They’re not doing it for the economy of Northern Ireland. But why are the Conservatives threatening to rip up their own deal? The arrival of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill brings our relationship with the EU back into the spotlight. We were told it was ‘done’ and everything else was Covid’s fault. Leaving the EU has exacerbated our divisions, not healed them.įor a time, the Tories avoided talking about Brexit. All while the gap between north and south grows against still. Many of us are wearily reading the reports that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Brexit has set us back and, more importantly, we see the impact in our own communities: a 6% rise in food prices that can be directly attributed to leaving the EU a £31 billion impact on the UK economy over the last five years and a 15% drop in exports, causing countless small UK businesses to go bankrupt.
These are some of the words that I suspect come to mind for Labor activists and voters when Brexit is mentioned.
