UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was earlier warned by a bipartisan group of American lawmakers that the US Congress would not support an upcoming trade deal between London and Washington if Britain's new Internal Market Bill jeopardises the Good Friday Agreement, a peace deal that brought the Northern Irish conflict to an end back in 1998.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden joined members of the US Congress in a call to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson by tweeting on Wednesday that “any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.”
In a post, the former vice-president shared a public letter from a group of American lawmakers, three Democrats and one Republican, who earlier urged the UK Prime Minister to “abandon any and all legally questionable and unfair efforts to flout the Northern Ireland protocol of the Withdrawal Agreement”.
The Northern Ireland protocol is an intrinsic part of Brexit agreement that was negotiated by Boris Johnson last October, which was designed to prevent the re-establishment of a hard border between the UK's Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, a member of the EU, following the UK's departure from the union this year. However, many now worry that this vital piece of legislation could be put at risk by the Internal Market Bill which recently passed through the House of Commons with a 77 majority.
According to critics,…
