Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar backs Chequers’ Brexit proposals
The Irish Taoiseach has welcomed the UK government’s Chequers proposal, giving hope that the Irish border issue may well be resolved.
Leo Varadkar told the Dail he had spoken with Theresa May on Saturday, and that the approach outlined at that point could help drive talks forward.
If the UK relaxes its red lines, then the EU should be able to do the same, Varadkar told the Irish parliament.
“On the face of what we see, it can have an input to the talks on the future relationship,” he said.
“It is welcome and, as we have always said in the past, if the United Kingdom was able to relax its position regarding some of its red-line issues, then the European Union could also be flexible. Perhaps we are now entering into that space.”
The leader of Fianna Fail, Micheal Martin, argued that credit should be given to Mrs May for navigating the UK towards what he termed a “new Brexit realism”.
It comes after a torrid few days for May in which she was left reshuffling her Cabinet after the resignations of David Davis, Steve Baker and Boris Johnson over the Chequers agreement, which she had hailed on Friday evening as uniting her team.
Varadkar said the resignations were “internal matters” for the UK government.