Tom Newton Dunn, The Sun's former political editor, but writing now for the Evening Standard, has an utterly fantastic article and I mean in terms of it being a fantasy. He is suggesting, presumably from UK government sources, that the UK and the EU are working together in secret on a grand plan to (a) resolve the NI protocol difficulties and simultaneously (b) thwart plans for Scottish independence. It sounds like total madness to me and something the UK would like to happen but the EU wouldn't contemplate - ever.
Here's the plan in a nutshell in TND's own words:
"As they did during the 2014 independence campaign, senior EU figures have quietly suggested to our ministers that they are prepared to be very helpful on an independent Scotland’s ambitions to rejoin the EU: a rejection that would kill Sturgeon’s project dead."
Really? Were the EU helpful to the British government in 2014? I don't remember any intervention. Even if they were, it would be to prevent a member state breaking up. We are no longer a MS and the EU has no interest in what happens to the UK. I think they might even welcome an application from Scotland.
Newton Duun seems to think that Brussels will somehow help to block Scotland's path to EU membership. It takes some believing doesn't it? But that's not all. The quid pro quo is:
"But the EU has a price: an agreement to heal the festering sore that is the Northern Ireland Protocol once and for all. It wants the UK to align to a thinned-down book of EU standards on food and agriculture, a move that would slash the need for the lion’s share of disruptive and costly border checks on imports into the province from the British mainland in a stroke. Some ministers in Johnson’s Cabinet also want closer alignment on sanitary and phytosanitary measures (as they’re technically known), and have pressed Brexit negotiator Lord Frost on it. And I understand this is now happening."
Lord Frost has already ruled out aligning with EU SPS rules but the sneaky way TND says they plan to do it is this:
"It won’t be called alignment (No10 prefers the terms “equivalence”). It may even involve the option to diverge if the UK feels it must, to avoid the incandescent rage of hardline Brexiteers who insist the UK must never again be beholden to Brussels on anything. But it amounts to the same thing."
It will be a common or 'thinned down' rule book as Newton-Dunn calls it and referred to by the EU as "alignment" but by the UK government as "equivalence." It's a fudge, in other words. I really cannot see the EU engaging in such an underhand scheme with a plain old fudge at the heart of it.
Tony Connelly at RTE, a man with good connections in Brussels has suggested the ongoing and future problems with the protocol might be resolved by the UK aligning temporarily with EU SPS rules and this is certainly possible but it would need to be done legally with enforcement measures and possibly a role for the ECJ? I don't know.
No doubt Frost and his opposite number in the EU, Commission vice president Maroš Šefčovič, are "inching towards agreeing a set of common standards on agri-food" but it will be the EU's standards and they will refer to it as alignment - and it will be alignment written into UK law.
This is what Twitter thinks of the plan:
The effort in this to maintain the facade that London is in control of events is quite somethinghttps://t.co/tOb0Tp6S88
— Alexander Clarkson (@APHClarkson) May 5, 2021
I'll keep an eye on it and we'll see what transpires.
It comes as Michel Barnier's diaries are published in French (English available in September) which has some bearing on TND's piece. The Guardian have translated the juicier parts of his 500 page book (I'll certainly be reading that) and quote from it in yesterday's edition. Barnier had a high regard for UK civil servants including Ollie Robbin but sympathised with them because:
“They have above them a political class who, in part, simply refuse to acknowledge today the direct upshot of the positions they adopted a year ago.” And he is wary throughout of Britain’s strategy, which seems to him to amount mainly to “offering little and taking a lot”, procrastinating, and cherry picking."
And we now know the government is still clinging to the idea of cherry picking through plans to join the Lugano convention as I posted yesterday. But from TND we see they are also desperately trying to solve the NI conundrum by fudge, sleight of hand and deception.
The DUP are opposed to the whole principle of the NI protocol and any border in the Irish sea. This common rule book may reduce the number of checks but it won't eliminate them and if the EU refer to it as alignment (as they will) and we call it equivalence, Brexiteers and unionists will see through it in a heartbeat.
In The Telegraph, the former Brexit Party MEP calls both the WA and the TCA those "two wretched agreements" and says this about the TCA:
"Virtually the entire agreement is bad but perhaps the worst aspect of it is our being locked into in a level playing field on state aid, competition, environment and employment law. Breaking the stranglehold of EU regulations on our economy is therefore practically impossible. And if we seek to do so, guess what, the EU has the ability to impose sanctions ahead of any dispute resolution mechanism taking its course."
In other words he (and plenty like him) think we are locked into the "stranglehold of EU regulations" NOW under the existing TCA settled just four months ago, before Johnson and Frost have even announced a deal on SPS standards, which will be closer alignment in all but name. The government can call it what they like but hard line Brexiteers will see it for what it is.
Frost and Johnson are slowly coming to the same conclusion that Cameron and May and other decent Tory ministers came to years ago, you can never offer Brexiteers enough. However hard the Brexit you propose or deliver, it will not be hard enough.
Johnson is riding the same tiger as Mrs May and will probably suffer the same fate if he goes too far.
I see Tony Connelly has also posted some translations from Barnier's book with this one being the stand out one for me:
Barnier says the talks nearly collapsed during a heated meeting with Dominic Raab, whom he described as having an almost "messianic glow"
This was in August 2018, after he took over from David Davis, who had resigned over the Chequers white paper, as Brexit Secretary. May had proposed the UK wide customs union to avoid a customs border on the Irish Sea. The EU had reservations
Barnier quotes Raab as saying “The question of Ireland must be settled in the context of a larger agreement. That's why we want an overall solution for the UK, across a special customs arrangement and a common rulebook for exports.
Raab added: "If you don’t accept these proposals, then it will be no deal and that will be your responsibility, which will bring up borders. Not our [responsibility].”
Barnier replied: "Theresa May never dared to make this threat; never, because she knew her responsibility and that of the UK. She recognised: that it is Brexit which creates the problem in Ireland, nothing else.
"We are searching for solutions together. And Dominic, if this threat is the new line of your govt, then the negotiations can end immediately. And I will prepare myself in the coming days to inform the EP and MS. We will regard the failure as being the fault of the UK.”
It is an utter disgrace that a once great nation should be represented by a cheap thug like Raab, issuing empty threats like Dino Vercotti from a Monty Python sketch to the chief negotiator of a trading bloc 6 or 7 times our size. Pathetic.
Barnier has been exemplary in the face of the chaos and incompetence of the British government. He always looks the part, is calm and measured and understands the issues. We have had Davis, Raab, May, Johnson and Frost - what a weak line-up. Not a single one of them ever grasped the details.
They wouldn't listen to civil servants, business, opposition parties, our friends across the world or indeed anybody who tried to explain the problems.
I have always believed that no good can come out of bad things. If Brexit turns out to be a success my faith in this country will be shattered.
