DAVID Mundell has signalled that he might be prepared to support a move to give Northern Ireland a special Brexit status while insisting he would not sign up to anything that undermined the integrity of the United Kingdom.
Last year in a joint letter to Theresa May with Ruth Davidson, the then Scottish Conservative leader, the former Scottish Secretary threatened to resign, stressing how the issue of protecting the Union was the most important one in the Brexit process.
He told the Prime Minister in October 2018: “We could not support any deal that creates a border of any kind in the Irish Sea and undermines the Union or leads to Northern Ireland having a different relationship with the EU than the rest of the UK, beyond what currently exists.”
But negotiations around the issue of creating a regulatory and customs border down the Irish Sea now seem to be central to the Johnson proposal.
In an interview with ITV, the former Scottish Secretary appeared to have shifted his position, declaring: “The overwhelming priority is to get it sorted.”
When he was reminded of his previous opposition to a special dispensation for Northern Ireland, Mr Mundell replied: “We have to see what it is. I want to see what is on the table, how that is responded to in Northern Ireland and Ireland.
“What I also don’t want to do though is to politicise Northern Ireland in a Nationalist way, which unfortunately I feel Nicola Sturgeon has done in the sense of just saying Northern Ireland is being given special treatment when in fact Northern Ireland is different.
“There are a lot of differences now in the way things operate in Northern Ireland compared to the way they operate in GB.”
The Dumfriesshire MP then stressed: “I’m not someone who is going to sign up to anything that undermines the integrity of the UK but we have got to a point where you’re not delivering Brexit throughout the UK because of the political turbulence…”
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