Boris Johnson is ‘ready to tear up the Northern Ireland protocol’

Boris Johnson is getting ready for a fresh clash with Brussels as he prepares to tear up the post-Brexit deal on Northern Ireland.

Sources confirmed yesterday that ministers were drawing up laws allowing them to unilaterally suspend parts of the Northern Ireland protocol, which has been blamed for driving a wedge between the province and the rest of the UK.The move will allow ministers to ‘switch off’ controversial border checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea, which have been blamed for disrupting trade and causing shortages. The Prime Minister said yesterday he was ready to finally ‘fix’ the problems with the protocol.

Mr Johnson said: ‘The protocol really does not command the confidence of a large, large component of the population in Northern Ireland. We have to fix that.’We think we can do it with some very simple and reasonable steps. We have talked repeatedly to our friends and partners in the EU. We will continue to talk to them, but… we don’t rule out taking steps now if those are necessary.’

A Whitehall source said action to suspend some or all of the post-Brexit checks looked ‘almost inevitable’ before the summer unless the EU backed down. Ministers fear the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) will refuse to continue with power-sharing after next month’s Stormont elections if the protocol remains in place.

Ministers have engaged in talks on the issue with Brussels for months. But a source said negotiations were ‘going round in circles’.The protocol was included as part of the PM’s Brexit deal. Because the province effectively remains part of the EU’s single market, Brussels demanded the right to impose checks on goods entering from the rest of the UK. But ministers say the heavy-handed checks are disrupting trade.

Northern Ireland minister Conor Burns said the threshold for triggering Article 16 of the protocol, which allows either side to suspend it, had been reached.

But Simon Hoare, Tory chairman of the Commons’ Northern Ireland committee, said suspending the protocol could be a breach of international law.