Brexit Johnson was in Belfast yesterday to celebrate the reforming of the Stormont power sharing executive after three years without one. The DUP seem to have met their match in the PM who apparently promised mountains of cash as an inducement beforehand only to suddenly become both reticent during the press session and parsimonious when he sat down to discuss specifics afterwards. Sinn Fein Finance Minister Conor Murphy said his first offer "falls way short" of what was promised. I am amazed how the most cynical are still taken in by a known liar and charlatan.
He also managed to claim once again that there would be "no circumstances" in which goods coming between Northern Ireland and Great Britain would be subject to checks after Brexit.
One almost comes to admire him, the way he can continue to offer up what virtually every other sentient person who has read the WA knows is a flat out lie.
Peter Foster of The Telegraph (although tweeting his own views) asks if it's pure cynicism:
Once AGAIN @BorisJohnson says that his #Brexit deal will mean NO checks for goods travelling from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, if he does a 'zero tariff' deal with he EU - must know that's wrong. Is this just pure cynicism? 1/Thread— Peter Foster (@pmdfoster) January 13, 2020
Brexit Johnson apparently said the "only circumstances" where you could imagine checks is if we failed to get a zero tariff, zero quota deal with the EU. But this is just wrong, as Foster points out in his thread, using slides from the EU and The Treasury to prove it. Checks of one sort or another will be required under all circumstances.
It might be cynicism, although that's just a fig leaf to say it's a lie, but I honestly think he simply doesn't understand it.
And paradoxically, the reopening of the executive at Stormont will allow all of this to be debated in public. When the truth emerges I am not sure business in NI will be happy with all the extra hoops they will have to go through after Brexit. Foster ends his thread:
"But more profoundly, a propagandist approach to government is profoundly corrosive. I've worked in a few countries where that's the case and it rots societies from within.
"There WILL be checks. They SHOULD be manageable - why not just say that? Coz its what the deal says!"
Of course the checks will be manageable in themselves, the real question is will they make Irish unification more or less likely. If GB-NI trade is diminished and intra-Irish trade increased I think a border poll will happen rather sooner and the result may not be as unionists want.
Meanwhile, the Institute for Government doesn't so much pour cold water onto the idea of the transition period ending in December, as wash it away with a tsunami of a report that claimed the UK could find itself before the ECJ if we fail to comply with the Withdrawal Agreement. You can download the report: Getting Brexit Done (is that irony?) as a pdf file HERE. It says:
The government will almost certainly be unable to implement the Northern Ireland Protocol by December 2020. This could result in the UK being taken to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and cause practical and political disruption in Northern Ireland. The Protocol involves complex customs arrangements and regulatory and customs checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain – but key details are yet to be decided by the Joint Committee established in the Withdrawal Agreement and not yet up and running. The deal has the support of no Northern Irish political parties and it looks almost impossible to complete the practical changes, for government and business, by the end of the year. Failure to comply with the Withdrawal Agreement could see the European Commission begin infringement proceedings and the UK ending up at the ECJ.
It points out that:
"With regards to the proposed customs arrangement, Sir Jonathan Thompson, former chief executive of HMRC, said that a similar customs system involving rebates depending on the final destination of the goods would take up to five years to develop and implement."
So, we will see.
Someone on Twitter posted a short extract of an interview with Liam Fox on Sky last Sunday where he says categorically that we can't have frictionless trade outside the single market. There will be "some friction" and the negotiations will be about "access to the single market" when we are setting our own regulations:
Fox is still in cake and eat it mode. Which major nation would deliberately introduce friction into its largest export market and set itself on a course to add more and more friction as time goes on? It makes no sense to me at all. Listening to this stuff from men (and women) like Fox drives me absolutely mad. Why do they think every other nation strives to sign trade deals to reduce friction?Liam Fox - The UK "will be outside the single market therefore you can't have what is called frictionless trade”— Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 (@Haggis_UK) January 13, 2020
In other words the UK can say goodbye to any manufacturer that requires frictionless trade.#Ridge pic.twitter.com/yWqJTAANpW
And why, despite repeated warnings from the EU that there will be no trade deal at all without a level playing field, do they think we can get it all done in eleven months time?
