The British Labour Party has accused Liz Truss of allowing her judgment to become clouded following reports that she is considering triggering article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol within days of taking office if she becomes prime minister.
British newspapers reported on Friday that the foreign secretary had been studying a number of options, ahead of a September 15th deadline, to European Union legal action over London’s failure to fully implement the agreement.
The Financial Times quoted Ms Truss’s campaign as saying she would prefer a negotiated solution and that she was not “pushing” article 16.
“Some government officials have raised concerns about issues coming down the track and have presented many options to ministers to deal with them,” a figure close to the foreign secretary told the newspaper.
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The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill would give British ministers the power to scrap most of the protocol but the legislation is not expected to complete its passage through parliament until the end of this year or early next year. The British government has said the conditions are present for the activation of article 16, which allows one of the parties to unilaterally suspend parts of the protocol if it leads to “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties”.
Friday’s reports followed a Conservative leadership hustings in Norwich during which Ms Truss said the jury was still out on whether French president Emmanuel Macron was “a friend or a foe”.
“At a time when the West must stay united in the face of Russian attempts to divide us, the fact the foreign secretary has chosen to needlessly insult one of our closest allies shows a terrible and worrying lack of judgment,” said Labour’s shadow foreign secretary David Lammy.
“Liz Truss’s decision-making has clearly become clouded by weeks and weeks of playing to the gallery of Tory members rather than focusing on the country.”
Ms Truss’s antipathy towards the protocol has grown in recent days, after British steel producers were told they would have to pay a 25 per cent tariff to sell some construction products into Northern Ireland.
Triggering article 16 would allow either side to take unilateral action if they believed the protocol was causing “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist”, or diversion of trade.
Serious difficulties are not defined, giving both sides room for interpretation.
The UK government has long said triggering article 16 remains an option, and some will view renewed discussion of the possibility as sabre-rattling designed to please the ardent Brexit-supporting Tory party members who will choose the next prime minister.
Over the past year, Ms Truss has studiously lobbied Tory MPs believed to have concerns about her plans, in an attempt to avoid a return of the divisions that plagued the Conservatives from 2016 to 2019.
Sources said the foreign secretary wanted the government to appear united, or else Brussels would believe its threats were empty because Conservative backbenchers could torpedo the most controversial elements of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill.
John Finucane, the Sinn Féin MP for North Belfast, said “reckless threats” to trigger article 16 were evidence of the UK government’s “total disregard for the democratic wishes of people and businesses here”.
He said the protocol was supported by most people, companies and elected politicians in the Assembly, but the Conservatives had tried fiercely to undermine it.
Earlier this month, the UK triggered its own dispute proceedings with the EU, accusing it of breaching the Brexit treaty by freezing it out of scientific research programmes following the row over Northern Ireland.
Ms Truss said there had been a “clear breach” of the trade and co-operation agreement, with her department writing to Brussels requesting formal dispute talks.
The UK government claimed the EU was causing serious damage to research and development in both the UK and EU member states, with Britain frozen out of the science research programme Horizon; Copernicus, the Earth observation programme, which provides data on climate change; Euratom, the nuclear research programme; and space surveillance and tracking. — Additional reporting: Guardian
