Significant backlash has forced Northern Ireland’s ruling DUP into backtracking on measures intended to ease agri-food trade disruption in NI caused by Brexit.
Under post-Brexit customs rules, checks are required on animal-based products entering the UK from the EU, and subsequently on goods moving between Great Britain and NI too.
It was decided that a ‘Swiss-style’ trading arrangement with the bloc would ease such regulations, therefore mitigating trade disruption, but the DUP’s economy minister Diane Dodds on Tuesday ruled out such an arrangement – because it would require the UK to “slavishly” follow EU rules “in every respect”.
Meanwhile, Wales’ former Labour first minister accused Boris Johnson’s “anti-Scottish” outlook of driving support for Scottish independence. Carwyn Jones told the Constitutionally Unsound podcast that Downing Street was playing into the hands of the SNP.
“If you keep on saying ‘no’ to democrats you give succour to people who are far more extreme,” he said, referring to Mr Johnson’s repeated refusal to allow an indyref2 vote to go ahead. “How do you say in the long term ‘no, no, no’ when people in Scotland keep voting yes, yes, yes? That’s a fundamental problem that can only end badly.”
