Northern Ireland’s government faces collapse after its agriculture minister ordered officials to stop carrying out Brussels-mandated checks on trade with Great Britain.
Update 1725: Northern Ireland’s First Minister has now resigned, effective midnight.
Northern Ireland First Minister Paul Givan has announced that he is resigning, an act that will be effective from midnight tonight. Stormont — the home of the Northern Ireland devolved government — is ruled in a powersharing arrangement that stipulates that if the leader from one party resigns, his counterpart from the other in the agreement must also step down.
Although it is now 24 hours since agriculture minister Edwin Poots ordered border guards to stop making EU-imposed checks on goods travelling within the United Kingdom it is reported this has not actually changed and the civil servants seem to have simply ignored the command.
In all, the moves are protests against the Northern Ireland Protocol which were agreed on the nation’s behalf by London and are not well regarded by Unionists there who see it as having secured Brexit for England, Scotland, and Wales’ at Northern Ireland’s expense, leaving them effectively still inside the European Union in several key ways.
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#Edwin Poots, the Minister of Agriculture, Environment, and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland’s devolved executive used his authority to order a halt on all checks from midnight of February 2nd. The move followed what was perceived by Poots and others as a failure by the Boris Johnson administration to make any progress on changing the controversial Northern Ireland protocol with the EU and amid mounting evidence that the bloc is abusing the protocol in order to punish the United Kingdom for Brexit by imposing a “totally disproportionate” customs regime on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson went back on prior promises and agreed Brexit deals with the European Union which saw Northern Ireland turned into a kind of customs and regulatory colony of the bloc, with border checks imposed on trade between the province and the British mainland, in 2019.
This so-called Northern Ireland Protocol has caused simmering anger among British unionists, historically a majority among Northern Ireland’s residents, and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) which governs the region alongside the Irish nationalist Sinn Féin under a power-sharing agreement. Many believe that the terms of the protocol mean that Brexit effectively never took place in Northern Ireland and that its status as an integral part of the United Kingdom has been eroded.
Poots’s move has enraged the European Union, with a spokesman for the unelected European Commission instructing the Johnson administration — which has said that checks on the Northern Irish side are rightly a matter for the regional government — to remember “the responsibility of the UK Government for the respect of the international obligations it has entered into” through the Brexit deals.
It has also caused division within the Northern Irish government itself, angering ministers from Sinn Féin and the left-wing Alliance party, both opposed Brexit, and seemingly not enjoying the support of First Minister Paul Givan of Poots’s own party the DUP, who has confirmed he will resign from office as a result.
Under the terms of the Northern Ireland Executive’s power-sharing arrangements, Deputy First Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Féin will automatically lose office when he goes, leaving the devolved government facing total collapse.
The Northern Ireland Protocol itself does not appear to be in imminent danger of collapse, however, with bureaucrats having reportedly taken it upon themselves to simply ignore the Agriculture Minister’s order to halt EU-mandated border checks and continue carrying them out regardless.
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