Angry Tory MPs reject Joe Biden's comments on
UK-EU Brexit talks
Trade deal with US not possible if UK undermines Good
Friday agreement, Democrats say
Patrick
Wintour and Daniel Boffey
Thu 17 Sep
2020 11.10 BST
Conservative
MPs have reacted angrily to an intervention by Joe Biden, the US Democratic
presidential candidate, in the UK Brexit talks, accusing him of ignorance of
the Northern Ireland peace process.
In a tweet
on Wednesday, Biden warned the UK there would be no US-UK free trade agreement
if the Brexit talks ended with the Good Friday agreement being undermined. He
tweeted: “We can’t allow the Good Friday agreement that brought peace to
Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit.
“Any trade
deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the agreement
and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.”
His
intervention was welcomed by Richard Neal, the chairman of Congress’s ways and
means committee.
The
backlash was led by the former cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith, who told the
Times: “We don’t need lectures on the Northern Ireland peace deal from Mr
Biden. If I were him I would worry more about the need for a peace deal in the
US to stop the killing and rioting before lecturing other sovereign nations.”
Donald
Trump has made law and order a key theme of his re-election campaign after
months of unrest triggered by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.
David
Davis, the former Brexit secretary, said: “Perhaps Mr Biden should talk to the
EU since the only threat of an invisible border in Ireland would be if they
insisted on levying tariffs.”
Biden spoke
out after the UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, met the House Speaker, Nancy
Pelosi, in Washington in a bid to reassure her that the British government was
not seeking a hard border on the island of Ireland via measures in its internal
market bill, a move that is seen by the US pro-Irish lobby as potentially fatal
to the peace process.
Raab has
argued that the measures in the UK internal market bill are proportionate,
precautionary and necessary due to the EU’s politicising of the stuttering
talks on a trade deal between the UK and the EU.
However,
the EU hit back on Thursday, saying an agreement on a trade and security deal
remained conditional on the government pulling the contentious clauses in the
internal market bill.
The
European commission’s vice-president for the economy, Valdis Dombrovskis, said:
“If the UK does not comply with the exit agreement, there will no longer be a
basis for a free trade agreement between the EU and the UK. The UK government
must correct this before we continue to negotiate our political and economic
relations.”
The dispute
between Biden and Downing Street poses a broader threat to UK interests if
Biden, a pro-EU and pro-Ireland politician, decides to turn against Boris
Johnson, who has made a virtue of his close relations with the Trump
administration.
The former
UK trade minister Conor Burns tweeted: “Hey JoeBiden would you like to discuss
the Good Friday agreement? It is also called the Belfast agreement so it
doesn’t offend both traditions. Did you actually know that? I was born in NI
and I’m a Catholic and a Unionist. Here if you need help.”
The
Conservative MP for Beaconsfield, Joy Morrissey, replied that “Biden is
shamelessly pandering to the American Irish vote while refusing to engage with
the UK government or UK diplomatic channels. Nice.”
She later
deleted her tweet, but added: “Clearly it’s all about the Irish American vote.”
Burns
added: “The error those of us who supported Brexit was to assume the EU would
behave rationally in seeking a free trade agreement with a large trading partner
like the UK..”
Alexander
Stafford, the Conservative MP for Rother Valley, tweeted: “Is this the same
JoeBiden who once described Britain’s position in Northern Ireland as
‘absolutely outrageous’. And who hit the headlines in the 1980s for his stand
against the deportation of IRA suspects from the US to Britain?”
John
Redwood, a leading Brexiter, said: “Trade deals are nice to have but not
essential. We did not have a trade deal with the US when we were in the EU.
Getting back full control of our laws, our money and our borders is essential.”
Theresa
May’s former chief of staff Nick Timothy rejected the frenzy, dismissing “the
sudden discovery that Democrats don’t like Brexit and prefer the Irish”.
Other Tory
MPs including Stewart Jackson tweeted articles claiming that two of the
representatives criticising the UK over the Good Friday agreement were overt
IRA sympathisers, and a third was a supporter of Martin McGuinness, the now
deceased former deputy first minister for Northern Ireland.
The shadow
foreign secretary, Lisa Nandy, said: “This shows the scale of the damage the
government have done to Britain’s standing in the world. They’ve lost trust and
undermined cooperation at the moment we most need it – and all to tear up an
agreement they negotiated. Reckless, incompetent and utterly self-defeating.”
Daniel
Mulhall, the Irish ambassador to the US, has been working the corridors in
Washington for the past fortnight, lobbying to lessen the threat the Irish
perceive to the Good Friday agreement posed by the British proposals. He has
been tweeting his gratitude to those representatives issuing support for the
Good Friday agreement.
No free
trade deal between the UK and the US can be agreed unless it is supported by
two-thirds of Congress.
In a sign
of Trump administration concern about the row, Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s former
acting chief of staff, will shortly make his first trip to the the UK in his
new role as the US special envoy for Northern Ireland.
The Foreign
Office, criticised by some for failing to anticipate the likely US backlash,
will argue Raab’s visit to Washington may have drawn a predictable reaction
from some corners, but was necessary to reassure and counter Irish propaganda.
But UK
diplomats will be anxious that the UK is not seen to adopt a partisan stance in
the US elections, especially since Biden currently holds a fragile poll lead.
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