Lord Trimble warns special EU status for Northern Ireland 'would provoke loyalist terror revival'
2 min read
Granting Northern Ireland special status to effectively keep it in the EU after Brexit would lead to a return of loyalist paramilitary violence, Lord Trimble has warned.
The former Northern Ireland first minister, who played a key role in the Good Friday Agreement 20 years ago, said any arrangement which weakened the United Kingdom would cause uproar.
His comments come after months of negotiations between the EU and the UK over how to avoid the reintroduction of a hard Irish border after Brexit.
Brussels has said that if no other solution is found, Northern Ireland should remain in the customs union and parts of the single market - a proposal rejected as "unacceptable" by Theresa May.
"What is happening now is that people are talking up the issue of Brexit and the border for the benefit of a different agenda from the (Good Friday) agreement,” Lord Trimble told the Guardian.
"The one thing that would provoke loyalist paramilitaries is the present Irish government saying silly things about the border and the constitutional issue.
"If it looks as though the constitutional arrangements of the agreement, based on the principle of consent, are going to be superseded by so-called ‘special EU status’ then that is going to weaken the union and undermine the very agreement that Dublin says it wants to uphold."
The former Ulster Unionist Party leader, who now sits as a Tory peer in the House of Lords, said suggestions by Dublin officials that the province be governed like Hong Kong were "extremely dangerous".
"I believe that some senior Irish government officials go around Brussels talking about the ‘Hong Kong model’ – the one country, two systems idea," he added.
"That is a precedent they talk about where sovereignty has been transferred from Britain to China.
"Anything that looks remotely like this or is building on that foundation would be extremely dangerous. Although I think that under this Conservative government I cannot see that prevailing.”
Mr Trimble also said he feared a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government could consent to special status for Northern Ireland.
"His right-hand man [John McDonnell] who in government might get a rush of blood to the head and go to his old mates like Gerry Adams and give him what they want," he said.
"If he and Corbyn were the two leading figures in a Labour government and created ‘special status’ after Brexit that would be very dangerous."
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