Republican sentiment is rising over fears that Brexit will tank the economy, but Northern Ireland’s unionists won’t go quietly.
Prospects for unification will have less to do with ancient hatreds than with health care, schools, housing, and jobs.
UK PM Boris Johnson had been wildly happy about his new EU exit deal; then he introduced a law undermining both it, and the last round of trade negotiations. Speaking with two former permanent secretaries of the UK’s EU exit department, Matt Ross asks whether Johnson is applying firm leverage – or deliberately sabotaging the trade talks.
'A dagger at the heart of the Union': Brexit reality for Northern Ireland will fuel Nationalist hopes of Irish unity
01/01/2021
Sinn Fein's Michelle O'Neill says Brexit is a gamechanger, but the DUP's Arlene Foster doesn't consider Irish unity inevitable.
Food shortages in Northern Ireland and Scottish fisheries on the brink have been overlooked due to the ongoing pandemic
Since the start of the year, a raft of new requirements are making life increasingly difficult for UK businesses that trade with the EU.
A much bigger driver of the unity chatter is, of course, Brexit and the out-workings of the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol, in particular the Irish sea border that Secretary of State Brandon Lewis denies exists.
Ireland finally has one of its own in the White House. And Joe Biden’s arrival in the Oval Office may well prove pivotal in protecting the Northern Ireland peace process in the face of Brexit — Britain’s inexplicable decision to leave the world’s biggest trading partnership.
The myriad of ways Brexit has permanently shifted the course of Northern Ireland's future
17/03/2021
BEFORE THE BREXIT vote, Northern Ireland was on a more stable trajectory.
Great Brexit Con Job
13/04/2021
Get Brexit Done’ has unravelled in a spectacular fashion; a significant knock to the economy, removal of rights and freedoms, more red tape for business and – the most heart-breaking of all – trouble has returned to Northern Ireland. The obvious answer to this foreseeable problem is for the UK to be part of the single market and customs union.
Northern Ireland: Petrol bombs won't demolish a border in the Irish Sea or turn back the tide of Brexit
24/04/2021
The Protocol has reaffirmed Unionism's worst fears that Northern Ireland is the unwanted child of the British government.
Brexit’s Ghosts Still Haunt Northern Ireland
28/04/2021
BELFAST, Northern Ireland—For more than a week earlier this month, Northern Ireland was rocked by riots in pro-British unionist communities, with frequent outbursts of violence in areas bordering on pro-Irish nationalist neighborhoods.
Brexit: is it sustainable?
08/07/2021
In January 2020, as Britain was about to exit the EU, a post appeared on the London School of Economics (LSE) blog musing about the mechanism and conditions that might apply if Britain ever wanted to re-join.
SDLP’s Brexit spokesman says Frost’s attempts to unpick NI protocol risking investment.
The PM is reportedly considering bypassing the Northern Ireland protocol so British sausages can continue to be sold there.
Brexit May Spoil Johnson’s G-7 Party
09/06/2021
The Brexit bills are starting to fall due for Boris Johnson just as the U.K. prime minister seeks to cast himself as a global statesman leading the Group of Seven’s fight to defeat Covid-19.
Even the keenest Brexiteer must feel that the process has been tortuously long. / That has been, in large part, because successive British governments have refused to accept the trade-off between untrammelled sovereignty and friction-free access to the EU’s single market, a refusal that shapes today’s increasingly testy relationship.
Boris Johnson & the Rise of Make-Believe
17/06/2021
It is no good offering people a ‘story to believe in’ if it ends in harm – but the Prime Minister does not know any other way, observes Jonathan Lis.
An expected snap election in Northern Ireland would become a mini-poll on post-Brexit trade arrangements.
That vote -- five years ago Wednesday -- was supposed to settle the United Kingdom's perennial neurosis over its relationship with Europe once and for all. It did nothing of the sort.
Brexit’s collateral damage - Chris Patten
30/06/2021
Five years after the Brexit vote, the costs of that decision are becoming clearer.
No hint of contrition or constructiveness in article by Lord Frost and Brandon Lewis... just menace.
The London bureau chief for Germany’s public broadcaster reflects on Britain’s government.
Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney warns about the ongoing border disputes, but he stresses that violence is unlikely.