London April 10, 2021 (AFP) – A border in the Irish Sea between the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland? “My body,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson answered before Brexit. However, this unfulfilled promise is now sparking outrage in the British boycott.
In The Times, a recent comic showed protesters bombing the famous campaign bus that Boris Johnson used during his Brexit campaign while fleeing the driver’s seat, showing discontent with the British prime minister in the province.
Clashes between police and demonstrators have continued in the area for a week.
At first they were mostly pro-British trade unionists, but then they had the support of the Republicans, in favor of the reunification of Ireland.
The clashes left dozens of people injured in the ranks of the police forces.
So far, Boris Johnson has remained silent about the resumption of violence, but he posted a tweet Wednesday calling for “dialogue without violence or crime.”
A day later, he sent his minister to Northern Ireland, Brandon Lewis, to Belfast to speak with local leaders.
On the part of trade unionists, there is anger and a sense of betrayal due to the Brexit agreement signed between London and the European Union, which aims to avoid questioning the peace signed in 1998 between trade unionists, most of whom are Protestants, and Republicans are predominantly Catholics.
To prevent the return of the physical border between the British Territory and the Republic of Ireland, a member of the European Union, controls are being implemented in Northern Ireland ports.
However, these new agreements cut supplies of goods and are denounced by trade unionists as the frontier between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.
For Katie Hayward, a Brexit expert at Queen’s University Belfast, after the protocol was downplayed in Northern Ireland before it came into effect on January 1, Boris Johnson is now paying the price.
“There were consequences. There was a lack of preparation on the part of companies for the new controls and a lack of preparedness on the ground in Northern Ireland about the repercussions,” he told AFP.
The European Union says that the British Prime Minister was fully aware of these consequences and that the solution to the problems is left to the British government.
While the European Union insists the protocol is here to stay, local government leader Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) is calling for it to be eliminated.
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