LONDON (AP) \u2014 British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is heading to Northern Ireland on Monday to try to end a political deadlock that is preventing the formation of a regional administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trip comes amid threats by Johnson\u2019s government to break the Brexit agreement with the European Union that it signed, but now blames for the crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Johnson said there would be \u201ca necessity to act\u201d if the EU didn\u2019t agree to overhaul post-Brexit trade rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Voters in Northern Ireland elected a new Assembly this month, in an election that saw\u00a0Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein\u00a0win the most seats. It was the first time a party that seeks union with the Republic of Ireland has won an election in the bastion of Protestant unionist power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Democratic Unionist Party came second and is refusing to form a government, or even allow the assembly to sit, until Johnson\u2019s government scraps post-Brexit checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under power-sharing rules set up as part of Northern Ireland\u2019s peace process, a government can\u2019t be formed without the cooperation of both nationalist and unionist parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Johnson will urge political leaders in Belfast to get back to work and deal with \u201cbread and butter\u201d issues such as the soaring cost of living, his office said Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Johnson also accused accuse the EU of refusing to give ground over post-Brexit border checks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Northern Ireland is the only part of the U.K. that shares a border with the EU. When Britain left the bloc in 2020, a deal was agreed to keep the Irish land border free of customs posts and other checks, because an open border is a key pillar of the peace process that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland. Instead, there are checks on some goods, such as meat and eggs, entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The arrangement is opposed by unionists in Northern Ireland, who say the new checks have put a burden on businesses and frayed the bonds between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The British government agrees that the regulations are destabilizing Northern Ireland\u2019s peace agreement, which relies on support from both Protestant unionist and Catholic nationalist communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The prime minister\u2019s office said Sunday that the trade agreement \u2014 which Johnson\u2019s government negotiated and signed \u2014 had \u201cresulted in the unionist community feeling like its aspirations and identity are threatened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Belfast Telegraph, Johnson accused the EU of failing to recognize that the arrangements weren\u2019t working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI hope the EU\u2019s position changes. If it does not, there will be a necessity to act,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Johnson said his government would \u201cset out a more detailed assessment and next steps to Parliament in the coming days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.K. has said it may pass a law allowing it to override parts of the Brexit treaty if the EU doesn\u2019t agree to scrap the checks. If that happened the EU would hit back with legal action \u2014 and potentially trade sanctions. The 27-nation bloc is Britain\u2019s biggest economic partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ivan Rogers, a former British ambassador to the EU, said \u201cI think there\u2019s a severe risk that we are heading into a trade war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said Britain\u2019s \u201csaber-rattling and grandstanding\u201d was undermining Northern Ireland peace \u201cat a time when the world needs the Western world to be united, to be acting in concert to solve problems together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe last thing the EU wants, the last thing that Ireland wants, is tension with the U.K., particularly at the moment given what\u2019s happening in Ukraine, Russian aggression, and the need to work together on an international stage,\u201d he told Sky News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON (AP) \u2014 British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is h […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1475,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473\/revisions\/1475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}