Johnson premiership would ‘plunge relations with Ireland into freezer’, peace process architect warns

Relations with Ireland will be “plunged into the freezer” if Boris Johnson returns as prime minister, an architect of the Good Friday peace agreement has warned.

Jonathan Powell, who was Tony Blair’s chief of staff and chief negotiator on Northern Ireland from 1997 to 2007, said it was vital to have someone “competent and capable” in Downing Street to get talks back on track.

His comments came as Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker and Commons Northern Ireland committee chair Simon Hoare penned a joint article naming Rishi Sunak as the leader who could deliver a “clear, workable and fair solution” to the ongoing row with the EU over the Irish border.

Liz Truss’s brief premiership saw signs of a rapprochement with Brussels over the Northern Ireland protocol, with Mr Baker offering an apology for the tone of his comments during and after the Brexit referendum.

But Mr Baker today warned that Tory Eurosceptics will “implode” the negotiations if a future leader backs away from Ms Truss’s insistence that the European Court of Justice must be removed from jurisdiction over disputes.

Mr Baker told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “Whoever wins this contest, the only policy that can be successfully carried through on Northern Ireland is the one that we have and everyone should understand that.

“If, say, Rishi or Penny [Mordaunt] didn’t carry through that policy, the Eurosceptics would implode the government.

“There is absolutely no doubt, they have been very quiet but the Eurosceptics really care about this issue of the whole UK leaving the jurisdiction of European law.

“My colleagues and friends like Bill Cash and Mark Francois and John Redwood are not going to tolerate any diversion, any equivocation on this point. So whether it’s Rishi or Penny or Boris, the same policy must be carried forward on the Northern Ireland protocol.”

Mr Powell said that recent progress on the protocol will “collapse” if Mr Johnson wins a second stint in 10 Downing Street.

“Anglo-Irish relations will be plunged back into the freezer,” he told Times Radio. “Relations with the EU will be even worse.

“There’s quite a premium on having someone competent and capable in Downing Street who can actually get those things done, get a negotiation on the protocol, so you can make it as acceptable as possible to the unionists and restore relations with the Irish government.

“Boris Johnson certainly would not do that.”

Mr Powell said the UK had become “an international laughing stock” under the Johnson and Truss governments.

“I think that has serious implications for our standing around the world,” he told interviewer Kate McCann. “I think it has serious implications for the way people see government.

“Competent government is harder than it looks. And I think that both Liz Truss and Boris Johnson demonstrated that incompetent people in No 10 can make a real mess of things. A restoration of competent government would at least be one good thing that might come out of this leadership race.”

Northern Ireland secretary Chris Heaton-Harris said that a fresh election to the devolved assembly at Stormont will be called if a new executive is not formed by 28 October.

Mr Heaton-Harris told Sky News he hopes the unionist DUP will lift its boycott of the executive, which is blocking the restoration of power-sharing institutions.

“There is a choice that people can make to stop there being an election, but it’s got to be made by elected representatives in Northern Ireland going back into that assembly,” said Mr Heaton-Harris.

“Without that, the secretary [of state] for Northern Ireland will have to call an election this week.”