Boris Johnson holds talks in Belfast as Sinn Féin says Brexit boosts case for united Ireland – live news

The Ulster Unionist party told Boris Johnson that it did not want a no deal Brexit, the BBC’s Jayne McCormack reports.

There are various protests going on at Stormont to mark Boris Johnson’s visit.

This picture shows anti-Brexit protesters and pro-rights campaigners who are standing together under the statue of Edward Carson.

And these are Harland and Wolff employees, who are campaigning to save their shipyard.

Boris Johnson sometimes seem to think that he can win people over with a bit of personal charm. If that was his thinking before his meeting with the Sinn Fein delegation this morning, it didn’t work because Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Fein president, was fairly scathing when she spoke at her press briefing afterwards. Sinn Fein leaders never come away from meetings with British prime ministers exuding joy and goodwill (and mostly DUP leaders don’t either), but even by Sinn Fein standards, this was quite withering. Here are the main points.

• McDonald accused Johnson of being “complacent” about the damage Brexit would cause Ireland. She said:

There is no doubt that Boris Johnson’s first priority coming to Ireland is his interest, Tory interest, British interests, as he sees them, and it seems to me that he is quite complacent at the idea of Ireland being the collateral damage.

• She said that nobody believed Johnson’s claim (see 9.29am) to be impartial between the DUP and Sinn Fein. She said:

He tells us that he will act with absolute impartiality. We’ve told him that nobody believes that. Nobody believes that because there are no grounds to believe that there is any kind of impartiality, much less strict impartiality.

• She said the Tory/DUP confidence and supply agreement had “poisoned the groundwater” in Northern Ireland politically. She said:

We have told him that the confidence and supply agreement between the Tories and the DUP poisoned the groundwater here politically and made it very, very, very difficult to sustain a negotiation, much less to land on a conclusion or an agreement.

• She said Johnson had to stop acting like the DUP’s gofer. She said Johnson asked the Sinn Fein team for their advice. She went on:

We have strongly advised that to make progress here he needs to ensure that he is not the DUP’s gofer. He needs to stop mollycoddling them. He needs to spell out the realities of life to them.

• She criticised what he has said about how Northern Ireland addresses legacy issues (ie, killings during the Troubles). She said:

We have advised him that his commentary thus far on these issues as British prime minister has been damaging and very, very dangerous.

That seemed to be a reference to Johnson telling Tory MPs, in his first address to the 1922 Committee as party leader, that the persecution of military veterans facing historical allegations over their conduct in Northern Ireland has “got to stop”.

• She said her team told Johnson that it would be “unthinkable” to refuse to allow Northern Ireland a border poll in the event of a no deal Brexit. See 9.29am for more on McDonald’s thinking on this.

• She said the DUP were denying the people of Northern Ireland their rights. She said:

The DUP have used every contrivance to frustrate social and political progress here and to ensure the continuing denial of rights. They have used this as a ruse to really trample on the views of the majority of people who live here, whether it’s in relation to rights issues or in relation to Brexit.

This was a particular reference to the DUP’s opposition to marriage equality for Northern Ireland and to legislation to benefit Irish language speakers.

• She said any move to direct rule in Northern Ireland – something the government has not ruled out in the event of a no deal Brexit – would be unacceptable and very dangerous in turning the clock back.

At Stormont Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Fein president, is speaking to the media following the Sinn Fein delegations meeting with Boris Johnson.

She says they stressed their opposition to a no deal Brexit, and their view that no deal would justify another border poll. She says Sinn Fein accused the DUP of holding up the restoration of power-sharing.

She says Johnson assured them he would be impartial in dealings between the DUP and Sinn Fein. She says they told him that no one believed that.

• McDonald says her team told Johnson no one believes his claim to be impartial between the DUP and Sinn Fein.

She is now taking questions.

In response to a question about the DUP, she says there is an axis between the DUP and the Tories.

She says the Tories will do anything and everything to remain in government. In coming to Ireland, he is only interested in his interests and Britain’s interests. He says Johnson is “complacent” about Ireland suffering collateral damage from a no deal Brexit.

• Sinn Fein accuses Johnson of being “complacent” about risks to Ireland from a no deal Brexit.

In her Today programme interview this morning Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Fein’s president, said she has been asking the UK government to explain what needs to happen for another referendum to take place in Northern Ireland on joining a united Ireland. (See 9.29am.) The last one was in 1973.

This Institute for Government briefing sets out some possible criteria that might apply.

As part of the Good Friday Agreement, an explicit provision for holding a Northern Ireland border poll was made in UK law. The Northern Ireland Act 1998 states that “if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland”, the secretary of state shall make an order in council enabling a border poll.

It is not clear exactly what would satisfy this requirement. The Constitution Unit suggests that a consistent majority in opinion polls, a Catholic majority in a census, a nationalist majority in the Northern Ireland assembly, or a vote by a majority in the assembly could all be considered evidence of majority support for a united Ireland. However, the secretary of state must ultimately decide whether the condition has been met.

The IfG note also includes this chart on polling that undermines McDonald’s claim that support for Irish reunification in the north is rising.

Boris Johnson is in Northern Ireland this morning where he has just started what will be a series of talks with the five main parties. The last time he was here, for a hustings during the Tory leadership contest, he sounded as if he knew almost nothing about the reasons for the suspension of the power-sharing executive. He should be better informed by lunchtime. We’ll find out, because he is expected to address the media later.

Johnson himself and others have also been speaking to the media ahead of the talks, at Stormont and on the usual morning programmes. Here are some of the points they have been making.

• Johnson claimed that the UK government will be bound by “complete impartiality” as it oversees talks designed to get the power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland up and running again. The DUP is propping up the Conservative government at Westminster through the confidence and supply arrangement, and last night Johnson had a private dinner with DUP leaders. But the government is also supposed to be neutral as it mediates between DUP and Sinn Fein on restoring power-sharing. Asked how impartial he would be in the light of the dinner with the DUP last night, Johnson said as he arrived at Stormont this morning:

It’s all there in the Good Friday agreement. We believe in complete impartiality and that’s what we are going to observe.

He also said he would be focusing on getting the executive functioning again.

Clearly the people in Northern Ireland have been without a government, without Stormont, for two years and six months so my prime focus this morning is to do everything I can to help that get up and running again because I think that’s profoundly in the interests of people here, of all the citizens here in Northern Ireland.

• He said he attached “huge importance to the letter, spirit of the Belfast/ Good Friday agreement and will be insisting on that”. He was speaking in the context of Brexit, and addressing claims that a no deal Brexit would undermine the Good Friday agreement.

• Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Fein president, said that Brexit changes the terms of debate in Northern Ireland, boosting the case for Irish reunification. Speaking on the Today programme, she said:

Traditionally the argument and the discourse [in Northern Ireland] has been between green and orange, between Irishness and Britishness. But Brexit changed that and added a new dimension, a critical dimension, which is European or not? Inside the European Union or not? And for the purposes of the north of Ireland, a very direct choice, economically, socially, politically, as to whether or not this part of the island wishes to become a sort of backwater, marooned somewhere between the Tories in Number 10 and the very, very destructive agenda of the DUP.

• She said there were now unionists willing to consider the case for reunification following Brexit. She said:

For everybody across society, Brexit has raised fundamental questions around the wisdom and the sustainability of the partition of our island which we have lived with now since the 1920s … It’s changed the entire political dynamic, it has changed the parameters of the conversation. In the course of the debate that we will have about constitutional change, lots of people for whom a united Ireland would still not be their first preference, who would still have a strong attachment to union, even they now are willing and eager to have the conversation [about Irish reunification].

• She said it would be “scandalous” to refuse Northern Ireland a referendum on joining a united Ireland after a no deal Brexit.

In the event of a hard Brexit and a crash Brexit, I don’t know for the life of me how anybody could sustain an argument that things remain the same …

I don’t know how Britain could crash this part of Ireland out of the EU with all of the attendant harm and damage economically and politically and, with a straight face, suggest to any of us who live on this island that we should not be given the democratic opportunity as per the Good Friday agreement to decide our future. I think that would be quite scandalous.

• She said she thought there were already grounds for holding a referendum in the north. Under the terms of the Good Friday agreement, the UK government is obliged to hold a referendum, or “border poll”, if at any time it seems “likely” that a majority in the north would vote to form part of a united Ireland. McDonald said:

This is a matter that I had explored at great length since I became the leader of Sinn Fein with Theresa May and with Karen Bradley [the former Northern Ireland secretary]. And I raised this matter with Julian Smith [the new Northern Ireland secretary] when I met him the other day. I think it’s very important that the British system sets out very clearly for all of us what it and they would understand to be the point of threshold, the trigger point at which a border poll or a referendum would be called …

I think some of the thresholds have been met. I mean, this northern state is built on the assumption of a perpetual unionist majority. That political majority has been lost in three successive elections … The demographic patterns have been well discussed and well aired and they are moving in on direction. That for me is not the most compelling of arguments but it is a reality.

• Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, said that her party’s confidence and supply arrangement with the Tories was still in place. On the subject of continuing it, she told Sky News it was not just a matter of money. For example, she said her party particularly welcomed Johnson’s decision to appoint a veterans minister and to set up an office for veterans’ affairs because, she said, Northern Ireland has more people in the armed forces per head of population than anywhere else in the UK.

As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I plan to publish a summary when I wrap up.

You can read all the latest Guardian politics articles here. Here is the Politico Europe roundup of this morning’s political news. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must-reads.

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