Stormont

The Northern Ireland Protocol undermines the guiding principles of the region’s historic peace deal, a former No 10 chief of staff has warned. Jonathan Powell, who worked for Tony Blair and was involved in negotiations that forged the Good Friday Agreement, said he understood why loyalists and unionists were upset by the economic border in […]

Loyalist paramilitary organisations have told prime minister Boris Johnson they are withdrawing support for Northern Ireland’s historic peace agreement. The outlawed groups said they were temporarily withdrawing their backing of the Belfast/Good Friday accord amid mounting concerns about the contentious Northern Ireland Protocol governing Irish Sea trade post-Brexit. However, they stressed that unionist opposition to […]

The European Commission expects permanent post-Brexit border control posts to be ready in Northern Ireland by the middle of this year. Commission spokesman Daniel Ferrie said the UK had obligations to meet under the Northern Ireland Protocol, which governs the trade in goods from the rest of the UK. Irish Sea checks required under the […]

Arlene Foster has accused Boris Johnson of a dereliction of duty over Brexit after claiming he is not doing enough to address Irish Sea trade disruption, claiming his excuses were “patronising and offensive”. Northern Ireland’s first minister demanded action from the prime minister amid the continued fallout from the EU’s botched move to invoke a […]

A Question Time audience member has called on politicians to prepare for a border poll in Northern Ireland “even if it isn’t for another ten years”. The audience member told Northern Ireland first and deputy first ministers Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neil that Stormont had a lot to learn from the “shambles of the Brexit […]

The Northern Ireland secretary has urged MPs not to “overstate” issues at the border which have led to supply issues in supermarkets.  Brandon Lewis said that whilst there have been “challenges” to overcome in the first few weeks since the end of the Brexit transition period, “goods are moving” to and from the island. Responding to […]

Stormont’s agriculture minister has described the Northern Ireland secretary in Westminster as the “emperor with no clothes” after he said trade disruptions across the Irish Sea were due to Covid-19, and not Brexit. Edwin Poots said Brandon Lewis was “the emperor with no clothes – but instead of a small boy pointing out he’s naked, the […]

A prominent public health expert has said that anti-lockdown campaigners are responsible for worsening the very restrictions they oppose. Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh told the Stormont politicians: “The people who are most anti-lockdown have been frustrating to listen to because those are the people pushing us into lockdown… “The […]

Northern Ireland will mark 100 years of its existence on May 3, 2021. In the meantime the government of the Republic has launched a radical new policy calling for “A Shared Island”. This new emphasis on sharing points to a United Ireland as an aspiration rather than a policy. In parallel, the United Kingdom has […]