Chai Brady
Baroness Nuala O’Loan has said she believes the new UK PM Boris Johnson aims to renegotiate a time limit on the Brexit backstop in order to “buy time”.
Currently he “is playing hard”, Baroness O’Loan told this paper. Without a time limit “the backstop doesn’t cease to operate until all the member states agree, and if all the member states have to agree they’ll have a price for agreeing, so we’re in a very, very weak position,” she said.
Without a backstop in place and Mr Johnson committing to deliver Brexit by October 31, the possibility of a no-deal Brexit is being treated more seriously.
“I think a time-limited backstop, whatever it may be, two years, three years, five years, it allows time for proper trade negotiation, allows freedom of movement of goods across the border in the meantime, it takes care of it,” said Baroness O’Loan, who is a member of the House of Lords, a human rights lawyer and former Police Ombudsman.
“I have no doubt that what he [Mr Johnson] is doing is he’s saying ‘I can play as hard as anyone else’, and I agree that the backstop in its current form is unacceptable because it’s not time-limited in any way and because it can’t lead to fair trade negotiations. That doesn’t mean the backstop has to go…”
A customs arrangement would be “advantageous” to both Unionist and Nationalist communities in the North of Ireland, she said, because both communities have interests in agriculture and industry “which require some provision for movement across the border, so I think our interests are common”.
Mr Johnson’s spokeswoman has said he will not hold face-to-face meetings with EU leaders until they agree to renegotiate the backstop, which puts the UK at significant odds with Ireland and the EU.
“I’m quite sure that work is going on in the background, I don’t see Boris going to Brussels until he’s got some reason to go, and he doesn’t have a reason to go until they’ve got movement,” said Baroness O’Loan, who said she believes Boris will deliver Brexit.