At a Policy Exchange fringe meeting at Tory conference, Arlene Foster has just ruled out any regulatory checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain that extend beyond agriculture, eliminating one of the possible Brexit compromises. She did say that she’d be prepared to consider a time limit on the backstop. But she thought that Leo Varadkar wouldn’t even be prepared to entertain this.
Foster made clear that she could never accept a customs border within the United Kingdom. She argued that would be unacceptable on both constitutional and economic grounds, highlighting that Northern Ireland does far more trade with Great Britain than it does with the Republic of Ireland. She was also clear that she wasn’t interested in any kind of dual customs status for Northern Ireland, that would see it as a kind of special economic zone in both the UK and EU customs territories.
On regulation, she indicated that she was prepared to see the island of Ireland treated as a single unit for agriculture, building on existing precedents.
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