Boris Johnson and Liz Truss play dangerous game over Northern Ireland - Yorkshire Post Letters

From: Jeremy Hall, Budbrooke, Crockernwell, Exeter.

Any questions about Mr Johnson’s motives, principles or capacities is dismissed by some of his fans as “wailing, bleating or bashing Boris”. It must be so comforting to have a hero who is beyond criticism.

Objectively, the PM has to be criticised because he endangers the EU, Nato, peace in Northern Ireland, our democratic system, recovery from the harm done by Brexit and, according to the most influential of recent Tory leaders, the lives of UK citizens themselves. Mrs Thatcher stated that “the first duty of Government is to uphold the law...failure will mean that the governed will copy ...home, liberty and life will not be safe”.

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With his inexperienced Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, he has decided to try to force the EU into compromise over the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Boris Johnson. Picture: Getty.Boris Johnson. Picture: Getty.
Boris Johnson. Picture: Getty.

If they refuse to play his game he has stated that he will tear up this international law.

All the previous living UK PMs stress how dangerous this would be. It will mean that our reputation in Europe, already more than tarnished, will collapse further as we become a rogue state with zero integrity and a conviction that simple honesty is not needed by Brexit leaders.

If we break international law in this way how can we expect the nations with whom we are supposed to sign post-Brexit treaties to trust us?

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Perhaps “shouting” at the EU that we will break up the Protocol about which the PM was so enthusiastic when he signed it is just a gamble to “force” the 27 EU states to give in to his game, but the only person pleased by more argument within Europe is Vladimir Putin.

The EU nations have formed a “sanctions team” against Russia.

Johnson’s inability to tell the truth (when he signed the Protocol he stated that there would never be a trade border between Northern Ireland and the UK knowing full well that that border was the basis of what he was signing!) not only disrupts UK political systems but angers our allies and significantly weakens the “sanctions team”.

A wide range of US politicians have said that they will not sit by if the peace in Northern Ireland is threatened by Johnson’s game playing.

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So a hoped-for trade deal between us and the US will be dead and the strength of Nato reduced by unnecessary tension between ourselves and Washington (the two nations that have led Nato for decades).

The Tory Government needed the support of the DUP in 2017. Why, five years later, is the Prime Minister still indebted to them?