KING Charles should not have been involved in the political fray over Brexit, according to a former First Minister of Northern Ireland.
Arlene Foster suggested that the Government involving the King in the unveiling of the new EU deal on Northern Ireland was an attempt to bounce Unionists into approving it.
She told GB News: “It was very crass by the Government to do that. They obviously know how much we, who are monarchists in Northern Ireland, love the King and really look up to the King….the King should be above politics.
“They’ve made the point of course that he meets heads of state all of the time, this lady [Ursula von der Leyen] is not a head of state. This lady is from the European Union.
“It was a deliberate attempt to try and say, ‘well, if the King is contented with this deal, and in some way connected with it, then the Unionists shouldn’t have a problem with it.
“Look if the deal is okay and if the text is okay then Unionists will look at it, there was no need to involve His Majesty the King.
“I think the Government made a mistake in relation to that, and I think they should reflect on that very deeply.”
She told Nigel Farage: “The protocol was incredibly difficult for those of us living in Northern Ireland, it reduced our choice of goods on the shelves, and increased the cost of goods as well.
“So now we have a number of changes, practical changes, which I think are good news for Northern Ireland businesses.
“We will of course want to see the detail in relation to the so-called green and red lines. What does the red line contain? What does the green lane contain?
“And indeed, does the green lane have any additional checks that you wouldn’t normally have within an internal market?”
She added: “And then, of course, we’ll want to look at this so-called Stormont break. What does that mean?
“What does it actually involve? And will it actually allow Stormont to say no to new EU laws?
“Now the Prime Minister in the House of Commons seems to be suggesting that is the case, but I’d be very interested to see the legal text on all of that.”
Asked why Unionists should trust the Prime Minister about the involvement of the European Court of Justice as arbiter, she said: “Well, we’ll have to find out in the next couple of days Nigel, but I think it is interesting that she was unequivocal in relation to that issue, about the ECJ.
“And you’ll remember back to the command paper from David Frost in July of 2021, where he had made suggestions of actually a panel, an arbitration panel.
“So it just wouldn’t be the ECJ, there would be somebody there from the UK as well and somebody independent and they would deal with any problems that there were but that was rejected by the European side.
“They will stick very much to the line that is the ECJ, if there’s European law, if there’s any problems with it, it’s the ECJ that deals with the issue.”
