British prime minister Boris Johnson will risk a trade war with the European Union by introducing legislation on Monday to override the Northern Ireland protocol and break the withdrawal treaty he negotiated three years ago.
The Bill is expected to give ministers the power to scrap checks on goods moving from Britain to Northern Ireland, and to remove the requirement for businesses in the North to follow EU regulations.
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Under pressure from Eurosceptic Conservative backbenchers, Mr Johnson is understood to have included clauses in the Bill that explicitly disapply British domestic legislation ratifying the withdrawal treaty.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney said whatever is published “is unlikely to be helpful in any way” and would “cause an awful lot more problems than it solves”. He said British claims they had exhausted other options did not stand up. “They are breaking their word to Ireland, they’re also breaking an international treaty with the EU, and breaching international law by doing that.”
Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said on Sunday the legislation would not breach international law because the UK government would be breaking one international agreement in order to protect another.
“I said back in late 2020 that for me the primacy [is] the Belfast Good Friday agreement, and if at that point that meant breaking something like the withdrawal agreement, which wasn’t complete then, to protect the Good Friday agreement, that’s our primacy,” he told the BBC. “But tomorrow’s legislation is within international law, defending and protecting the Belfast Good Friday agreement.”
In response, Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald said Mr Lewis was “talking through his hat”.
Mr Coveney said the UK government “seems to be more focused on speaking to themselves rather than speaking to the EU about solving these problems”.
He said the “dangerous and disingenuous” British moves were “driven by domestic political considerations as opposed to the greater good”, adding that if the protocol collapsed a new mechanism to protect the peace process, prevent a hard border, and protect the EU single market would have to be established.
The British government has argued that the DUP’s refusal to restore the Stormont institutions or to take part in North-South bodies because of the protocol shows it is undermining the Belfast Agreement. But Mr Lewis admitted that he had received no indication from the DUP that the legislation will be enough to persuade the party to nominate a deputy first minister.
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The DUP is under pressure from the Conservative government to nominate a speaker for the Northern Ireland Assembly this week in response to the introduction of the Bill.
The European Commission has made clear that if such a Bill becomes law it will trigger retaliatory trade sanctions, and that the legislation’s introduction will adversely affect all aspects of the EU’s relationship with Britain.
In Dublin a senior source said that if the legislation outlines what may be done, without immediate action following, it would not hinder the resumption of talks on the protocol. A second Government source said Dublin is “furious”, and that “Britain’s word is no longer its bond”.
Conservative MPs who voted against Mr Johnson’s leadership last week are organising opposition to the Bill, and the PoliticsHome website on Sunday published details of an internal memo making the case against it.
“Breaking international law to rip up the prime minister’s own treaty is damaging to everything the UK and Conservatives stand for. We are a country that acts with integrity and honours the agreements we sign,” the memo said.
