Jim Allister: Varadkar ‘partitioned’ UK by pushing border in Brexit talks
The TUV leader was speaking during a debate in the Commons.
TUV leader Jim Allister has accused former Irish premier Leo Varadkar of “partitioning” the UK during the Brexit negotiations by insisting “on the border being pushed where the IRA could never push it”.
Mr Allister warned against “nice, fuzzy sentiment” between the UK and Ireland, saying relations between the two countries included “malevolence to the detriment of Northern Ireland”.
As leader of party Fine Gael, Mr Varadkar held the post of taoiseach from 2017 until 2020, returning to the role in 2022 before resigning in 2024.
He played a key role in the Brexit negotiations, with a famous meeting with then-prime minister Boris Johnson at a manor house on the Wirral in England seen as a significant moment in paving a way for the deal on the UK’s exit from the EU.
The agreement staved off the prospect of a hard trade border being introduced on the island of Ireland, but it did prompt years of further political turmoil, particularly within unionism in Northern Ireland, over the creation of a so-called Irish Sea border on the movement of goods between the region and Great Britain.
During a debate in the Commons on the legacy of St Patrick’s Day, the MP for North Antrim referred to the Second World War where he said the Irish government “formally and quite shockingly expressed regrets at the death of Hitler”.
He went on to claim that “when co-operation was sought” by the British Government during the Troubles, “there was very little action” from the Irish Government.
Moving to Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trading situation Mr Allister said it would be impossible “to ignore the incredible constitutional situation” the region is in as a result of the Windsor Framework agreement.
He said: “This is said to be a United Kingdom. It’s a United Kingdom, sadly partitioned by a border in the Irish Sea and the point I’m coming to is this, that much of that is at the behest of the authorities in the Irish Republic.
“It was the taoiseach of the Irish Republic who pushed and cajoled and forced the EU into their irrational demands.
“The EU, at the beginning of the protocol negotiations, was prepared, indeed they originated the idea of mutual enforcement to control the movement of goods.
“But sadly it was the taoiseach Varadkar who insisted, who saw the opportunity of partitioning the United Kingdom, who insisted on the border being pushed where the IRA could never push it in their 30 years of terror, insisted on it being pushed to the Irish Sea.
“It was the Dublin government that made those irrational demands and repudiated the very thing that made that unnecessary, namely mutual enforcement.
“So yes, lots of nice, fuzzy sentiment about how the Irish Republic and the UK have relations, and in many areas they are good, but there is a reality that there has been a malevolence to the detriment of Northern Ireland as well.”
Intervening, SNP MP for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East Seamus Logan said: “I don’t recall some of the accusations that he’s making about the role of the Irish government in terms of the negotiations that followed the Brexit vote.
“But what I wanted to ask him to clarify for the purpose of the record, is it not the case that many Unionist elected representatives, some of them in this chamber, encouraged their voters and their supporters to vote for Brexit in June 2016, did they not?”
Mr Allister agreed that they did but added: “they didn’t get Brexit”.
He concluded: “I think that in any relationship, you look for a two-way co-operation, and you certainly don’t look for trying to exploit a situation to achieve the dissembling of part of your neighbouring country, and that, sadly, is what has happened in respect of the Brexit negotiations.”
