Tag "Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)"

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A House of Cards: Northern Ireland Brexit Quagmire

“The bonds that hold the United Kingdom together are fraying. The government needs to try to mend them”, proclaimed The Economist in its editorial of 17 April 2021. In their opinion, the “union is now weaker than at any point in living memory”. Political leaders in Britain have risked the safety of the union, they claim, with First Minister and DUP leader Arlene Foster particularly at fault for “stupidly” opposing the ‘soft’ Brexit advocated by Theresa May, which precipitated Boris Johnson’s ‘hard border’ Brexit. To top it all off, they brazenly claim that Johnson’s most important task as Prime Minister is to hold the union together, and that if he fails, “he will go down in history not as the man who freed the United Kingdom [from the ‘tyranny’ of the EU], but as the man who destroyed it”.