Irish PM heralds 'pretty good' day as he secures Brexit guarantee

The Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar has declared the Brexit deal a “pretty good” day in politics, revealing that he had achieved everything that Ireland wanted from the negotiations including a guarantee over the Irish border.

A buoyant taoiseach said cabinet support for the deal was a breakthrough after two-and-a-half years of negotiation. “This is one of the better days in politics,” he told reporters in Dublin.

He said Ireland’s priorities from the outset had been “protecting the peace process and the Good Friday agreement, protecting the common travel area and protecting trade, jobs and the economy … On each of these priorities we have achieved a satisfactory outcome today.”

But the agreement put London on a headlong collision with the Democratic Unionist party, which said it would oppose the agreement over the Irish border which would see EU regulatory checks on goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland in the event of no deal.

Under the draft agreement, a backstop contingency plan would come into force in the event of no deal and would not have the expiry date or the unilateral exit clause that hard Brexiters had been demanding.

A backstop is required to ensure there is no hard border in Ireland if a comprehensive free trade deal cannot be signed before the end of 2020. Theresa May has proposed to the EU that the whole of the UK would remain in the customs union after Brexit, but Brussels has said it needs more time to evaluate the proposal.

As a result, the EU insists on having its own backstop - the backstop to the backstop - which would mean Northern Ireland would remain in the single market and customs union in the absence of a free trade deal, prompting fierce objections from Conservative hard Brexiters and the DUP, which props up her government.

That prompted May to propose a country-wide alternative in which the whole of the UK would remain in parts of the customs union after Brexit.

“The EU still requires a ‘backstop to the backstop’ – effectively an insurance policy for the insurance policy. And they want this to be the Northern Ireland-only solution that they had previously proposed,” May told MPs.

Raising the stakes, the prime minister said the EU’s insistence amounted to a threat to the constitution of the UK: “We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom,” she added.

In such a scenario, it calls for “full alignment with those rules of [the EU’s] internal market and the customs union” in Northern Ireland in the event of no deal, something the DUP has said amounts to a barrier down the Irish Sea that the party cannot support.

This arrangement would hold “unless and until an alternative arrangement implementing another scenario is agreed”.

The DUP leader, Arlene Foster, met Theresa May for an hour on Wednesday after warning there would be “consequences” if the prime minister went back on her word over the Irish border.

“We had a frank meeting tonight with the prime minister lasting almost an hour. She is fully aware of our position and concerns,” Foster tweeted.

Varadkar, meanwhile, praised May for her “mettle and courage” and tried to allay unionist fears.

It emerged the new draft agreement included guarantees for the right to self-determination for the people of Northern Ireland, as stated in the Good Friday agreement.

“Our approach is not intended in any way to be a threat to you or to your identity,” said Varadkar.

He said the draft withdrawal agreement “states in black and white” that Ireland and the EU fully respect the constitutional status of Northern Ireland as part of the UK. “This can only change if the majority of people in Northern Ireland want it to,” he said.

“We never wanted Brexit – our goal is simply to protect the peace and the Good Friday agreement from any unintended or undesirable consequences.”

He also said he believed the deal presented an economic opportunity for Northern Ireland. “I also believe that the trading arrangements envisaged in the text, if embraced, represent a genuine economic opportunity for Northern Ireland business, with unfettered access both to Great Britain and the EU markets,” he said.

Ireland also secured a deal for freight traffic transiting cargo from Ireland to the EU via the “landbridge” of the UK.

The withdrawal agreement affirms the “commitment of the UK to facilitate” this traffic in either direction.

Earlier, Varadkar raised the hackles of Brexiters when he confirmed that an emergency EU summit had been pencilled in for 25 November, assuming May’s Brexit deal survived the cabinet meeting on Wednesday, which it did.

The MP Steve Baker, who resigned over the Chequers deal, tweeted that he was “disappointed” to learn it in this way.

It also emerged that Varadkar was going to brief the Northern Ireland non-unionist parties, the SDLP and the Alliance, and the Green party on the withdrawal agreement, even though the region is part of the UK jurisdiction.

During questions in the Dáil, he sought to allay the fears of unionists, saying they would be protected by the deal.

“I know for the unionist community in Northern Ireland this is quite a difficult time; many of them may be feeling vulnerable, many of them might be feeling isolated and many of them may be quite worried about what may be agreed in the coming days,” he said.

“I want to say to them the Good Friday agreement will be protected, and that includes a recognition that we respect the territory of the United Kingdom and that we respect the principle of consent, that there can be no change to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland unless a majority of Northern Ireland say so and we are very happy to have that written into any agreement.”