Theresa May to meet main Northern Ireland parties

Theresa May is holding talks on Brexit with Northern Ireland's five main political parties at Stormont.

The PM is on a two-day visit to try to reassure people she can secure a Brexit deal that avoids the return of customs checkpoints on the Irish border.

May has already had conversations with business and community leaders during her two-day trip to Belfast.

She is expected to meet the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein among others on Wednesday.

The premier has suggested that she is seeking “changes” to the controversial backstop in her Brexit deal, rather than its total removal from the UK’s EU Withdrawal Agreement.

The EU has maintained it will not renegotiate the withdrawal agreement, including the backstop.

May is due to spend Wednesday morning meeting the political parties.

In a speech in Belfast, the Prime Minister restated her “unshakeable” commitment to avoiding a hard border in Ireland after Brexit, pledging: “The UK Government will not let that happen. I will not let that happen.”

When asked how she could convince the people of Northern Ireland to accept a Brexit deal which was stripped of the backstop, May said: “I’m not proposing to persuade people to accept a deal that doesn’t contain that insurance policy for the future.

“What Parliament has said is that they believe there should be changes made to the backstop.”

It was in that light that she was working with MPs, the Irish government and the EU to find a way to meet the commitment to take Britain out of the EU on March 29 with a deal which avoided a hard Irish border, she said.

The Irish Government accused the Prime Minister of harbouring unrealistic expectations over the backstop.

The mechanism has polarised nationalists and unionists.

May is due to visit the Belgian capital on Thursday, where she will hold a series of talks with key figures including Tusk, Juncker, European Parliament president Antonio Tajani and the European Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt.

It will be the Prime Minister’s first chance to hold first face-to-face talks in Brussels since the Withdrawal Agreement reached last November was rejected by the House of Commons.