Johnson rejects claims of impending EU trade war

The prime minister has this afternoon brushed off claims plans to scrap parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol could trigger an EU trade war.

This afternoon foreign secretary Liz Truss said the government intends to bring forward unilateral changes to post-brexit deal, should EU negotiations continue to stall.

The remarks were made during a visit to the opening of the Elizabeth line at Paddington train station in central London He told reporters: “I don’t think that is likely but what we have to fix is the problems with the Northern Ireland politics situation where you can’t get the Executive up and running right now.

“In the past we have done all sorts of things to fix that. We need to address the problems with the protocol.

“The higher duty of the UK Government in international law is to the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process and that is the thing we have to really look to and of necessity we can make some changes I think to the protocol, which is not the law of the Medes and the Persians.

“I agreed it. It is there in article 13.8 that if things aren’t working you can change it. Plus it makes it very clear on the face of the text that you should ensure the east/west trade and the integrity of the UK internal market.

“So let’s fix it. We don’t want to nix it, we want to fix it and we will work with our EU partners to do it.”