Morning View: UK and Irish governments should press EU to back down over power grab

News Letter Morning View on Friday November 11 2022
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Morning View

The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is attending the British Irish Council (BIC), becoming the first British premier to grace a meeting of that body since Gordon Brown in 2007

The BIC is part of the Belfast Agreement’s ‘strand 3’ dimension, which encourages strong ‘east west’ relationships across the British Isles. It is attended by figures from the London and Dublin governments, as well as representatives from the devolved administrations, and those from the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey.

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In light of the Brexit negotiations after 2016, and the protocol that eventually emerged, unionists have often claimed that strand 3 of the agreement is unjustly neglected. The argument that there could be no border on the island of Ireland invoked strand 2, which sets out ‘north south’ arrangements, but neglected the greater political and economic significance of our links to Great Britain.

The summit forms an excellent opportunity for Mr Sunak to remind Micheál Martin and the Republic’s government of the agreement’s real content, rather than the claims that are often made of it. The Taoiseach recently made the completely baseless assertion that another strand 3 body, the British and Irish Intergovernmental Conference, ‘kicks in’ whenever devolution is not operating at Stormont.

Mr Sunak will tell the meeting that he is ‘determined to deliver’ a restoration of the power-sharing institutions. That is a noble aspiration, but one that can only be realised on a sustainable basis by dealing with the NI protocol properly, rather than agreeing a partial deal with the EU.

The prime minister is right to highlight the ‘shared interests’ of ‘people across these great islands’. And that’s precisely why both governments should press Brussels to back down from its power grab over NI.