Joe Biden’s White House has issued its second threat against the UK government over its refusal to bow to the post-Brexit demands of the EU.
The newly installed Liz Truss government’s refusal to bend to the will of Brussels over ongoing Brexit disagreements to do with the Northern Ireland Protocol risks endangering any potential future trade deal with the United States, Joe Biden’s White House has now threatened.
It is the second time the American executive branch has issued what appears to be a veiled threat against Britain’s new government over the last number of days, with Joe Biden previously telling incoming Prime Minister Liz Truss to acquiesce to EU demands on Northern Ireland during a phone call on Tuesday.
More specifically, Biden emphasised that it was important that the UK to not single-handedly make changes to the protocol agreement, which at the moment grants considerable legal powers in the British region of Northern Ireland to the European Union, with the Province being subject to the EU customs zone and establishing an internal UK border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
This has left many pro-UK Unionists in the deeply divided region fearing that the bloc’s chokehold on Northern Ireland risks splitting it off from the rest of the United Kingdom.
With Prime Minister Liz Truss appearing not to have headed such a demand, announcing earlier this week that it was indeed her intention to see parts of the protocol scrapped with or without EU approval, the White House appears to have reiterated its demands in more certain terms, with The Guardian reporting that U.S. authorities are now saying that Britain was endangering any post-Brexit trade deal with the superpower should it continue to aggravate Brussels.
“There’s no formal linkage on trade talks between the US and the UK and the Northern Ireland protocol, as we have said, but efforts to undo the Northern Ireland protocol would not create a conducive environment, and that’s basically where we are in the dialogue,” the publication reports White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre as saying.
The remarks represent the latest volley of political threats from the U.S. government over the Northern Ireland Protocol, with a number of politicians in the country — especially those like Joe Biden who have Irish-American backgrounds — expressing fears that any attempt by the UK to unilaterally change the agreement endangers a fragile peace in the highly-sectarian region.
This has led to a number of threats coming from senior figures in the United States, with Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi being especially keen to openly demand that the UK bow to EU demands that any and all changes to the protocol are first agreed with the bloc before being implemented.
So far, Liz Truss appears to have largely tuned complaints originating from across the Atlantic out, with the newly minted Prime Minister telling parliament on Wednesday that while a “negotiated solution” with the EU was her preference, the UK government needed to “resolve the issue of the Northern Ireland Protocol”.
Truss has previously been adamant that such a resolution could be found in her Northern Ireland Protocol bill that would rip up parts of the negotiated settlement with Brussels if passed.