Thursday, 4 February 2021

Gove clings to a lifeline

Michael Gove has written to Maroš Šefčovič at the EU. This follows Gove coming under pressure in Northern Ireland for the working of the protocol and the anger over the draft regulation published last week briefly with a reference to using Article 16.  It is an appalling letter. Gove conflates the two issues and argues that the EU made a mistake and because of it, must therefore offer concessions to alleviate the problems.  It has offered him a lifeline to cling to.

Here is the letter. 

It starts with six paragraphs building up the mistake to record breaking levels. To read it is to think the EU had erected a line of concrete pill boxes across Ireland. The EU admitted the regulation was a mistake but it was a draft, never in force and whose limited effect would have been to require Pfizer in Belgium to inform the EU where shipments out of the bloc were going. That's it. 

For a fuller explanation of what the regulation would have meant Tony Connelly of RTE has a very clear explanation below:

Gove says the EU's move was received badly by everybody in NI and equates it to declaring World War 3. In Uriah Heap fashion he says, "I had expected a strong response, but the reaction was even more negative than I had anticipated."  You imagine a crafty smile on his lips as he dictated that sentence, eh?

No mention of his government voting and passing legislation to override the NI protocol and break international law, that wasn't included for some reason.

So, having carved a monument to the error, he then sets out his demands for concessions and there are six listed but this isn't the end because his letter says:

"The issues above do not represent the complete list of flexibilities that are required on the Protocol. Working with the Northern Ireland Executive, the UK Government has compiled a wider list of issues that will be provided separately, covering more specific but nonetheless very important issues. While there is more time to address these issues, we will need to take forward a comprehensive work programme to resolve all these difficulties."

I assume to save his blushed, the 'wider list' isn't published because it would reveal what a terrible deal the Withdrawal Agreement was. 

The 'demands' are couched in terms of what the EU "must" do and four of the six involve extending the grace period to 1 January 2023 - two years on. I lost count of the number of times Gove was asked about extending the transition period last year and each time he was adamant it would under no circumstances be extended. Now he is essentially using the EU's minor administrative mistake to force huge concessions and an extension. It will not work.

Tony Connelly has another Twitter thread which is well worth a read:

I borrow from it with some emphases of the key points:

"The fact the Commission quickly reversed course, suggests Gove, does not make a difference. That "does change these realities, which have been well noted in NI Ireland +beyond, + which have profoundly undermined the operation of the Protocol + cross-community confidence in it"

"This preamble is a way of saying, last Friday has fundamentally changed everything. Indeed UK sources have said the negative reaction to the Article 16 controversy (depicted above) means we're not just going back to the way things were before last Friday

"Then the letter sets out six demands. These actually relate to the difficulties that everyone knew existed before last Friday. However, Gove says the UK "believes that we should reach agreement this week" on the demands, ie the EU has 48 hours to agree to these."

It is being reported that the EU don't like the 'tone' of the letter and I'm not surprised.

Many commentators are saying the problem is not with the NI protocol, it's with Brexit. Gove and Johnson were repeatedly warned the border would cause huge difficulties which were thought to be impossible to resolve. The NI protocol, which Gove is now trying to row back from was the solution to to the problem.  It is not a problem itself.

As Connelly points out, all the problems existed before last Friday. None are new. Gove has seized on a minor mistake by the Commission in order to deflect blame from himself for negotiating such a terrible deal and for pushing Brexit right from the beginning in 2015.

His letter comes dangerously close to taking us back several years when everybody was trying to come up with circle-squaring solutions to an apparently insoluble problem. The protocol was the ONLY solution ever found and if the UK government thinks it cannot work they need to offer another solution. It's notable that Gove doesn't suggest one.  If the NI protocol needs renegotiating what replaces it?

There maybe some small easements but the fundamental approach involving official EU controls and customs in the Irish sea is here to stay. 

Iain Duncan Smith weighs in with this:
He says the protocol isn't working. He says the problems are not teething issues. Don't forget he voted for both the WA and the TCA. What a twerp he is.

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