Talking every week earlier than elections to the Northern Eire Meeting on Might 5, the previous chief Brexit negotiator insisted the Protocol was the one approach to ship Brexit by the point Boris Johnson turned Prime Minister in 2019.
Accusing the EU of treating his negotiating group as “the supplicant representatives of a renegade province”, Lord Frost stated the Authorities had confronted the selection of accepting the Protocol or strolling away and failing to ship Brexit.
He stated: “At that time we'd have seen, at finest, a second referendum, fairly presumably Brexit taken off the agenda for good, and who is aware of what penalties in our home politics.”
Lord Frost made the feedback at a gathering on Wednesday hosted by the centre-right suppose tank Coverage Alternate.
He added that the Protocol was solely ever supposed to be momentary and he had assumed it could final solely till Stormont voted on whether or not to maintain the accord in 2024.
He stated: “I anticipated that we'd accomplish that a lot home reform and alter inside Nice Britain between 2020 and 2024 that it could be self-evidently enticing to Northern Eire to finish the Protocol and put another preparations in place.”
Lord Frost stated the EU’s “ham-fisted” proposal to ban exports of vaccines throughout the border into Northern Eire in January final 12 months had “destroyed” unionist consent and rendered the Protocol unworkable.
He added: “The strains it's inflicting are actively damaging the Belfast Settlement.
“It's due to this fact certainly apparent, certainly it's an inescapable logical conclusion, that the Protocol can’t be operated because it stands. It must be renegotiated or eliminated.”
On the identical time, the Prime Minister advised the Home of Commons the Northern Eire Protocol wanted to be “rectified”.
Responding to a query from DUP MP Jim Shannon, Mr Johnson stated: “There's clearly an financial value to the Protocol.
"That can be now turning right into a political drawback and an imbalance in sentiment about it.
“We have to rectify that steadiness for the sake of the Good Friday Settlement on which this nation relies upon.”
However the Authorities has refused to be drawn on hypothesis that the Queen’s Speech on Might 10 would come with laws to unilaterally droop the Protocol if a negotiated answer didn't emerge.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman stated: “We do need to transfer as shortly as doable. We recognise there's nonetheless much more work to do.
“It stays our view that negotiated settlement could be the fitting method.”
However the spokesman added: “We don’t rule out taking additional steps if options can't be discovered.”
Post a Comment