London and Brussels still have “genuine differences” over post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland, despite tangible signs of progress in ending the bitter deadlock, Britain’s foreign secretary said on Wednesday.
In a visit to meet politicians and business leaders in the region, where the impasse has paralyzed politics for months, James Cleverly said he would not be in a hurry to sign a deal with Brussels on the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol without ensuring it is sustainable.
But he caused local strife by not allowing Mary Lou McDonald, head of the all-island nationalist Sinn Féin party, to attend the talks. McDonald is also the leader of the opposition in the Republic of Ireland and diplomatic convention dictates that he must meet with his Irish counterpart.
The incident – which McDonald slammed as “strange” and “reckless”, a political act – illustrates London’s challenge in navigating the region’s delicate tensions. The Democratic Unionist Party, the largest pro-UK party, has been vetoing NI’s political institutions for months to demand sweeping changes to the post-Brexit deal.
“We’re not setting a timeline. We’re not setting a deadline. We want to get this done [protocol] problems quickly, but there are still gaps that need to be addressed,” Cleverly told reporters.
“It has good mood music [with Brussels] it is important. . .[but]itself is not enough. . . there are still differences that are genuine and cannot be underestimated,” he said.
The DUP has vetoed the Stormont Assembly and the power-sharing executive since the election in May last year. It has said it will go ahead with demands to change the protocol, including ending customs borders for goods in the Irish Sea.
But Cleverly said that “for parties to go back to Stormont and get a resolution on the Northern Ireland Protocol is not always relevant”. Restoring the institution is a decision for the elected representatives of the region, he added.
Deirdre Heenan, a professor at Ulster university, called McDonald’s exclusion from Wednesday’s meeting, in a week when welcome progress had been made on the protocol, “an avoidable PR disaster”.
One of the business leaders who met Cleverly said that he was surprised and this is evidence of the tin ear by London in an area where politics is in the balance between nationalist and unionist communities.
Because of Cleverly’s decision, Sinn Féin did not send anyone to the meeting and the smaller nationalist Social Democratic and Labor parties were not far behind.
The dispute comes after London and Brussels this week reached a tentative deal that would give Brussels access to British IT systems for trading in the Irish Sea – a breakthrough after months of acrimony.
But DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson demanded more flexibility from Brussels, telling reporters: “The EU must give ground.”
The talks come as both sides make efforts to find a quick solution, ideally before the 25th anniversary in April of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended Northern Ireland’s three decades of conflict known as the Troubles.
Ireland’s Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who helped finalize the protocol deal in 2019, will hold talks in Belfast with the leaders on Thursday.
Donaldson said real progress has not been made by Brussels beyond “tinkering around the corners of the protocol”. He added that the scrutiny of the agreement by the European Court of Justice was a DUP red line and “unfair”.