Brexit: UK 'downplayed' risk to NI peace process says ex-diplomat

Alexandra Hall Hall resigned as UK Brexit counsellor at the British embassy in Washington in 2019

A former British diplomat has accused the government of being "deliberately misleading" over Brexit and its effect on the Northern Ireland peace process.

Alexandra Hall Hall resigned from her senior role in Washington in 2019.

Now she has written a lengthy article criticising Boris Johnson's government in the lead up to the 2019 Brexit deal.

She said one minister dismissed the risk of a no-deal Brexit on Irish firms as only affecting "a few farmers with turnips in the back of their trucks".

BBC News NI has asked Downing Street for a response to her allegations.

Ms Hall Hall joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1986 and clocked up more than 30 years of experience in diplomatic roles.

Most recently she worked as UK Brexit counsellor at the British embassy in the United States capital Washington - a post which she said carried the "responsibility of explaining Brexit to American audiences".

She quit that role in early December 2019, saying she could no longer "peddle half-truths" on behalf of political leaders she did not "trust".

Her resignation came a few weeks after Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement with the EU and a few days before he led the Conservative Party to victory in the 2019 general election.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson shakes hands with the then European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in 2019

Her resignation letter made headlines at the time and now she has gone further in her criticism of Mr Johnson's government in an article she wrote for a US journal, the Texas National Security Review.

The article describes her dilemma as a "conflicted civil servant" who felt her her government was implementing Brexit in a way that was "deliberately misleading and a violation of my civil service duty to act with integrity".

'Low point'

She said after he became prime minister in July 2019, Mr Johnson's government "downplayed" the impact of Brexit in terms of its likely costs and its effect on international trade.

"They were not simply putting a positive spin on policy — a normal practice of any government — but were wilfully disingenuous," she wrote.

Ms Hall Hall added that "most damagingly" the government also "downplayed the consequences of Brexit for the delicate peace process in Northern Ireland, in which the United States was a core stakeholder, having helped to broker the Good Friday Agreement".

"A low point for me was when I heard a senior British minister openly and offensively, in front of a US audience, dismiss the impact of a 'no-deal' Brexit on Irish businesses as just affecting 'a few farmers with turnips in the back of their trucks'," she wrote.

She also had to provide Brexit briefings for US businesses with significant investments in the UK, and said she found herself "struggling to maintain the line that there would be no harmful consequences for them" from a potential no-deal Brexit.

Democratic choice

Ms Hall Hall said that she did not personally support Brexit, but acknowledged that the decision to leave the European Union was the "democratic choice of the British people, who had voted in a legally constituted referendum".

She also acknowledged that UK civil servants had to be impartial in terms of party politics and "cannot quit every time they disagree with a policy, otherwise government couldn't function".

But she said the civil service also required integrity, honesty and objectivity from its staff.