Unlike his predecessor, boris won't take any rubbish from the eu about northern ireland | thearticle

Boris Johnson completed his introductory prime ministerial tour of the UK’s devolved regions with an overnight stay in Belfast on Tuesday. Having first dined with the DUP’s leadership team,

he spent Wednesday morning urging Northern Ireland’s five largest political parties to restore power-sharing and discussing with them how Brexit might affect the province. His visit

coincided with protests against the possible closure of the Harland and Wolff shipyard. This historic company, which built the Titanic and thousands of more seaworthy vessels, now employs

only 130 workers and could go into administration early next week. The yard is a symbol of Belfast’s proud industrial past and its cranes are a distinctive feature of the city’s skyline. It

may prove easier for the new prime minister to re-float the Titanic and return Harland and Wolff to its glory days than revive power-sharing before 31 October. Sinn Fein claims that a

no-deal Brexit requires an immediate border poll, while its smaller Irish nationalist rival, the SDLP, is bidding for London to exercise ‘joint sovereignty’ over Northern Ireland with

Dublin, if no agreement on devolution is reached. Meanwhile, if the parties delay for three months, and they’ve successfully waited out two-and-a-half years so far, the Secretary of State

must implement same-sex marriage and abortion reform, removing the responsibility for these divisive issues from the institutions at Stormont. This incentive for inaction was provided thanks

to MPs amending the Northern Ireland Executive Formation Bill, that the outgoing secretary of state, Karen Bradley, hastened through parliament to avoid an Assembly election. Mr Johnson,

who declined to hold a press conference in Belfast, released a statement claiming that there had been “constructive progress in recent weeks at Stormont” and called for “serious and intense

engagement to get this done.” He is obliged to encourage the parties to conclude their talks successfully, but he must know that little is likely to happen until the Brexit deadline has

passed. The prime minister will be more hopeful that he can persuade the DUP to extend its confidence and supply arrangement with the Conservatives. The government’s slender working majority

has nearly disappeared, even with Arlene Foster’s support, but his firm opposition to the Irish backstop (so far) will reassure the unionist party that he is a more reliable partner than

Theresa May. Traditionally, the DUP’s most obvious motivation was maximising the amount of public money pumped into Northern Ireland by the Treasury. With the draft withdrawal agreement

threatening to drive an economic and political border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, the party’s priority is to make sure that the Prime Minister stays committed to killing the

backstop, in all its possible forms. Downing Street’s statement stressed that Mr Johnson, “made clear that the UK would be leaving the EU on 31 October, come what may.” Reportedly, he told

EU leaders that no face to face negotiations will take place until Brussels scraps the backstop. Johnson delivered a similar message to the Irish Republic’s Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, in

a phone call earlier this week. This appears to answer the Dublin government’s aggressive Brexit position with the kind of resolution that you would expect in the face of a challenge to the

UK’s territorial integrity. However, more cynical Ulster unionists will fret that Johnson might eventually settle for a Northern Ireland only backstop, if its nationwide features could be

removed. They suspect many Conservative Brexiteers hated the Withdrawal Agreement chiefly because it required the whole country to remain tied to the EU customs union, even if, technically,

Northern Ireland was the only part of the UK to remain a full member. If the prime minister managed to renegotiate the specifics of Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement, he might feel that he

could claim to have binned the backstop, even if it still applied to Ulster. The Northern Ireland protocol was never truly UK-wide, but, for unionists here, the removal of even the flimsy

protections that were supposed to keep the province closely aligned with the rest of Britain, would be a disaster. For the moment, there is no evidence that Mr Johnson plans a betrayal of

that type. Indeed, there are signs that he may start to challenge Dublin’s misleading claims about Brexit and Ireland. Theresa May was loathe to contradict Varadkar and his deputy Simon

Coveney, even while they hectored and patronised Britain and distorted the Good Friday Agreement. She effectively accepted the fraudulant idea that new infrastructure at the border was a

breach of its terms. In contrast, Johnson delayed his first phone call to Varadkar for almost a week, in a snub designed to remind the taoiseach where the balance of power lies in that

relationship. Perhaps Boris Johnson will be the prime minister to point out that it is Northern Ireland’s place in the UK, not a ‘seamless border’, that is underpinned by the agreement and

its principle of consent.