(Reuters) – Britain’s top government lawyer, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, has new legal advice stating that Britain will be able to break off from the Irish backstop under the terms of the Vienna Convention, The Telegraph reported on Thursday.
Cox is attempting to win over Eurosceptic Conservative Party MPs and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) with his new legal advice, the Telegraph reported.
The Attorney General states that Britain will be able to end the backstop if it has a “socially destabilising effect on Northern Ireland”, the Telegraph report said.
Cox had said on Tuesday that, despite some improvement in Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal, the legal risk remained that Britain might be unable to get out of the backstop. May’s deal was rejected by the parliament later in the day.
(Reporting by Ishita Chigilli Palli in Bengaluru; Editing by James Dalgleish)