The Irish border issue again

On Saturday I posted a piece about the Irish border with the conclusion that the only solution we know works is the one rejected by the Tory party. I note that a Twitter thread later the same day by Andrew Levi, a political commentator comes to the same conclusion. He says, "There’s no future for the UK of GB & NI outside arrangements essentially identical to the EU’s CU & SM."   I think this sums it up well. But, I am not sure he follows through on the logic. 

His first tweet is here:

.@DavidGHFrost says the NIP needs consent of “all of the people” in NI.

This is as close as HM Govt has come to admitting its Brexit deal is incompatible with the GFA/BA.

It’s attempting to put lipstick on a pig. Which won’t work.

What next?

A 🧵/1.https://t.co/iEGMTqwS9A

— Andrew Levi (@AndrewPRLevi) March 27, 2021

If as he suggests, without membership of the SM and the CU there is no future for the UK and assuming the government sees preservation of the UK as a desirable thing (not a given), you could also say that there is no future inside the SM and the CU but outside the EU. We cannot be a rule taker.  This is out of the question. 

We are then back to the old question of what Brexit really means.

The fact is the Good Friday Agreement is an unbreakable treaty. Not only is it legally binding, lodged with the UN and so on, it is backed by both the US and the EU.  It is a statement of the wishes of both sides of the sectarian divide but it effectively makes a concession to the nationalist side not to have a land border.

In 1997 nobody thought it necessary to preclude a sea border between GB and NI, but in hindsight there was nothing to prevent it and every reason for the unionists to demand it, as I am sure they would have done.

Had such a clause been included it may have made Brexit impossible or at the very least delayed it pending some magic technology to allow seamless trade across an invisible border

Levi comments on Lord Trimble's recent intervention and the legal action planned to challenge the NI protocol as a breach of the GFA:

"David Trimble thinks an Irish Sea border without prior majority NI consent is a breach of the agreement. (I agree). Bizarrely, he doesn’t seem to think a customs & regulatory border across the island is a breach."

I am not sure if the full import of the legal challenge has been thought through. If indeed a court rules the NI protocol is a breach of the GFA and therefore the sea border idea is not legal or acceptable without majority consent (unlikely) the options are severely limited.

There can be no land border and Ireland cannot be forced out of the EU. This leaves either a magical technological solution yet to be invented or no Brexit. I don't see anything else.

Incidentally, Fergal O'Shea, an Irishman from Cork now living in Belfast, made an interesting point in the comments to Lev's thread. He says unionists are defending a system whereby England, by sheer electoral weight makes all the major decisions, something the Republic rejected 100 years ago.

This is fine (Brexit) until England decides on something they don't like (the Brexit Johnson has given them) then he says, "loyalty" morphs into "Ulster Says NO." Brexit exemplifies this doublethink: unionism wants Brexit, so it dismisses the NI vote with platitudes about "the whole UK."

"The whole UK" agrees a form of Brexit it hates, and it demands an NI veto.  Cakeism."

How true this is.

Financial services

The Bank of England and the government seem to be getting nervous about the damage being done to the financial sector. A piece in the FT this morning says:

"The Bank of England is demanding that lenders seek its approval before relocating UK jobs or operations to the EU, after becoming concerned that European regulators are asking for more to move than is necessary for financial stability after Brexit.

"The BoE has taken this stance — described by one senior banker as “increasingly curmudgeonly” — after hearing of several requests from the European Central Bank that it considers excessive and beyond what is required from a prudential supervisory perspective, according to people familiar with the move. Governor Andrew Bailey has taken a personal interest in the issue, they added."

"UK politicians and regulators have long been concerned that their European counterparts are attempting to poach as much financial services business as possible under the guise of repatriating robust oversight of all euro-related financial activities. They fear the loss of associated jobs, tax revenue and prestige.

"However, the BoE’s new stance has been criticised as regulatory “over-reach” by international bankers, who feel that they are caught between the politicised demands of the UK central bank and the ECB’s Single Supervisory Mechanism."

This looks like an uphill task to me.  The BoE seem to want the EU to accept that the bloc's financial services (or a large part of them) be supplied by the UK.  But the ECB control the eurozone and it is the sheer economic might of the market which is pulling activity in.  If the ECB rule that some activities must be done inside the bloc what can the BoE do?

We wanted out, we got out but as far as financial services are concerned (and fishing and food) we still want to behave as if we're in.  More Cakeism.

As Brexit grinds on one cannot escape the idea that these problems will never go away and will continue to grow until the politicians who created them - mainly Johnson - are overwhelmed.

On this topic I see IDS has a piece in The Telegraph which looks like a bit of whistling in the dark - as you would be if your head was buried in the sand like him. He article (£) is: The EU is lashing out because it's terrified that Britain will make a success of Brexit - sub heading: While the UK grows in self-confidence, the EU is being shown up as the incompetent organisation it is.

Mnnnn...