UK considering Irish border compromise in Brexit talks - report
The Prime Minister Theresa May is understood to be considering a new approach to the Irish border, according to reports, as she seeks to end the stalemate between the UK and European Union.
The Irish border is one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the Brexit negotations, with neither side able to agree how to avoid police and custom checks. The issue has all but halted the talks.
But an un-named senior government official claims, according to a report from Bloomberg, that the UK is now prepared to back down on its current opposition to checks on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the British mainland.
In return, said the source, the government wants the whole of the UK, including Northern Ireland, to be allowed to remain within the EU’s customs bloc.
The report comes just hours after Dominic Raab, the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, called on both sides to take meaningful action and strike a deal.
Speaking at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Raab conceded that the Government’s current proposals were not “perfect”. But he urged Tory Eurosceptics to drop their “dogmatic” opposition and to respect the EU’s red lines, so that a compromise could be reached before the UK leaves on 29 March 2019.
He argued that leaving the EU after more than 40 years of membership was never going to be "straight-forward or risk free", and that to rise to the challenge, “we’ll need some unity of purpose. And I believe we’re at our best when we work together.”
He also called on the EU’s negotiators to “get real” – warning that the UK would rather leave without a deal than be bullied into signing a one-sided agreement.
“If the only offer from the EU threatens the integrity of our union then we will be left with no choice but to leave with no deal.
"What is unthinkable is that this Government, or any British government, could be bullied by the threat of some kind of economic embargo into signing a one-sided deal against our country’s interests.”