His name is Edwin Poots, has cumulated in recent years the posts of minister within the Northern Irish executive and was elected, Friday 14 May, the new leader of the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party), the main Unionist party of Province. At 55, this politician known for his reactionary convictions (creationist and anti-gay marriage), should replace at the end of May the boss of the DUP resigning Arlène Foster. She was also Prime Minister of Northern Ireland but, for now, Mr Poots has no plans to take the post, which therefore remains to be filled – by the end of June.
If this appointment at the head of the DUP counts, it is because this party founded fifty years ago by the Reverend Ian Paisley (one of the leaders of the Unionist camp during the civil war with the nationalists proreunification of Ireland) is a cog essential for the North Irish political balance. This balance, still precarious twenty-three years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement peace treaty, has been further weakened by Brexit. As part of the divorce with the European Union, the British government agreed to establish a customs border in the Irish Sea (between England and Northern Ireland), the province remaining partly in the European internal market. .
This new border has created a deep unease within the Unionist community loyal to London, which sees it as an attack on its British identity. Many unionists feel betrayed by the government of Boris Johnson, which they nevertheless supported in its Brexit and which had promised them the absence of customs controls with Great Britain. Their anger erupted during riots in the streets of Belfast or Londonderry in April. It is largely because she was accused within the DUP of having been too weak vis-à-vis London, that Arlene Foster was pushed at the start.
Anger of Unionists
Will Mr Poots be more intransigent, refusing any compromise vis-à-vis the Northern Irish Protocol – the part of the Brexit treaty establishing the border in the Irish Sea? This Friday also began at the High Court of Justice in Belfast the examination of an illegal appeal against the protocol, brought by Mr.me Foster and the leader of the small Ulster Unionist Party. “The protocol is a problem for all unionists”, Poots insisted, just after his appointment (by the 36 elected DUP MPs in the Westminster Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly in Stormont).
A few days ago, returning from a visit to Belfast, UK Brexit Minister David Frost said he was not “Vo[yait] not ” how the northern irish protocol “P[ouvait] last long “. Faced with the anger of the Unionists, the Johnson government unilaterally suspended the application of the protocol in early 2020, and is now asking Brussels for substantial adjustments to this part of the divorce treaty, to eliminate the main customs constraints.
Negotiations with the European Commission have since taken place, quietly, to find a compromise, the community institution insisting on the need to protect the European internal market. The only solution in his view, to lift customs controls in North Irish ports: that London align itself in part with European sanitary and phytosanitary regulations. But the British government stubbornly refuses. Boris Johnson raised the issue during an interview with the Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland, Micheal Martin, on Friday. In Belfast, as in London, we hope for an agreement – at this very hypothetical stage – before the period of the “Orange marches” begins, in the summer, these traditional unionist parades which often create strong tensions with the community. Catholic nationalist.
