Boris Johnson seems to be living a double life. In one, he is triumphantly touring the nation, enjoying a double digit poll lead, winning by-elections and riding a wave of popularity. In the other he is facing a wall of personal and political problems, mainly of his own making, and all of them very serious for him, his party and the country. It's hard to predict which difficulty will eventually bring him down but surely one of them will. Where to begin?
The most important is the legal challenge into the NI protocol being heard in Belfast. It got underway yesterday with the applicant's counsel likening the protocol to the Vichy government in France during WW2, a government operating under laws it doesn’t agree with but cannot change or control. There is a long Twitter thread detailing the proceedings that you might want to follow HERE.
The essential argument, as far as I can see, is that the NI protocol breaches clause 6 of the 1801 Act of Union and clause 42 of the 1998 NI Constitution Act which implemented the Good Friday Agreement.
The 1801 Act says this:
Subjects of Great Britain and Ireland to be on same footing from 1 Jan. 1801. No duty or bounty on exportation of produce of one country to the other. All articles the produce of either country shall be imported free from duty. Produce of either country, subject to internal duty, shall on importation into each country be subject to countervailing duty. Same charges on produce of either country exported through the other.
Section 42 of the 1998 Act is about cross community support. The judicial review in Belfast was told that MPs, when passing the Withdrawal Agreement Act in January 2020, could have expressly repealed clause 6 of the 1801 Act of Union, but didn’t. The government argue that repeal was 'implied' by the later WA Act.
If you recall, the WA was the one that Iain Duncan Smith said MPs had spent enough time on and Johnson, in his haste to get Brexit “done.” then rushed it through parliament assisted by Brexiteers. Nobody gave any thought to the NI protocol. Now, it’s probable the judicial review will end up at the UK Supreme Court with the judges doing what MPs should have done in 2019 and scrutinise the legislation to make sure it worked properly.
I don’t know what the courts will find, but either way, Brexit in one respect is now out of the hands of politicians and into those of judges. Either they will find the protocol is legally sound in which case NI is going to have to learn to live with the consequences, or the courts will find it isn’t legal which would leave us with an even bigger problem. What do we put in its place?
The WA reaffirmed a commitment by both sides to having no hard land border and the Americans will not allow the Good Friday Agreement to be broken. I don’t believe the magic thinking ‘alternative arrangements’ are any more palatable for the EU now than they were in 2018.
You can see the objections of unionists to a sea border and they are no less justifiable than those of nationalists are to a land border. I don’t suppose the judges are going to make a ruling on Brexit because it is in essence a political decision. But I think an objective person would say why not go back to how things were before Brexit. The solution of Theresa May was rejected by the EU so that isn’t an option.
Apart from all the enquiries already going on into wallpapergate affair, Greensill and goodness knows what else, The Daily Mail run a story this morning that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone has suggested the Prime Minister's New year break to Mustique in 2019 was worth more than twice the £15,000 he declared in the Commons Register. More than that she cannot find out who paid for it.
Also, she has learned he didn't stay in the house owned by Carphone Warehouse co-founder David Ross, as Johnson claimed, but in another house owned by a US family who were paid by the management company which refuses to tell Ms Stone where the money came from.
It is incredible that a sentient human being, let alone a prime minister, simply can't say in a few minutes who paid either for his holiday or his flat refurbishment. Yet, after months of civil service efforts we still don't know. What is he hiding? It's not impossible he will become the first PM ever to be suspended from the HoC.
Next, another Daily Mail story has emerged about how Priti Patel lobbied Michael Gove, Cabinet Office minister, in April last year concerning a £20million contract for surgical masks for a company called Pharmaceuticals Direct Ltd (PDL) after an approach from her own former adviser Samir Jassal
Within weeks the firm was awarded a no-bid, no-competition deal that was eventually worth £102 million to supply masks but Patel made no declaration about the deal or about Jassal's links to PDL. Jassal was a parliamentary candidate once pictured alongside Patel and also a Tory councillor in Kent. He is said to have played a key role in negotiating the lucrative deal, with the masks priced at almost twice the Government's 'benchmark' rate;
We have a prime minister who doesn't seem to know who gives him money - perhaps he has so many brown envelopes it's hard to keep track - surrounded by ministers only too willing to ignore rules on government procurement to enrich their friends and donors. It is starting to make John Major's last days look like a tea party.
Last night Johnson was announcing more relaxations of the Covid-19 restrictions with signs that the Indian variant has been allowed to enter the country virtually unchecked after he refused to block flights from the sub continent for weeks because he wanted to fly to India to get a trade deal. There are now hot spots everywhere with the R rate (the rate of increase in transmission) now thought to be above 1.0 in some areas and growing worries that another lock down, perhaps regional ones, will be needed again soon.
This comes as we approach May 26 when Dominic Cummings is scheduled to give evidence to a parliamentary committee about Johnson's handling of the affair last year. Should be very interesting and very uncomfortable for the prime minister.
Finally, I see Lord Frost, in a tweet, implies that trade with the EU is back to normal (it isn’t). If it was, it would mean that trade barriers don’t inhibit trade which would come as a surprise to many wrestling with all the newly imposed red tape. It would also cast doubt on the claims that it’s essential we leave the EU to sign our own trade deals. Tariffs are very low in general (note) so most friction is in NTBs. But if they don’t cause a loss of trade, why bother?
Very encouraged by the continued growth in the value of goods trade between us and the EU shown by today's @ONS trade statistics for March. Striking that goods exports to the EU now exceed average levels from 2020.https://t.co/SAjuz8BNbw
— David Frost (@DavidGHFrost) May 12, 2021
Brexiteers will point to other ‘benefits’ but can’t escape the fact that trade was one of the central arguments for Brexit. It’s just another contradiction.
Frost by the way is comparing the Q1 2021 numbers with the average for 2020 - a year of pandemic lock down. If he looked back to 2018 he will find UK-EU trade is well down. And don't forget, our own bureaucracy doesn't start until January next year.
