Theresa May was updating MPs yesterday on progress (or lack of it) in the negotiations. She had a surprisingly easy time given what was expected after the weekend's lurid headlines. We have now reached 95% agreement apparently but Ireland is still the sticking point. The backstop is proving every bit as difficult as we thought. Unwittingly, the DUP may even have laid the foundations for the UK to remain in the EU or at the very least in the EEA. A report (HERE) tries to explain the problem but even this doesn't quite get the measure of it.
When Theresa May committed to having no border in Ireland last December, she and the ultra Brexiteers had no idea what it really meant, as Johnson and Gove have now admitted. At it's heart is a simple concept. You cannot have a completely open border without regulatory alignment and a common customs area. At least you can't with technology as it stands today. There is no example of an open border anywhere that has different regulations and tariffs either side. Nor can there be, as should be obvious.
The backstop is intended to ensure nothing "leaks" into the EU from Northern Ireland that isn't in compliance with EU regulations. The EU's plan is to ensure nothing that is non-compliant gets into NI in the first place but it means a border between GB and NI, which the DUP insisted last year cannot be allowed to happen.
So, May's next plan is to extend the customs territory on a temporary basis to the whole of the UK and hope that the future trade deal resolves everything. But Brexiteers do not appear to have noticed the problem. If "regulatory alignment" is the precondition to an open border in Ireland (which it is) the whole of the UK must remain in lock step with EU regulations in perpetuity. But EU law is constantly being updated and added to, so we will have to follow it and not change any existing laws either.
If the UK tries to diverge in the future or fails to update its laws to take account of new EU rules, we will no longer have "regulatory alignment" and a border will be required. This is why the EU are demanding a permanent all-weather backstop is in place to fall back on. To believe that either technology is an answer or that the EU will grant us some sort of mutual recognition of standards is delusional.
When this reality dawns the Brexiteers will be even angrier than they are now.
The only possible solutions are (a) to repudiate last year's Joint Report in which case no transition and no trade deal (b) stay in the EEA or (b) stay in the EU. Interesting eh?
Ian Duncan-Smith and Owen Paterson went to Brussels yesterday and met Michel Barnier (HERE) to try and break the impasse.
They apparently tried to persuade him that the Irish border problem could be solved by technology. Afterwards, Adam Fleming at the BBC said by making the argument they did, inadvertently they were also making it easier for the EU to say if the technology exists to make trade frictionless as they claim, it could also be used between GB and NI and this is what the EU prefer. It looks a bit like an own goal.
Ian Duncan-Smith and Owen Paterson went to Brussels yesterday and met Michel Barnier (HERE) to try and break the impasse.
They apparently tried to persuade him that the Irish border problem could be solved by technology. Afterwards, Adam Fleming at the BBC said by making the argument they did, inadvertently they were also making it easier for the EU to say if the technology exists to make trade frictionless as they claim, it could also be used between GB and NI and this is what the EU prefer. It looks a bit like an own goal.
