Liz Truss 'Causes Disquiet' in Washington With Her 'Concerning' Push to Scrap NI Protocol

Earlier this week, UK media reported that Foreign Secretary and Tory leadership frontrunner Liz Truss may tear up the Northern Ireland Protocol by triggering the document’s Article 16 within days if she succeeds outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson next month.

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss’ alleged plan to scrap the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) has caused disquiet in Washington, according to the Telegraph.

The newspaper quoted unnamed UK diplomatic and White House sources as saying that if Truss becomes the next UK prime minister, she may launch a charm offensive in order to ease American concerns over her policy on the NIP. Truss is seen as favorite to win the Tory leadership contest on September 5th and succeed outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The sources argued that if the foreign secretary gets the better of former Chancellor Rishi Sunak in the Tory leadership race, she will most likely face Biden, “who is proud of his Irish-American heritage,” raising the issue of the NIP as soon as possible.

“The thing that is loaded against her [Truss] and is going to be difficult for her is what she has said on the Northern Ireland Protocol, especially if she now implements it,” one of the insiders claimed.

They added that it’s “going to be difficult with the Biden administration, and I imagine in their first phone call Biden will say: ‘Don’t do it. Try and do a deal with the EU’.”

A White House source, in turn, told the Telegraph that “for personal reasons, he [Biden] is very focused on the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland.”

According to the insider, “For geopolitical reasons he does not want a situation in which the UK and EU create a diversion and damage at a time when we can least afford it. The policy being proposed by Liz Truss is a concerning one for folks here in Washington.”

Truss Reportedly Seeks to Tear Up NI Protocol

The remarks followed the Financial Times (FT) reporting on Friday that Truss may trigger the NIP’s Article 16 against the EU if she wins the Conservative leadership contest next month.

Article 16 allows either party to undertake unilateral safeguarding measures if the protocol leads to “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade.”

Unnamed sources told the FT that triggering Article 16 would “provide a stop-gap while a legislation to unilaterally rewrite the NIP passes through the Commons, which is not expected until the end of this year at the earliest.” The legislation, also known as the NIP bill, was unveiled by No 10 in June, prodding the European Commission to relaunch legal proceedings against Britain.

Although the insiders claimed Truss was not “pushing” to trigger Article 16, they argued that it remained an option on the table if she became prime minister.

The foreign secretary earlier argued that the NIP bill would not harm the EU, claiming that “there simply is no reason […] for the EU to take any action, [because] this legislation does not make them any worse off at all.”

This was preceded by No 10 stressing that the bill will allow the government “to address the practical problems the Protocol has created in Northern Ireland in four key areas: burdensome customs processes, inflexible regulation, tax and spend discrepancies and democratic governance issues.”

Issue of the NI Protocol

Part of the Brexit deal that went into force in January 2021, the NIP stipulates that there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, but under the document, all goods and animal-based products coming from the rest of British territory must be checked upon arrival to ensure their compatibility with EU sanitary regulations.

The UK government has repeatedly argued that the Protocol is not working, as it causes delays and interruptions to goods moving between the UK and Northern Ireland and irritates unionists, who believe their place within the country could be affected, thus threatening the Good Friday Agreement that in 1998 put an end to 30 years of armed conflict within Northern Ireland.

The situation around the NIP worsened in May after the Irish Republican political party Sinn Fein outperformed the unionist DUP party in the Northern Ireland Assembly election for the first time, prompting unionists to warn they will boycott the new government unless post-Brexit trade rules with the EU are addressed.