Warning about perilous state of the Union
KEEPING the UK intact will be a tougher issue than Brexit in the next parliament, a Northern Ireland MP said yesterday.
Sammy Wilson has urged Boris Johnson to show voters in Scotland and Ulster why they should stay inside the Union.
He said that the Prime Minister can expect calls for a referendum on Scottish independence and a “border poll” on Irish unity.
Mr Wilson is the Brexit spokesman of the Democratic Unionist Party, which now holds fewer seats than those won by pro-unification parties Sinn Fein and the SDLP.
He said: “It’s a nettle [the PM’S] got to grasp. In fact, he might find that sorting out the remaining issues that there are with the EU is easier than sorting out the internal UK union issues.”
He argues that if Mr Johnson will not grant referendums he must “go on the offensive” and sell the “concept of the Union”.
Mr Wilson said: “He can go down one of two routes. He can ignore the threat in Scotland and just bumble along and probably be seen as the Prime Minister who [oversaw] the break-up of the United Kingdom – or he can now become the Prime Minister for the Union.”
The DUP propped up the Tories in government but the two parties clashed over Brexit. Mr Wilson’s party – which lost two seats last week – is deeply opposed to trade barriers between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
However, Mr Wilson hopes that Mr Johnson’s new clout in the Commons will help him win gamechanging concessions from the EU.
He said: “[The PM] has always said he wants, for the United Kingdom as a whole, a tariff-free and a quota-free trade deal. He’s in a much stronger position now to demand that from the EU because he’s not going to get undermined in the House of Commons.
“If he skewers that then a lot of the issues about the border and the Irish Sea will be removed... So, [while] we may not have direct leverage we believe if he uses his position correctly it will be to the benefit of the Union.”
Mr Wilson said he was “overjoyed” that voters had rejected Jeremy Corbyn, who had close relationships with Sinn Fein during the Troubles.
He said: “There were cheers all round my constituency to see Jeremy Corbyn bite the dust.”