Mr. Jonathan Powell:

The truth of what is happening on the protocol, unfortunately, is that it has a lot to do with the Conservative Party and very little to do with Northern Ireland. It is about the leadership of the Conservative Party. For Boris Johnson, shoring up his position in the Conservative Party requires him to pander to the Brexit radicals in the European Research Group, ERG. That is what he is doing. Liz Truss, unfortunately, is now in charge of this negotiation. She is also pandering to the same people in the hope of getting their votes to succeed Boris Johnson. However, if there is a leadership election in the Conservative Party and a new Prime Minister, even if it were to be Liz Truss, I would be very surprised if the British Government carries on the same theme of pandering to the ERG in the same way. Any responsible Prime Minister would immediately try to rebuild trust, restart negotiations and not risk making things worse in Northern Ireland by reopening issues of consent and cross-community agreement. That is my hope and my belief but I may, of course, be wrong.

The Senator also asked about the union, which requires a long answer. I will try to give a brief answer on that. I think people fail to fully comprehend how the constitutional futures of Scotland and Northern Ireland impact on each other. We tend to look at them in isolation whereas, in fact, they will interact with each other. If a Conservative Government tells the Scottish people it will not agree to a referendum but it then agrees to a border poll in Northern Ireland, for example, those approaches will be incompatible. If the circumstances for a border poll were met and the British Government rejected it, that would not be complying with the basis of the Good Friday Agreement.

The opinion polls when Boris Johnson ran for leader were interesting. They showed that a majority of those who voted for him in the Conservative Party leadership contest, amounting to approximately 100,000 voters, were clearly prepared to lose Scotland and Northern Ireland if they could get Brexit. That is mindset of the people who got Boris Johnson the job of Prime Minister. For those people, the future of the union is not that important compared with Brexit. That is an important political marker, if you like, for what might happen to the union in the future.