Varadkar said that the government of Boris Johnson was anti-democratic and disrespectful and implicitly accused her of being dishonest and dishonest. Tanaist made the sharp attack in a BBC interview Thursday night, days after the Northern Ireland Protocol bill – which could repeal the Brexit deal – overcame its first hurdle in the House of Commons. “I think this is a strategic mistake for the people who want to keep the union because if you continue to impose things in Northern Ireland that the clear majority of people do not want, it means more people will leave the union. “It’s a peculiar policy coming from a government that supposedly wants to defend the union.” Varadkar, who is set to succeed Micheál Martin as president later this year, said he found it “shocking and difficult to accept” that Downing Street had tried to unilaterally change the protocol. “What the British government is doing now is very anti-democratic and very disrespectful to the people of Northern Ireland because it is taking that power away from the assembly.” A respectable government would honor a treaty it had agreed upon and uphold international law, he said. “It is not normal for a democratic government in a respectable country to sign a treaty and then try to pass domestic legislation to circumvent it,” he said. Varadkar rejected statements by Liz Truss, the UK’s foreign minister, who said the proposed EU solutions would exacerbate bureaucratic hurdles. “Well, there are some people who can clearly say that the square is a circle. “These are just not the facts.” Asked about a statement by Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland minister, that relations with Dublin were “excellent”, Varadkar replied: “In my political life, I have never seen such bad relations.” London did not want to work with Dublin, chose to quarrel with Brussels and was not unchanged in Belfast, he said. Subscribe to the First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7 p.m. BST Separately, in a letter to the Financial Times, Adrian O’Neill, Ireland’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, refuted a Truss opinion piece that had defended the protocol legislation. It will destabilize Northern Ireland by creating a legal and political vacuum, he said. Meanwhile, Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s deputy chief of staff and supposedly Northern Ireland’s first minister, laid a wreath at a cenotaph in Belfast on Friday to pay tribute to British soldiers – many of them Irish – who have died in Ireland. at the Battle of Somme in 1916. an important anniversary for the trade unionists. Sinn Féin leaders have attended World War I commemorations in the past, but not in Belfast. O’Neill attended a low-key event before the city’s official celebration. “As political leaders we have a responsibility to go beyond our comfort zones and extend the hand of friendship and do what we can in terms of leadership and healing the wounds of the past,” he said.
