I am becoming more and more convinced that we are heading for a trade war with Europe in the next few months and our relations with the EU, already cooler than I have ever known, are set to go into deep freeze. I say this after reading Tony Connelly's article for RTE (HERE) which I suggest you might want to read too. Connelly has good lines, I assume via the Irish foreign office, to EU thinking and throughout the whole Brexit process he has proved a reliable source of information. So, I take him very seriously.
The article is a summary of where we are but about half way down under the sub-heading "Why has the UK raised the issue of the ECJ now?" - is the most interesting part because I think you can see the UK is keen to manufacture a row over the role of the European Court of Justice, regardless of what proposals the Commission makes to avoid checks on goods and agri-food products crossing GB-NI.
A lot of commentators came to this conclusion after Frost's speech in Lisbon but you tend to be a bit sceptical about these things. Not any more. This is what Connelly says:
"It [the role of the ECJ] was not an issue in Theresa May’s 2018 deal, nor in the revised protocol negotiated by Boris Johnson in October 2019.
"It was not raised in any of the Joint Committee meetings in 2020, nor was it mentioned in the December 2020 agreement between Šefčovič and Frost’s predecessor Michael Gove setting out flexibilities and grace periods.
"The ECJ was not raised as a problem in any Protocol-related Westminster committee hearings between January and July, even those involving David Frost in July, in the days right before the issue first surfaced in the Command Paper.
"When the Command Paper did appear it described the ECJ’s role as "highly unusual" in that the UK was "subject...to the jurisdiction of [EU] institutions".
"The paper suggested London had only agreed under duress. The ECJ issue had "increased...tensions" in Northern Ireland and had "contributed to a false sense of separation [from] Great Britain."
It was only after EU Vice President Maroš Šefcovic visited Northern Ireland on 9 September and met business leaders and clearly listened to their concerns that the UK government seemed to wake up to the fact that the excuse of excess checks they had been using up to then, might not be enough. Šefcovic obviously gave NI businesses encouragement that they could reduce the burden of checks and make the sea border manageable.
On that score, I noted a tweet from the BBC's Katya Adler suggesting the reason the Commission had been unable to offer easements before is that they could not get access to the UK's database showing what kind of goods were crossing:
That they’ve long been waiting to be given access to UK databases - allowing the EU to better see which goods etc destined for NIreland ONLY and which for onward travel into Ireland and rest of EU single market - and therefore subject to checks/closer scrutiny says EU /2
— Katya Adler (@BBCkatyaadler) October 13, 2021
Anyway, Connelly then says that in a letter to the House of Lords European Affairs Committee on 28 September, the UK government started to go further and claim the problem was not just the ECJ, but the European Commission as well.
"We need to remove the policing role of the EU institutions and the [ECJ] so as to give us a more balanced framework that has the confidence of both communities in Northern Ireland."
In Lisbon, Frost developed the theme. The ECJ was at the apex of a system "which means the EU can make laws which apply in Northern Ireland without any kind of democratic scrutiny or discussion."
So, this is why Ireland and the EU member states think Frost is contriving to invent new red lines based on nothing more than ideology and a perception that it plays well with Tory supporters and leave voters.
Connelly also mentions elections in NI next May. If they result in a majority of members supporting the protocol, the government's fox will have been shot as it were.
However, I think we may be at a tipping point, although I don't want to get anyone's hopes up. The YouGov series of polls asking in hindsight if the UK was right or wrong to vote to leave the EU had a new poll added last week - it is now on 193. Including 13% don't knows, the latest figures are 49% thinking it was a mistake and 38% still convinced it was right.
This is a big gap, 11 points, and at 38% support for RIGHT is as low as it's ever been. In fact it has only been that low on four previous occasions. Once in December 2018 and three times at the end of last year. These were at points where there was a danger of leaving without an agreement, either on withdrawal terms or trade.
On both occasions, the cliff edge was avoided and support for RIGHT recovered somewhat albeit never above about 42-43% maximum. I think the previous recoveries came when people were relieved we escaped the worst predictions, but I ask myself now what escape is around the corner for the labour shortages and all the rest of the crises that Johnson has made for himself and us?
I don't see anything in the short or even in the medium term changing our trajectory and a trade war with the EU is only going to make matters worse. Support for RIGHT can only slip further behind and I see no prospect of it recovering.
The FT recently carried a piece confirming that the EU were preparing for a trade war:
FT UK: Top EU states push to put bloc on standby for trade war with Britain #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/P0u7ruIJBB
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) October 14, 2021
This is a war we can only lose and the NI protocol may be Johnson's bridge too far.
