Rishi Sunak Needs to Reset Britain’s Approach to Europe
The quarrel over Northern Ireland is only one of Brexit’s challenges. Success requires cooperation, not “We win, you lose.”
You might very well say that.
Photographer: Jack Taylor/Getty Images
Rishi Sunak won the race to become Britain’s new prime minister by promising to fix his predecessor’s fiscal errors and unify his party. Oddly, he wasn’t asked to say much about Brexit — which has hobbled the country for the past six years and remains the government’s biggest challenge. Addressing it will make cleaning up the budgetary mess look easy.
Sunak got an abrupt reminder of the trouble ahead after less than a week in office, when a quarrel over trade rules between Northern Ireland, Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland flared anew. When the UK left the European Union, it was understood that an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic was essential to preserving the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. But this meant Brexit would require an economic border in the Irish Sea, between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.