SDLP Leader Colum Eastwood has said that the election of Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party is a worrying step toward a hard no-deal Brexit and a hard border in Ireland.
Johnson received 92,153 votes compared to Jeremy Hunt’s 46,656 votes from the Tory Party membership.
He will be installed as British Minister tomorrow, Wednesday, July 24, following Theresa May’s last Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons.
Said Mr Eastwood: “Johnson has coasted into Downing street on a wave of Brexit bluff and bluster.
“It won’t be long until he crashes into the rocky reality that the European Union will not sacrifice the interests of Ireland to appease a man who has lied and slandered its institutions in an effort to secure power.
“All parties in the North must now set our combined efforts to resisting the impulse of this administration to drive off the Brexit cliff edge.
“The fragile complexities of political and economic relationships across this island cannot be placed on the altar of British nativism.
“Our struggle for peace and economic normalisation has been too long and too hard to be sacrificed for this,” added the Foyle MLA.
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