11th May 2022
Theresa May is a far better as a former Prime Minister than she ever was as a Prime Minister.
Other living former Prime Ministers have all stepped away from the House of Commons – and have also avoided appointment to the Lords.
Hers alone is the voice of a former Prime Minister in parliament at a time of this generally dire premiership.
Her premiership was not a good one – and from her early blundering over Brexit ‘red lines’ flowed almost all of the Brexit problems the United Kingdom has since had to deal with.
(And, of course, she was a worse Home Secretary, where she instigated the vile ‘hostile environment’.)
But.
May got one thing right.
And that was – given the respective positions of the United Kingdom and the European Union – there had to be either a ‘backstop’ or a trade border down the Irish Sea.
She chose the ‘backstop’ – which, in general effect, meant that if the United Kingdom and Ireland/European Union did not agree a trade agreement, certain measures would have to be implemented in Northern Ireland in respect of cross-border trade.
That proposal failed to pass the House of Commons – indeed, those versions of the withdrawal Bill suffered one of the heaviest government defeats in parliamentary history.
The new Prime Minister Boris Johnson – in a cynical manoeuvre that must have seen very clever at the time – dropped the ‘backstop’.
As this blog has previously set out, this was very much his measure – he changed the United Kingdom policy, he negotiated and agreed a revised treaty, he got it through parliament, and he obtained a majority for it in a general election.
Johnson used every power of the Prime Minister to get this new Northern Irish Protocol through Parliament, and at speed.
Parliament was denied any real opportunity to scrutinise the measure.
And Brexit supporters clapped and cheered this splendid wheeze so as to ‘Get Brexit Done.’
They are not clapping and cheering now.
For the cost of the Brexit which got ‘done’ was the Northern Irish Protocol.
At the time, this seemed a price Brexit supporters were willing to pay.
But now they do not want to pay it.
They want it both ways – they want the United Kingdom outside of the European Union but they now want to reject the only means by which that was possible in late 2019/early 2020.
Cakes, eating, and so on.
And so it was not surprising that May took an opportunity to respond to an intervention from a Northern Irish unionist MP who opposed her ‘backstop’ in the following terms:
“Sadly the DUP and others chose to reject that.”
Former PM Theresa May tells DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson her #Brexit deal protected the Good Friday Agreement and would have prevented a border in the Irish Sea or on island of Ireland.pic.twitter.com/glHgHgtI7K
— Darran Marshall (@DarranMarshall) May 10, 2022
She said:
“I put a deal before the House that met the requirements of the Good Friday agreement and enabled us not to have a border down the Irish sea or between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Sadly, the Democratic Unionist party and others across the House chose to reject that, but it was an opportunity to have what the right hon. Gentleman wanted.”
*
Had May had her way, however, there would have been alternative problems.
This is because of her early ‘red lines’ blundering, the only two withdrawal agreements available by late 2019, were the ‘backstop’ and Johnson’s calamitous clever wheeze of a border in the Irish Sea.
And this is because of the fundamental problem – that has never been addressed – of how one maintains an open border on the island of Ireland with no customs or trade infrastructure, if Northern Ireland leaves the European Union customs union and single market.
Some problems do not have solutions.
And, as this blog has also previously averred, it is not enough for those critical of Brexit (and this government’s Brexit policy) to point and jeer at the government and remind ministers that they negotiated and signed the Northern Irish protocol.
It may be satisfying, but it is not sufficient.
And any significant move in Northern Ireland does not need a mere majority, but actual consent from the nationalist and unionist communities.
This was pointed out yesterday by a unionist politician who had been opposed to Brexit:
@pmdfoster -normally supportive of your views, however, majoritarianism was replaced by Belfast Agreement. Politics in NI is based on x-community consensus. There are no, repeat no, Unionist MLA’s who support protocol. No consent so no bafflement @trussliz #UlsterUnionist https://t.co/m45nQvzpvH
— Steve Aiken OBE (@SteveAikenUUP) May 11, 2022
*
When May took office she insisted Brexit would mean Brexit.
She insisted that the United Kingdom would leave the European Union customs union and single market.
Yet a Brexit with the United Kingdom remaining within the single market was possible – and this is the basis on which other non-European nations trade with the European Union (as part of EFTA).
So she may have been right in her answer to the unionist politician yesterday.
But on a more fundamental level, she and other Brexit-supporting ministers got it very wrong.
**
Thank you for reading – and please do support this blog, so that it can carry on for you and others.
These free-to-read law and policy posts every week-day do take time and opportunity cost to put together, as do the comments to pre-moderate.
So for more posts like this – both for the benefit of you and for the benefit of others – please do support through the Paypal box above, or become a Patreon subscriber.
You can also become an email subscriber.
***
Comments Policy
This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.
Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome.
For more on this blog’s Comments Policy see this page.
It’s worth pointing out that there was a customs border between Ireland (Republic) and Northern Ireland in pre single market times, though both countries were in the sterling zone at that time and only two countries had to agree on the detailed implementation.
The fact is that being in the EU is pretty popular in Northern Ireland as it is in Scotland. Brexit has upset something fundamental. Although TM mismanaged things, the question in the Brexit referendum really should have anticipated the alternative customs structure being sought.
This is, of course, absolutely correct.
However, Theresa May’s red lines were simply a logical function of the political reality that Brexiter Tory MPs held the whip-hand in parliament and they clung (and still cling) to the fantasy that Britain could have its Single Market cake and eat it.
This in itself was a function of the original sin within the structure of the referendum which allowed a leave voter to literally be able to claim that they were voting for the moon on a stick. That is to say the Leave side was not required to set out in concrete terms what Brexit would actually look like.
This was compounded by the systemic failure within the British media class to call out the fact that there was no basis for the claim during the referendum that Britain could leave the Single Market and ‘enjoy the exact same benefits’.
So in reality, May’s red lines were simply a function of the UK’s archaic and dysfunctional constitutional governance, and the systemic failure (with honourable exceptions) of its media class.
“However, Theresa May’s red lines were simply a logical function of the political reality that Brexiter Tory MPs held the whip-hand in parliament”
But in reality they held that whip-hand only because of May’s profoundly stupid decision to try to “weaponise” Brexit against Labour. There was nothing to prevent her seeking a cross-party consensus on the form of Brexit and, indeed, such an approach would in any normal country have been regarded as practically essential in respect of such profound and sweeping changes to the nation’s future path and prospects.
Her decision was, in fact doubly stupid as it deprived her at a stroke of any “negotiating coin” as he had delivered the fate of her administration entirely into the hands of extremists who were guaranteed to scream “treachery” at even the whiff of reasonable compromise.
And none of this is remotely to be seen as hindsight: this dynamic was crystal-clear from the earliest “Brexit means Brexit” days of her administration.
“This in itself was a function of the original sin within the structure of the referendum which allowed a leave voter to literally be able to claim that they were voting for the moon on a stick.”
Yep! This too was perfectly clear from the outset. In normal first-world countries with mildly competent leadership this would be regarded as glaringly obvious. Under the Italian Constitution, for example, a referendum can generally be held only to approve a law that has already been approved by (both chambers of ) Parliament: the precise consequences and measures to be implemented in the event of approval must have been specified and drafted in advance of the vote.
Even without such a constitution, the UK is a full member of the Venice Commission (the European Commission for Democracy through Law) which developed and formally adopted its ‘Code of Good Practice on referendums’ in 2006: the UK Government, of course, considered itself far too clever and superior to take such advice to which foreigners might have contributed (and foreigners with actual experience of using referendums as an integral part of their polities, at that!).
“She chose the ‘backstop’ – which, in general effect, meant that if the United Kingdom and Ireland/European Union did not agree a trade agreement, certain measures would have to be implemented in Northern Ireland in respect of cross-border trade.”
That was the original withdrawal agreement, as preferred by the EU, but was criticised as putting a border in the Irish Sea not least by the DUP who felt they’d been sidelined (May didn’t consult them). So the backstop was renegotiated to apply to the whole UK, if no border free trade arrangement could be agreed after the transition period. This final version of May’s WA still failed because the term backstop becane weaponised as Brexit becoming Brino and unacceptable in any form by the hard Brexit ultras.
Johnson’s deal basically reverted to the original NI only protocol but implemented immediately, not as a backstop. The DUP no longer mattered as he had a large majority. The EU were happy as the effect was limited to Northern Ireland.
Exactly. Though it baffled me why people seemed not to realise that Boris hadn’t jettisoned the backstop, as was claimed repeatedly, but rather had just implemented it in its original form from day one.
Furthermore, I remain mightily baffled by how anyone could possibly have ever thought that any form of Brexit that involved leaving the single market and the customs union could possibly be compatible with the Good Friday Agreement.
The GFA is about so much more than trade: the way it deals with issues of nationality and identity seem to me to be central to how peace has been achieved and sustained in Northern Ireland. Anything that might disturb this settlement was always going to be problematic. Such as having a border on the island of Ireland, or down the Irish Sea.
The very turbulence we are witnessing now was entirely predictable, but somehow the issue never gained the traction it needed in the run up to the referendum. The “moon on a stick” wasn’t just “leave and keep the exact same benefits” it was also “leave and keep the exact same settlement on the island of Ireland”. How could we have been so foolish?
For those of us who understand UK / Irish history – which eliminates almost every English MP – Northern Ireland always was the Achilles heel of Brexit. And so it remains. Johnson may think that because they named a street after him in Ukraine he is untouchable in this latest attempt to walk away from the Protocol element of the international agreement with the EU. The right wing press would have us believe he is leading the western world in this endeavour. Absurd and ridiculous. In short, he is quite openly risking undermining European unity against Russia’s aggressive invasion of Ukraine in order to appease his right wing and the DUP. It is as despicable as it is cynical. The EU has made sincere efforts to make the Protocol work. UK government has made no efforts at all, except to try to incite sectarian violence to support its opposition to an agreement it negotiated and signed. UK’s international reputation in Europe yet again debased by Johnson.
Theresa May was dealt a bad hand and played it poorly. Johnson played a blinder and by hook or by crook he “got Brexit done” – albeit in a way that was sufficient unto the day, turning the backstop into a frontstop but pretending that it would never need to be implemented – leaving unresolved issues and tensions all over the place, and now we are in buyer’s remorse and some of those issues are unraveling.
There seems to be little cross-community consensus in Northern Ireland for anything, at the level of the political leaders at least. The DUP never liked the Good Friday Agreement, or May’s backstop, or Johnson’s protocol, and any movement towards a compromise risks them being outflanked by the TUV, just as the DUP have outflanked the UUP. How can we pull the polarised hyperpartisan politics back from the extremes?
No one has been able to explain to me how it would be possible to maintain the EU/UK customs border between Calais and Dover, if there is not a similar customs border somewhere on the route from Calais to Cherbourg, to Dublin, to Belfast, to Holyhead, to Dover. The only three places that make any sense to draw that line are (i) in the sea between France and Ireland, (ii) on the land border between the south and north of Ireland, and (iii) in the sea between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
We already have a one-sided border in Dover, where southbound travellers are subject to EU checks, but northbound traffic is waved through. We call that “taking back control”.
Will the EU turn its back on the UK, just many member states are turning their back on Russian energy? Absolutely. The EU is far more important to them than any single third country.
For a moment then I thought you were going to end that with “any single third world country”! A bit harsh but apposite: we persist in overestimating our importance to the EU and underestimating the EU’s importance to its remaining members.
Point of order, but the “hostile environment” first emerged in 2007, long before May’s tenure at the Home Office.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/may/16/immigration.immigrationandpublicservices
I agree with Chris Park’s comments. And formerly I would have thought that Teresa May was quite entitled to take the high moral ground in her Parliamentary criticism of Johnson. Though not a Tory supporter, I respected our former PM.
Until I was required to have her forward my complaint about the Treasury Solicitor to the PHSO Ombudsman (she’s my local MP). My letter was addressed ‘Dear Political Commissioner.. I wish to complain about the Treasury Solicitor’.
‘Confused’ about the intended recipient of my letter, Mrs May ‘diverted’ my letter and sent it to the Cabinet Office who ‘consulted’ with the AGO, and sent it to the GLD. They immediately gave it to the Treasury Solicitor. Taking on the role of the Ombudsman, the TS replied, dismissed my complaint and returned my letter saying it was ‘up to her whether she now decided to forward it to the Ombudsman. May took 12 days before sending the TS’s reply, and asked me how I wanted to proceed.
Pressed by me, Mrs May, my local MP refused to comment critically on the TS’s behaviour. It eventually ended up with the PHSO who found the TS had no case to answer.
As the saying goes, “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story…”
It was David Cameron, an advocate for remaining within the EU, that set the terms, the timetable and the conduct of the Referendum. The moment the outcome was known he announced his resignation, abdicating his responsibilities and resulting in the appointment of the least competent Prime Minster we’ve likely ever had.
As May took office, she made a series of calamitous, idiotic decisions that resulted in the negotiations over the UK’s withdrawal from the EU being such a mess. To give you just one example… as a member of the EU, the United Kingdom was not permitted to negotiate separate trade deals with non-EU nations. That’s entirely reasonable, since you would not want different EU states sending mixed messages or trying to out-bid each other. Because of this prohibition in national-level trade deals, the UK government had disbanded the “trade negotiation” function from Westminster completely, so that when it came time to negotiate with the EU, we quite literally had nobody to do the negotiating on our behalf – and nobody with the experience needed. Rather than take the time to put the right people in place, Teresa May blindly set and agreed a date and then expected everything would “just happen”.
Or, if you’d like to look back a little further in to history, you might recall that when Cameron & Co. went off to “negotiate” with the EU to see if it might be possible for some or all of the UK’s concerns to be addressed without divorce, not only was there no setting out of the principles that the UK were going to be asking for, but there was no consultation with the British people to find out what we might actually consider important.
So yes, whilst we do agree that the systemic failures in the run-up to the referendum were catastrophic, it’s worth pointing out that the architect of all of that was David Cameron, a pro-Remain Prime Minister.
Unrelated footnote… May I just raise my concern at your use of the expression “media class”. This is, I believe, a misnomer, like “political class”. The use of “class” in this context generally conveys the meaning of some form of stratification – for example in society (e.g. Upper Class, Middle Class, Lower Class). Use of “class” in conjunction with either “media” or “political” as qualifying adjectives can lead to the confusion that, somehow, the “political class” exists at a different level of society than “the rest of us”. Given their already apparent disregard for the electorate they are supposed to represent, I would suggest that’s unwise.
Could we perhaps use terms like “political establishment” and/or “main stream media”, or just “media”?
I agree with Sproggit that, although there were lots of deep underlying causes which enabled Brexit (I reckon about ten), David Cameron’s catastrophic decision-making was the single proximate cause. But for David Cameron, Brexit might never have happened.
In much the same way, although WW1 had many deep underlying causes, ‘but for’ Kaiser Wilhelm’s actions the war would likely not have happened.
Cameron wrote the ‘blank cheque’ and the Brexiters gleefully cashed it. But it was the total absence of even the most basic constitutional governance that allowed Cameron to witlessly implement such a catastrophically designed referendum structure.
On ‘media class’ I was intending to convey a description of print and broadcasts journalists as a collective group of people within UK system who continue to enjoy enormous power and influence. Happy to accept alternative descriptions may apply!
“But for David Cameron, Brexit might never have happened”
to an extent – but then you’d be on equally firm intellectual grounds if you said that it was Farage/UKIP who were an existential challenge to the Tory party , hence Cameron being effectively a hostage to calling a referendum that he never (ever) thought he’d lose.
Life is a cr*p-shoot.
In reality UKIP was never an existential challenge to the Tory party.
I’ve not seen any evidence that the 2013 promise to hold a manifesto affected the outcome of the 2015 election.
In any event, it was the catastrophically flawed design of the referendum – rather than the decision to hold it – that brought us where we are today: unable to move forward, unable to move back.
Or perhaps he was indifferent to the prospect of losing because he thought his Lib Dem coalition partners would never allow the referendum to actually take place. Whatever happened to them?
“But for David Cameron, Brexit might never have happened.”
But for Jeremy Corbyn, Brexit would never have happened!
Yes, but without Cameron’s referendum promise, and his dreadful remain campaign, Corbyn wouldn’t have had the opportunity to put his Lexit ideas into play. Cameron was both the cause and the enabler. Yet he sang as he walked away from resigning. He simply didn’t care.
I agree. I was reminding us all that Corbyn put the fatal icing on the very badly cooked cake.
But “media class” is at least halfway right as for the last 10 years (or so) entry into media professions has been near impossible for people from ordinary families.
New entrants needed to be able to fund themselves through lengthy unpaid internships, often internships in places like London where living costs are especially high. They needed good social networks to find out about the scarce opportunities … candidates and their families with existing connections to senior players in the media had much better chances of landing good internships and junior jobs than those without.
A disproportionally high percentage of people with “creative” / journalistic media jobs are those who were educated in public schools, come from well-off families and are based in London or the South East.
Entry to other high prestige but financially troubled professions – eg the museums sector – show similar trends.
There is a solution and there always was, EFTA, but, that would entail a lot of EU regulations and primacy of the ECJ. Anathema to all Brexiteers. And while that remains the case, you are correct, there is no solution.
I think the challenge of the NIP is now more about poor drafting of the document itself including the provision of Article 16 – this was always likely to be contentious given how rushed the agreement was.
The preamble has two paragraphs that present immediate challenges post implementation – these are:
DETERMINED that the application of this Protocol should impact as little as possible on the everyday
life of communities in both Ireland and Northern Ireland
and:
HAVING REGARD to the importance of maintaining the integral place of Northern Ireland in the
United Kingdom’s internal market
You have to assume that both UK and EU understood the implications of this preamble and that , post Brexit, if either of the conditions outlined above were not met then, the potential for Article 16 to be invoked is almost a given.
What seems to be happening is that both parties seem to have short selective memories – evidence is mounting that both paragraphs (above) have been breached – now, it’s a case of deciding , within the protocol on how best to address. You don’t have to be a commercial lawyer in a golden circle firm to appreciate that , it really ought to be apparent that Article 16 can be successfully be invoked in a temporary & proportionate manner as to try and resolve the challenges – in the limit, bad treaties like bad contracts rarely survive.
The worst PM since Eden – until Boris got in.
May is being disingenuous. When she finally woke up to the Irish problem she chose the sea border option but DUP and the Tory Brexit wing nixed it. She then managed to pick the worst of all worlds: exit the SM but keep the UK effectively governed by SM rules via the Backstop. May consulted no one except her voices, failed to plan, refused to create a consensus game plan instead of rushing ahead and imposed deadline in herself that played into the hands of both the Brexiters rebels, DUP and the EU.
DUP of course was too brain dead to understand what suited it politically and amusingly thought it might dictate to the RoUK before being knifed by Boris at the first opportunity.
May is so un-empathetic I am not sure she can be accused of horribleness as a Home Sec. She doesn’t have relationships and so cant grasp the human side. Disastrous HS but competent in her own way. Patel on the other hand is incompetent and nasty.
“She then managed to pick the worst of all worlds: exit the SM but keep the UK effectively governed by SM rules (er, with no veto or vote….my words in brackets) via the Backstop. ”
Very (very) few people understand the import of what you write here – in fact whilst out of the SM, we’d be governed by SM rules and still effectively within the EU customs regulatory union via the backstop – potentially in perpetuity.
Worse -most MP’s of the remainer /rogue Parliament of 2017-2019 did not even realise this. So much for Parliament.
Of course Mp’s realised this (the ERG never stopped banging on about it) but the point of the backstop was it would only apply if suitable alternative arrangements for the Northern Ireland border were not agreed. This does not mean being within the EU customs union regulations in perpetuity as hard Brexiteers claimed it was intended to do. A British government acting in good faith could have negotiated such arrangements. The hard Brexiteers probably knew they had no intention of doing any such thing.
“…but the point of the backstop was it would only apply if suitable alternative arrangements for the Northern Ireland border were not agreed….”
And this is or was the rub. The EU ( rightly) could always say that suitable alternative arrangements could not be found down the line. Unfortunately, based on good or bad faith ,any subsequent government could not possibly guarantee that eventually they would get agreement with the EU to have the backstop removed.
This was agreed by Geoffrey Cox, then Attorney General and other government legal officers. Being effectively stuck in a customs regulatory union ,with no veto was not something that many or any governments would sign up to.
As I said elsewhere, many people suffered short term memory loss during the 2017-2019 Parliament – those with an accurate memory of events have different views.
The EU negotiates in good faith. It’s the UK that negotiates agreements then almost immediately threatens to tear them up. In the case of the NI Protocol it appears the UK signed it knowing it intended to break it.
Had the UK and the EU came up with a trade and customs agreement that was able to keep the Irish border open then it could hardly then say: “ah but we still need to keep the backstop, sorry about that.”
The backstop covered the whole UK, not just NI. As originally announced it was just for NI but the DUP wouldn’t have it so it was renegotiated to avoid the Irish Sea border. Johnson put that back.
I totally agree that Theresa May, and Boris Johnson, got things fundamentally wrong on Brexit.
Just a couple of points :
– there was, before Brexit, already a trade border between GB and Northern Ireland regarding plant and animal health, and movement of such goods and animals traded between GB and Northern Ireland was subject to checks in order to protect farmers and consumers on the island of Ireland;
– the cross-community consent required by the Belfast Agreement had been given for such measures.
On the first point, Brexit enlarged the scope of these checks. But businesses in Northern Ireland would get an additional benefit – a form of access to the EU market not available to their GB counterparts. Moreover, a specific UK-EU agreement on plant and animal health – offered by the EU – could deal with most of the irritants which have emerged through Brexit, but – ‘Sovereignty!’ (of the English rather than the Ulster kind).
On the second, there is much to admire in the personal qualities fostered by Ulster Presbyterian culture. Compromise with one’s neighbours is not at the top of that list. (Although, somewhat ironically, compromise with duplicitous Westminster politicians seems to be all right, no matter how many times one is duped). The refusal to give consent to the border arrangements may have nothing to do with the facts. Indeed the Unionists (ie people who support the Union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain) in the Alliance party can live with the arrangements. Even though they may not be ‘Unionists’ in the sense of the provisions of the Belfast Agreement. So the degree of cross-community consent has never truly been tested in an open and frank discussion.
“Moreover, a specific UK-EU agreement on plant and animal health – offered by the EU – could deal with most of the irritants which have emerged through Brexit, but – ‘Sovereignty!’ (of the English rather than the Ulster kind).”
If this was true – but it isn’t.
The Single market is significantly more than just food/agri goods per plant & animal health.
A greater challenge forseen by both sides is the lack of democratic accountability of laws being made with no representation for the people of NI – if it was just agri/food great but it ain’t.
Most informed critics of the NIP have also (now) worked out the asymmetry of the NIP in favour of the SM over the UK’s internal market – this was a grenade that was always going to go off at some point.
You’re right, of course, but as far as the ‘irritants’ are concerned, I was basing myself on what Northern Ireland businesses themselves are saying.
The most recent survey suggests that one in five manufacturing firms don’t like the protocol; one in four think it is positive for them; and of the rest there is a mixture of views, of which I think it is broadly fair to say that the irritants are mainly in the food and drink sector (about 40% of manufacturing). The Protocol itself did not rank among the main concerns of business in Northern Ireland.
It is time for the UK government to intervene and bring the DUP blackmail to an end, perhaps once again through a form of direct rule. Confronting these people, whose politics have not evolved in the last 50 years, is essential to the progress of NI in the future. The NI protocol, with its rules that keep NI inside both the UK and the EU SM, give it a unique and powerful economic opportunity. The rise of both the Alliance and Sinn Fein, including the transformation of the RofI over the same 50 years, show the opportunities for change.
It would, of course, be better not to have left the EU, but the facts are now changed in that way.
Johnson is paying his debt to the truth for all the lies he has told and continues to tell, the ‘oven-ready deal’ being the biggest of them all.
Sadly, his rate of repayment is less then the accruing interest.
The problem with looking back , in hindsight to the NIP is that it doesn’t take us forward in trying to sort the issues of challenges out – great for this kind of academic debate.
As the old adage goes – we are were we are.
Irrespective of blame, it strikes me that if a bad contract exists say in commercial life, the same thing can happen with a treaty – bad treaties are, in effect bad international contracts – they either work or they don’t.
One or other party has to try and break the deadlock – looks like it will be the UK.
Interesting to hear Donaldson plead for consensus in Northern Ireland. The nationalist community was opposed to Brexit. Consensus seemed not to matter in that instance.
Also frankly nauseating to hear Donaldson quote the GFA. He has opposed it from the start and clearly hoped that Brexit would undermine it.
“actual consent from the nationalist and unionist communities”
But the communities, that is the people, are not being listened to. It’s the consent of the parties that is required to make power sharing and that allows the DUP to withhold consent apparently contrary to the majority view of the community they claim to represent.
As someone who has been critical of Brexit and the Government Brexit policy, it is very difficult to put away the phrase “I told you so” even when it was very obvious at the point of signing the deal, that this would be the outcome. Boris Johnson and Lord Frost threw the DUP, Unionism and the people of Northern Ireland under the bus to get a Brexit deal on a self imposed timeline. That self imposed timeline was a result of Teresa May starting the clock by triggering article 50 far too early.
That said, that does nothing to fix the problems and ensure a more prosperous future for everyone within the UK.
At this point, there are really only a couple of options.
1. Hard border on the island of Ireland. The results of which do not bear thinking about and that no one wants.
2. EU capitualation on the topic of the protocol and having complete free trade between NI and GB and then having a massive backdoor open into the EU markets. Again not a runner.
3. A fudge, a symbolic scrapping of the protocol, followed by the introduction of less onerous measures, but still with a border in the Irish Sea to allow the integrity of the single market whilst giving Unionism a victory. Obviously this will require deft political leadership, and I hope Boris Johnson and Liz Truss will be able to provide that.
“3. A fudge, a symbolic scrapping of the protocol, followed by the introduction of less onerous measures, but still with a border in the Irish Sea to allow the integrity of the single market whilst giving Unionism a victory. Obviously this will require deft political leadership, and I hope Boris Johnson and Liz Truss will be able to provide that.”
I likey – unfortunately with Macron/Johnson & Sefcovic/Truss the chemical recipe for success must be low.
Fudge and a large dollop of treacle, followed by copious amounts of UK/EU constructive ambiguity could possibly have done the trick at one time.
Instead, as Barnier is alleged to have feared, by weaponising the border as the EU/RoI (Varadkar) did, there was always the possibility that the border issues would cut both ways and so end up as a hard core real border between RoI/NI.
Maybe if the chemistry of the main protagonists changed ( unlikely) or the can could get kicked down the line it would help.
Yep, the EU weaponised the border and the UK suffered from a remainer/rogue parliament in 2017-19.
Keep repeating these opinions of yours, it may turn them into truth one day.
If you are British and born in London you have lost all the benefits of EU membership.
If you are British and born in Northern Ireland then you have an option to retain all the benefits of EU membership without even having to pay a direct subscription.
How do you explain the rationale for this to EU citizens ? Where is the fairness ?
Most EU citizens are blissfully unaware. Those who understand are generally bemused although some in Spain have mentioned pulling away from the Treaty of Utrecht.
The Protocol and the whole TCA were last minute fudges to allow continued tariff free trade in goods from 1 January 2021.
Rip up the Protocol if you wish but to be consistent should you not rip up the TCA at the same time ?
In this way you can address all the issues you would have had to address on 1 January 2021 if matters had not been fudged even if this might now upset some non British people,
Imagine the next N.I. Assembly election, in which Sinn fein makes a clean sweep or shares the laurels with the Alliance Party. Will the Unionists still insist that their right to share power is still intact? The Republicans will claim an unassailable mandate for a referendum on reunification. It is conceivable that a Westminster government may be in place whose determination not to diminish the extent of His Majesty’s Empire by one square inch is as adamantine as Boris Johnson’s present opposition to a Scottish referendum.
By the way, if anyone other than Theresa May had been Home Secretary at that time, would Gary McKinnon be rotting in a federal prison cell now, or would the federal prosecutor have succeeded in his declared ambition to “fry him”?
Good review of the main topic which is May’s takedown of Bunter’s lies about NI and how her perfectly workable solution was rejected by the DUP
However coming from NI I do wish to point out a couple of points
You paste in ` Tweet from Steve Aiken of the UUP to Peter Foster of the FT in which Aiken says;
..”normally supportive of your views, however, majoritarianism was replaced by Belfast Agreement. Politics in NI is based on x-community consensus. There are no, repeat no, Unionist MLA’s who support protocol.”
I find this curious
1) Aiken talks of x-community consensus and by community he means Unionist vs Nationalist (or Protestant vs Catholic)
2) Aiken assumes that the Unionists are the Protestant community & I’m afraid thats not true at all. Its just as untrue as saying Sinn Fein ‘is’ the Nationalist community. In both cases the “community” is way bigger than the Unionist parties and Sinn Fein. The Alliance is a Protestant party and it supports the NI Protocol and in the recent election it won 17 seats to the DUP 25. Is Aiken saying the Alliance does not speak for a significant part of the Protestant/Unionist community?
3) In the years since 1998 NI has become far far more secular and far far less sectarian – particularly in the 18-45 yr demographic. I’m from a multi-generational Protestant family of impeccable Unionist/Orange Order credentials and have seen the sea change in the young adult generation regard themselves as Northern-Irish (or even Irish) and not British & absolutely do not support militant Unionism. Similar social changes have occurred in the Nationalist/Catholic community except that their own militant party SF have moved on far more along the path to transforming to a modern more moderate & electable party – to an extent this has happened to SF because of huge social changes in the Republic of Ireland since 1998 as well.
3) Aiken holds up the Belfast Agreement (GFA) as an example of x-community consensus. It passed by a huge majority in a binding referendum in in NI in 1998 so clearly did have x-community support of the majority.
However among Unionist parties only the UUP whose leader David Trimble negotiated the GFA with John Hume supported it and it was opposed by other Unionists, in fact current DUP leader Jeffery Donaldson tore up a copy of the GFA in front of David Trimble.
Just recently former DUP leader Edwin Poots sent a ferocious Tweet reiterating that the DUP never accepted the GFA and saying it never will. The very reason the DUP is the largest Unionist party today is that many Unionist leaders in 1998 rejected the GFA and defected from the UUP leaving it a small rump.
Had the hardline Unionist politicians claiming to speak for the Protestant community been given their wish in 1998 there would have been no GFA. Aiken’s claim that there was x-community support for the GFA is true in the sense the referendum showed there was majority support among the Protestant rank and file people but at Unionist party politician level thats not the case.
4) It’s exactly the same situation now, the recent NI Assembly election shows that at best the Unionists only speak for half the Protestant community and even then I do wonder if the UUP always the more sane & realistic of the Unionists actually do think that there is an alternative to the NIP given the choice of type of hardest of hard Brexit’s Johnson & the ERG went for.
5) Lastly, its worth asking why the hardline Unionists rejected the GFA because it is the real reason they reject the NIP – in 1998 they made a lot of bluster about allowing the IRA off the hook over crimes but the real reason was that the GFA left open a pathway to eventual reunification should a majority of the people of NI choose in future and right from the 1920 Gov of Ireland Act which set down the status of NI and SI post partition hardline Protestants have wanted NI to be permanently a ‘homeland for Protestants’. They supported Brexit primarily as a way to force a hard border across the island and so break the GFA. The NIP does not do this and they are determined to smash it even though they know the majority of people in NI think otherwise.
Why is it impossible to have a NI/Republic border that is no more intrusive or contentious than that between the USA and Canada? The answer is in one sense obvious, but why should we take it as read that the citizens of Ireland are so uncivilised that they can’t cope with a border and customs checks? That unquestioned assumption has bedevilled all discussion of this issue for years, and it looks as if it will continue to do so.
Re EFTA membership, the UK could join now, and choose whether to (re)join the EEA, or to remain outside it, as Switzerland, another EFTA member, is. However, if it were a member of the EEA, which would bring benefits, it would be committed to funding EU activities without having any say in how that money was spent: taxation without representation.
Next time ask those questions (and prepare to accept the answers to them) BEFORE you try your hand on a referendum.
Great riposte!
With regard to your question about the acceptability of a border on the island of Ireland, my admittedly limited understanding is that among other things the Belfast Agreement/GFA enshrines the birth right of those in NI to choose freely their nationality. And not to be disadvantaged in any way as a result of that choice. Consequently, it seems to me that introducing a “hard” border on the island of Ireland would be seen, rightly or wrongly, as diminishing that right.
“Why is it impossible to have a NI/Republic border that is no more intrusive or contentious than that between the USA and Canada?”
Because they are two independent countries with no overlap. NI is an overlap between the UK and the RoI.
Prior to the GFA, NI was disputed territory. The Irish constitution defined the Irish state as the entire 32 county island. The GFA was a settlement of that claim, applying principles to NI governance that would not normally be applied to part of a sovereign state. In return the RoI changed its constitution. If the UK continues to treat NI as just another part of the UK, walking away from what it agreed with the RoI, it would make sense for the RoI to reinstate its territorial claim.
The UK cannot hold that border. It is daring the RoI to impose a customs border, which would be awkward. But nothing like so awkward as a UK territorial border in the same location.
Bear in mind the nature of NI as a maximum land grab by the UK a century ago. The areas that are majority unionist are miles and miles away from the border in the northeast corner of NI. The border areas are all majority nationalist, essentially held against their will, larger in area but lower in population density. These people simply will not tolerate being severed again.
You say that Theresa May got this right. I am not sure about that. My problem is not with the structure of the deal, but its presentation. She sold it to her party on something better turning up, so that the backstop would never happen. But, there never was going to be anything better and she was creating false hopes. Rather than focusing on practicalities, the here and now, she was able to talk about a dream.
I agree with the proposition that she is better as a former PM than as an actual one. But surely being an ex is much easier – look at John Major and Gordon Brown. Ted Heath might be an exception to my proposition, as he was eaten up by bitterness at his overthrow.
The NI situation exposes Johnson’s claim to have got Brexit done as another of his lies – that and several other things too.
“And any significant move in Northern Ireland does not need a mere majority, but actual consent from the nationalist and unionist communities.”
The Northern Ireland Protocol is, however, not a “significant move” but is now the *status quo*, subject of commitments in an international treaty, voted into law by the UK Parliament, and arguably would never have come about without the support of the DUP itself in propping up the May Government. It may be a different status quo from that which existed years ago, but it *is* the current reality.
So “any significant move” in Northern Ireland would now signify the attempt to abandon the protocol and it is *that* change that would require “actual consent from the nationalist and unionist communities.” This argument has been misconceived completely backwards.
Invoking a veto on the grounds of lack of cross-community consensus cannot be simply a mechanism for the DUP to say “No” to anything they don’t like the look of, to cut down anything they now declare as being against their interests.