Northern Ireland unionists warn no deal with EU risks breakup of country

Feb. 20 (UPI) -- Northern Ireland's main unionist party warned Monday that the failure of current efforts to resolve a dispute over post-Brexit trading arrangements could lead the country to break apart.

Democratic Unionist Party senior MP Sammy Wilson said the party would not allow Northern Ireland's power-sharing government to resume for as long as the European Union retained any jurisdiction over the country.

The row has effectively left Northern Ireland without a government since May.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and other senior ministers have been engaged in intensive talks with EU officials in recent days in a bid to resolve issues with the so-called Northern Ireland protocol.

The protocol, designed to avoid a hard land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland which is part of the EU, moves the border with the EU to the middle of the Irish Sea instead -- preventing free movement of goods from other parts of Britain.

But Wilson said he wanted Northern Ireland to be treated in exactly the same way as the rest of the United Kingdom where the laws in Northern Ireland are British laws, not EU laws.

"Essentially if a deal is agreed which still keeps us within the EU Single Market, as ministers in the Northern Ireland Assembly we would be required by law to implement that deal," he said. "And we're not going to do that because we believe that such an arrangement is designed to take us out of the United Kingdom and indeed would take us out of the United Kingdom, because increasingly we would have to agree EU laws which diverge from U.K. laws and in doing so would separate our own country from the rest of the United Kingdom."

He added that it was "unreasonable to ask unionists to participate in an arrangement which is designed for the break-up of the union."

"And that's what's at stake here," said Wilson. "And that's why this is a historic moment for the prime minister."

The protocol gives the European Court of Justice the final say in disputes over the protocol, a role the DUP also wants ended along with eurosceptics within the ruling Conservative Party in London.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson who negotiated the Brexit deal, including the protocol, intervened Saturday warning Sunak not to jettison legislation that would give the government powers to unilaterally amend the protocol.

Johnson said it would be a great mistake to drop the bill he introduced when he was still prime minister. The bill is currently paused in parliament.

Penny Mordaunt, the deputy leader of the commons told BBC Television on Sunday that Johnson's intervention was not "entirely unhelpful," because the bill had helped bring the EU to the negotiating table.

"We have the bill and in part it is because of that that we are now able to have these negotiations and the EU is talking about things that it previously said it wouldn't talk about."

The Irish deputy prime minister Micheal Martin, who met with the European Commission's chief protocol negotiator Maros Sefcovic on Sunday evening, said while negotiations between Britain and the EU had been "very challenging" for both sides, "very, very good progress" had been made.

"What's very important is that everyone now from here on thinks about the people of Northern Ireland," he said.

"Not power-play, not politics elsewhere -- I think the people of Northern Ireland have had enough that, of people playing politics with their future."

Former senior Labor politician and European Commissioner for Trade Lord Peter Mandelson said Johnson was "trying to wreck the thing because he's opposed to the prime minister."

"He and his supporters want to undermine the prime minister, just as a continuation of the fratricidal war in the Tory party," said Mandelson.

The opposition Labor leader Keir Starmer indicated his party would help Sunak get any deal he negotiated through parliament.

"This is no time for political brinkmanship," he said. "This situation has dragged on for too long, and the stakes are too high.

"My offer to the prime minister stands. If a deal is on the table, and it delivers for the U.K., Labor will back it."