Northern Ireland Prime Minister to Resign Amid Dissatisfaction with Brexit Settlement

Northern Ireland Prime Minister Paul Givan of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party announced his resignation. Several British media reported this on Thursday. Givan would do so out of dissatisfaction with the Brexit settlement.

If Givan were to resign, it would mean that his deputy prime minister Michelle O’Neill of Catholic-Republican Sinn Féin would also have to leave her post. This would disintegrate the fragile unity government in the country a few months before the local elections.

The conflict over the so-called Northern Ireland protocol, which the British government had negotiated with the European Union in the context of Brexit, escalated on Wednesday evening. Northern Ireland’s Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots of the DUP announced the end of customs controls on goods from England. The British government supported the move, but it was sharply criticized by Sinn Féin, the European Commission and neighbouring Ireland.

The Northern Ireland Protocol stipulates that the European Single Market and Customs Union rules are still in force in Northern Ireland. In this way, a hard border with Ireland was avoided for fear of new tensions. As a result, however, there is de facto a customs border in the United Kingdom. The British government, which negotiated the protocol itself, and the DUP, therefore, want to cancel the arrangement.