DAVID Davis has triggered a new diplomatic dispute with EU leaders after insisting the deal Theresa May struck with Brussels on the Irish border last week was not “legally enforceable”.

The Brexit Secretary’s comments prompted an angry response from the Irish Government which said it and the rest of the EU 27 would hold the UK to the agreement, made on Friday.

Irish Government chief whip Joe McHugh branded Davis’s remarks “bizarre”, and said: “We will as a government, a sovereign government in Ireland, be holding the United Kingdom to account, as will the European Union.

“My question to anybody within the British Government would be, why would there be an agreement, a set of principled agreements, in order to get to phase two, if they weren’t going to be held up?

“That just sounds bizarre to me. This, as far as we’re concerned, is a binding agreement, an agreement in principle.”

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The row comes before a crucial summit this Thursday, when the UK hopes European Union leaders will decide sufficient progress has been made on “divorce” issues to allow trade and transition talks to begin, possibly in January. Dublin has a veto on whether talks should move on.

Under the EU/UK agreement London will find a way to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland “through the overall EU-UK relationship” but if this cannot be achieved, Britain will keep “full alignment” with the EU single market and customs union rules that are crucial to the Good Friday Agreement.

Pressed on BBC’s Andrew Marr show yesterday morning what “full alignment” between Northern Ireland and the EU would mean, Davis said: “This was a statement of intent more than anything else.

He added: “Much more a statement of intent than it was a legally enforceable thing.”

But EU leaders had already said on Friday they regarded the deal as “enforceable”.

Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar described it as “politically bullet-proof” and “cast iron”, while Guy Verhoftstadt, the European Parliament’s chief negotiator, also made it clear he believed it was binding.

“1) No hardening of the border 2) Regulatory alignment on the whole island 3) Respect #GoodFridayAgreement in all its parts. However, EP will only give green light if these commitments are fully enforceable,” he tweeted.

During the same interview with Marr yesterday Davis – who was last week was forced to admit a series of assessments about the impact of Brexit on the economy which he said had been carried out didn’t exist – said the chances of Britain leaving the EU without a trade deal had “dropped dramatically”, following the deal.

He insisted the agreement secured with Brussels to trigger talks on a post-Brexit relationship made the prospect of the UK being forced back into World Trade Organisation (WTO) tariff arrangements after withdrawal much less likely.

“The odds, as it were, against a WTO, or no deal outcome, have dropped dramatically,” he said.

Davis also insisted Britain will not pay a £39 billion exit bill to Brussels unless there is a trade deal – contradicting comments made by Chancellor Philip Hammond last week who has said it would be “inconceivable” the UK would fail to honour its international obligations.

Meanwhile, the SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford underlined the need for Scotland to remain in the single market and appealed to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to back the demand.

“We are now at a critical point in the Brexit negotiations.

“Extreme Tory plans to drag the UK out of the single market would cause economic catastrophe – costing the country hundreds of thousands of jobs, and hitting people’s incomes, livelihoods and living standards for decades to come,” he said.

“Short of retaining our EU membership, the only way to protect jobs, incomes, and workers’ rights is to remain in the single market and customs union – that is by far the best compromise and the least damaging option.

Blackford continued: “By working together in the national interest the opposition parties could deliver a parliamentary majority for this compromise but it would require Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour to stop equivocating, put party politics aside, and get behind efforts to stay in the single market and customs union.”