Leo Varadkar and the Good Friday Agreement

Until a few days ago one of the concerns most expressed by both the Irish government and many critics of Brexit was the need to respect the Good Friday Agreement.

I totally agree that we need to keep that agreement and am concerned that if they have been reported correctly comments from the Irish Taoiseach and the Irish Foreign secretary leave me wondering whether they themselves want to honour it.

Under the terms of that agreement both Britain and Ireland should respect the principle that the consent of both communities is needed.

In other words, policy towards Northern Ireland should seek the consent of both Nationalist and Unionist communities.

That is why Professor Brendan Simms argued that the UE's proposed "Backstop" is contrary to the Good Friday Agreement in his New Statesman piece to which I first linked a week ago.

And to be quite candid, some of the comments from both Leo Varadkar and Simon Cordingly which objected to the role proposed for the Northern Ireland in the UK government's proposed Brexit deal , , on the grounds that consulting the Assembly would give a veto to the DUP, do not sound like the words of someone committed to respecting the principle of consent for both communities.

There is a critique by Jeremy Black of Leo Varadkar's Brexit policy which can be read on "The Article" website here, and which has some force.

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