Baroness Foster urges Tories to back Northern Ireland's strategic importance to UK defence and security
Baroness Foster has urged the Conservative party to move away from the view that London has no “selfish or strategic interest” in Northern Ireland – saying the nation’s “safety, stability, security and success” depend on the Union.
The former DUP first minister made the comments during a speech to a Tory association in England – in which she questioned what would happen if the United Kingdom “was broken up by separatists”.
Highlighting the “divergence on foreign policy” between Ireland and the Trump administration, she said that the Republic had adopted an “increasingly activist and hostile approach to Israel whilst cosying up to China”.
The former DUP leader said that Northern Ireland has become the topic of much conversation in security and defence circles, citing the publication of the Defence Industrial Strategy. That is a government policy to boost the UK economy by growing the defence sector.
On a recent visit to Belfast, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said increased defence spending will put the province at the heart of the UK’s industrial future.
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Addressing Tory members in Chipping Barnett on Monday night, Baroness Foster said the defence strategy is why the Conservative and Unionist party must assert the strategic importance of Northern Ireland to the UK.
“I’m sure this gathering will recall well the speech of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to Parliament in November 1981 when she said that to her ‘Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom as much as my constituency is’. This speech became known as ‘Northern Ireland is as British as Finchley’.
“I’m afraid since then there have been many within the Conservative party who have moved away from this view not least the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in 1990, Peter Brooke, who then said that the Thatcher Government had ‘no selfish or strategic interest in Northern Ireland’.
“If the Conservative and Unionist party is looking for support across the United Kingdom they need to reassert the position of Baroness Thatcher that Northern Ireland is important to the rest of the United Kingdom and that there is a strategic interest in the UK staying together.
“The Union of the United Kingdom is about mutual support and sharing. It is about allegiance to shared institutions, and it is about our place on the world stage. Our safety, stability, security and success depend on the Union”, Baroness Foster said.