Picture copyright Reuters Pictur
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Reuters
Brandon Lewis was first elected as an MP in 2010
Brandon Lewis has been appointed the brand new Northern Eire secretary.
He replaces Julian Smith, who was fired after 204 days in the job and had helped to revive power-sharing at Stormont.
Mr Lewis is a former chair of the Conservative Celebration and, most lately, a safety minister in Boris Johnson’s cupboard.
Shortly after his appointment was introduced, he posted on Twitter that he was “honoured” to tackle the function.
Mr Lewis has been the MP for Nice Yarmouth on the east coast of England since 2010.
He campaigned for Stay within the EU referendum in 2016 however later mentioned he would help leaving the EU as he was “initially a democrat”.
Northern Eire Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill mentioned she would communicate to Mr Lewis on Friday morning.
The Sinn Féin vice-president posted on Twitter that she had a number of points to debate with him.
SDLP chief Colum Eastwood mentioned he hoped Mr Lewis would act with “equity and integrity” in his work in Northern Eire.
Ulster Unionist chief Steve Aiken mentioned Mr Lewis would face a “very massive in-tray” and couldn’t “let the grass develop below his toes”.
The Northern Eire department of the enterprise physique the Institute of Administrators mentioned it wished to satisfy the brand new secretary of state quickly to “talk about issues of enterprise leaders”.
In 2018, when Mr Lewis was a Cupboard Workplace minister, he visited the Irish border and later met companies in Belfast to listen to their issues about Brexit.
Final 12 months, throughout an interview with the BBC, Mr Lewis mentioned that after Brexit checks on some items leaving Nice Britain for Northern Eire can be required if these items had been then destined to depart the UK.
However he disputed the accuracy of a leaked authorities doc that acknowledged customs declarations checks can be extremely disruptive and separate Northern Eire from Nice Britain.
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Mr Lewis turns into the fourth Northern Eire secretary in 4 years. His three most-recent predecessors are:
- James Brokenshire – appointed in July 2016
- Karen Bradley – appointed January 2018
- Julian Smith – appointed in July 2019
Mr Lewis takes up the job simply weeks after a deal was reached to revive energy sharing in Northern Eire after a three-year deadlock.
Mr Smith was broadly credited with overseeing efforts to get the principle events to agree to return into the manager collectively.