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Oliver Dowden, the Conservative party co-chair, was doing the morning interviews on behalf of the government earlier. He sounded a bit more conciliatory than Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, did yesterday, but he did not say anything that implied a fundamental shift in the UK government’s stance.
Here are the main point points.
Well it is a major issue for us and we want to engage and I’m not going to start pre-empting, writing red lines here and there, but I think what Lord Frost said yesterday, this was a major issue and we do expect to see some progress.
We do need to look fundamentally at this protocol simply because it is not working for, particularly for one of the communities in Northern Ireland, and that must include also looking at the role of the European Court of Justice.
It is highly anomalous that a treaty between two, effectively, parties is being adjudicated by the courts of one party.
If they [the EU] are making progress that’s very welcome and we will very much engage in detail and constructively with it.