[News] Dominic Raab accuses EU of trying to erect Irish Sea border.

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The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has accused the EU of trying to erect a border down the Irish Sea as he told a US audience that it was the EU that had been doing most to threaten the Northern Ireland protocol and damage the Good Friday agreement.

His remarks came at the end of a setpiece speech at the Aspen Forum in which he extolled Britain as a force for good determined to build a broader caucus of nations ranged against a dangerous minority determined to ransack the international system.

His Northern Ireland remarks prompted the pro-Irish congressman Brendan Boyle to ask whether the UK was going to continue unilaterally delaying the implementation of the protocol. Boyle said the UK had twice now taken unilateral actions with respect to delaying the Northern Ireland protocol. He asked if the UK government was going to continue with its disruptive cycle.

Raab said: “It is the EU that by trying to erect a barrier down the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and Great Britain that is challenging the spirit of Northern Ireland Protocol and the Good Friday agreement.

He added: “I hope that our friends on the Hill on all sides of the house, and both houses, are equally robust in picking up when the EU undermines the agreement.”

He said the brief invocation of article 16 of the withdrawal agreement by the EU had created “huge tensions across all communities”.

Raab said: “The most overt political threat to the agreement and ultimately the Good Friday agreement has been the politicised way the EU has gone about things.” He also questioned whether the EU had made the same level of unequivocal commitment as the UK on refusing to set up any border infrastructure.