Sacrificing business for Brexit purity

Oct 18 2021 The Guardian

The Tories are sacrificing Northern Irish businesses on the altar of Brexit purity

Single-market status has been a boon to firms – but stirring up a trade dispute with the EU may be worth more to Boris Johnson

A taster from the piece:

“Stephen Kelly, chief executive of Manufacturing NI, which represents 5,500 Northern Irish firms, tells me “not one” of his members has raised the obscure question of the government’s attempt to remove the European court of justice (ECJ) as arbitrator of trade disputes. “Everyone knows a treaty needs legal backup. There have been border problems with the rest of the UK,” he says, but the ECJ is “nothing but a Brexit purity issue”.

Northern Irish businesses have good reason to be alarmed, as the protocol gives many of them an extraordinary opportunity: staying in the single market from which the rest of the UK is excluded. “Scotland would give its right arm for a deal like ours,” Kelly says. Sales of goods to the Irish Republic have risen by 61% in just eight months, he reports, as Irish buyers switch from harder to access English goods. “Manufacturers have brimming order books,” he says.”