Boris Johnson has been accused of failing to give straight answers after meeting party leaders in Belfast to try to resolve a political impasse over the Northern Ireland Protocol. Sinn Fein claimed the UK government had been coordinating with "obstructionist tactics" by its political opponents in the DUP who are unhappy with the protocol, which governs Northern Ireland's post-Brexit trading arrangements. The DUP want to see these issues resolved before they enter into a power-sharing administration - and the party's leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said after his meeting with the PM that it needed to see decisive action.
Talks over the Northern Ireland Protocol are "kind of stuck", an EU source has told Sky News as Boris Johnson heads to Belfast to try to make headway on the issue. The Brussels source said it was "not true or fair to say that we are being intransigent" and that the UK was asking for the kind of flexibility that has been offered to Ukraine even though "the UK is not at war". Ireland's foreign minister foreign minister Simon Coveney warned that if Britain goes it alone in pulling out of the Protocol that could endanger its wider Brexit trade deal with the EU - an agreement which averted the threat of tariffs.