The DUP have delivered an uncompromising message that the Northern Ireland Protocol “must be replaced” during a meeting with Lord Frost yesterday afternoon. I'm sure it was quite a lively meeting. They want the whole NI protocol scrapped, not tinkered with. This is the protocol he negotiated but now says the EU are “interpreting it” in a way the British government (i.e. him) didn’t anticipate.
This is quite a difficult position to sustain since the government’s own impact assessment, published with days of the WA being agreed, makes it perfectly clear that all of the checks that would apply (whatever was subsequently agreed in the trade negotiations) to the Dover/Calais crossing would apply to GB-NI goods.
Even if Frost didn’t know the full extent of the checks in late 2019, he slowly negotiated the terms of trade in 2020, and hence the checks, that would apply to GB-NI traffic. He should have seen what was coming.
I noted a piece by Fintan O’Toole in the Irish Times where he talks of stupidity pleading ignorance and I think that’s right:
Fintan O'Toole's analysis: "It is hard, admittedly, to figure out how much of the current discourse about the protocol among the Brexiteers is rooted in genuine ignorance and how much is a cynical pretence not to know what it meant." https://t.co/ryUcPq1cIx
— Naomi O'Leary (@NaomiOhReally) May 25, 2021
Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP's parliamentary leader, afterwards gave a long statement which is published on the DUP website and included this:
"The Protocol has no support from any shade or quarter of unionism. Its imposition without the consent of both traditions in Northern Ireland and overriding of cross-community voting safeguards has seriously undermined support for devolution. We made it clear that the Government must act carefully but decisively to restore the delicate balance of community relations in the coming days."
“The Government has a duty to step up to the mark and urgently reinstate our historic East-West trading relationships. It must bring forward meaningful and sustainable proposals to replace the Protocol, alleviate disruption facing businesses and in so doing restore in full the rights and benefits enjoyed by Northern Ireland citizens within the United Kingdom.’’
Meaningful, sustainable proposals? I wonder what they think they might be?
Frost and the Alternative Arrangements Commission, spent weeks in 2019 trying to find a solution and eventually came up with the NI protocol in October 2019. And it was hardly "imposed," Johnson greeted it as a fantastic deal, commended it to the British people, hailed it as an ‘oven-ready’ deal and got his MPs to vote it through the House of Commons, with very little scrutiny.
Ian Duncan Smith even said MPs had already “thrashed it to death”
If the DUP think there is some other magic solution that Frost is going to produce from his back pocket, they may be in for a shock. There are only three possible outcomes:
A. The protocol or a very close approximation of it has to be accepted by the government and the DUP even in the face of threats of violence..
B. The British government unilaterally invokes Article 16, provoking a massive EU backlash, legal, political, diplomatic and commercial. We will also face the ire of the USA.
C. The government agrees to alignment with EU SPS rules - effectively making a mockery of Brexit.
None are very attractive. I think under pressure from the USA and the EU only option A is really possible in the short term, but if violence breaks out because of it, I can see option B being invoked.
In the long run, option C will eventually have to be considered and probably applied. When that happens, Brexit itself will come under serious pressure. What is the point of being run by EU food regulations that you have no influence over?
It’s the old cake and eat it syndrome. What it shows is the folly of having negotiations conducted by advocates of the cause, rather than dispassionate civil servants who can weigh pro’s and con’s without their judgement being clouded with blind faith. Frost is now facing the same fate that he and his Brexiteer colleagues dished out to Ollie Robbins.
Cummings
Cummings is on parliament TV this morning which I shall watch with interest. There are a lot of rumours abounding that the reason Johnson missed the first five COBRA meetings in 2020, as COVID was beginning to run out of control, was because he was trying to finish a book on Shakespeare. He had taken a £90,000 advance from Hodder & Stoughton in 2015 to write the book for publication in 2016.
It is still unpublished, H&S say they don’t have a date now for publication (six years on!) and won’t say if he paid back the advance.
I don’t know if that will be enough to bring down Johnson, I suspect not. Those people who voted for him have priced in his faults and seem to like the fact he is an amoral, manically disorganised person. I hope Cummings has a surprise for us.
Someone on Twitter said:
"The sad thing is even if he told us that Johnson himself deliberately brought Covid here in a vial from China to kill off the elderly and save money so that he could give himself a £billion pay rise people still wouldn’t give a shit!"
I am afraid this is true.
Orban
Johnson is scheduled to meet Hungarian leader Victor Orban in London on Friday. He (Orban) is at loggerheads with Brussels about all kinds of stuff, including the allocation of EU money to his own family members and the separation of power in Hungary. He and Johnson are not strange bedfellows:
A No 10 welcome on Friday for Viktor Orban, who once spoke about "Muslim invaders", twice vetoed EU criticism of China's Hong Kong crackdown and last year urged the EU to lift sanctions on Belarus. Downing St insists good relations with Budapest "vital"https://t.co/I9zhOmA6cH
— George Parker (@GeorgeWParker) May 25, 2021
They share an interest, a personal and political one in undermining the EU and therefore it’s not surprising the prime minister thinks a meeting will be helpful. Orban will veto anything to assist Johnson. It is a dangerous, rather conspiratorial move. which will irritate the EU26, Orban may not be in power much longer and our relations with the EU27 will be that much worse for working hand in glove with a fully paid up member of the EU's awkward squad.
It will not go down well in Washington either. The G7 are supposed to be meeting in a few weeks time to promote democratic liberalism, not something Orban is noted for.
