Ireland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs has openly aired the idea that British Conservative Party MPs could rebel against the UK Prime Minister as relations between the two countries sour.
Simon Coveney, Ireland’s foreign affairs minister, has openly suggested that Conservative Party representatives could rebel against Boris Johnson over his government’s ripping up of parts of the Northern Ireland protocol.
A bugbear for pro-UK Unionists in the region since its inception, the protocol effectively leaves Northern Ireland within the EU single market and outside the UK’s own internal market. While the British government has made clear it wants to clean up the agreement and improvement, the European Union has refused to get involved, pushing the UK towards unilaterally suspending parts of the agreement.
Officials in Ireland and beyond, however, have expressed much anger over the move, with The Times even reporting Minister Coveney as now suggesting that those within Johnson’s own Conservative Party could move against their leader to prevent the protocol from being altered.
While the Irish politician from the pro-EU Fine Gael party emphasised that he was not calling “on Conservative Party MPs to do anything”, he hinted that such a rebellion could regardless be on the cards.
“I, like everybody else, have seen the concern that’s been expressed within the Conservative Party at this course of action,” the Minister said.
“I believe, from speaking to people in the Conservative Party, that there will be quite a number of them that see this as undermining everything the Conservative Party stands for or has stood for in the past, which is institutions, legality [and] international law,” he continued, before claiming that UK government’s decision to rip up the agreement is “undermining all of that”.
Coveney also claimed that the leftist UK Labour party — the leader of which he had met only last week — would also fight the decision to end the agreement without an agreement with the EU.
With the likes of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss sabre rattling over the possibility of killing parts of the protocol for weeks now, the UK government finally announced legislation on Monday which will enable authorities to end parts of the agreement.
Billing the decision as an attempt at “fixing the Northern Ireland protocol”, the government is claiming that the new bill will enable them to cut red tape for businesses looking to ship goods to and from Britain, as well as to harmonise taxation across all territory under the control of Westminster.
“It will end the untenable situation where people in Northern Ireland are treated differently to the rest of the United Kingdom, protect the supremacy of our courts and our territorial integrity,” Liz Truss said regarding the legislation, while also claiming that the move will prevent violence erupting in the region traditionally plagued by sectarian conflict for hundreds of years.
However, many in the EU and United States have condemned the United Kingdom for introducing the legislation, with some congressmen suggesting that it could endanger peace on the island of Ireland.
“The introduction of legislation in the United Kingdom undermines the Northern Ireland protocol, threatens international law, and, most concerningly, could jeopardise the almost 25 years of peace established by the Good Friday agreement,” reportedly read a statement penned by congressmen Bill Keating, Richard Neal, Brendan Boyle and Brian Fitzpatrick.
Any claim that the move breaks or could break international law has repeatedly been strongly denied by senior government officials within the UK.
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