Northern Ireland’s first minister resigns in row over post-Brexit trade
- Fresh political crisis as the UK and the European Union struggle to resolve the region’s post-Brexit trading arrangements
- Resignation of Northern Ireland’s unionist chief minister prompted calls for early elections in the tense British province
Northern Ireland’s first minister resigned in protest at post-Brexit trade rules on Thursday, a day after another minister tried to halt some checks on agri-food goods coming from the rest of the United Kingdom, drawing European Union anger.
Paul Givan’s decision may complicate talks between the EU and Britain to rework a politically divisive Northern Ireland protocol governing such trade that was agreed by London as part of its exit from the EU two years ago.
The protocol kept Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market for goods in order to preserve a politically sensitive open border with EU member state Ireland. In so doing, though, it created an effective border in the Irish Sea, angering pro-British, pro-Brexit unionists in the province and spurring the British government to seek to rewrite the deal it signed up to.
Tensions over the arrangements flared again on Wednesday when Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots, like Givan a member of the pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist party (DUP), ordered a halt to checks on the agri-food goods.
Poots’ order was not immediately implemented. His department said officials had not refused the instruction but were “considering the wider implications of fulfilling the minister’s request”. Trade bodies reported that goods were still being inspected at Northern Irish ports.