Monday 20 February 2023

Brace, the NIP row is coming to a head

Brexit has certainly had its share of the bizarre. From the start, it’s been full of contradictions, ignorance, and lies. The present state of play in Northern Ireland has all the elements that we have been accustomed to. The media is waiting this morning for some sort of announcement from Downing Street as Sunak attempts to make something of the mess that Johnson left. Johnson in the meantime is said to be warning him not to make any concessions and not to drop the NI Protocol Bill, keeping it instead as a weapon to use if the EU doesn’t show more flexibility.

You’d think the man responsible would keep quiet but not him. George Osborne thinks he’s still harbouring thoughts of occupying No 10.  Some hopes. The inquiry into the parties has not yet reported and will probably prove terminal.

Tory MPs are queueing up to repudiate the Withdrawal Agreement that they all supported in 2019.

John Redwood is asking why NI needs to follow EU laws at all.

You feel like gently reminding him that it's because he and a majority of Tory MPs voted for that to happen in the WA. 

Iain Duncan Smith writes in The Telegraph (No£): To preserve peace in Northern Ireland, the Protocol must be replaced. He says, “So long as EU law and regulations apply to Northern Ireland, leaving the province outside the UK’s own single market and the remit of exclusively UK law, the DUP cannot go back into the Assembly.” 

Bizarrely, talking about the troubles, says, "there was hardly any part of these islands that wasn’t affected by terrorist devastation and death. In Northern Ireland the sacrifices made to get this through were enormous, yet peace was the vital prize. Given so much sacrifice, I cannot understand why we would risk its demise now."

He supported Brexit and also voted for the WA yet seems to see no link between his own actions and the present crisis.

James Duddridge, Tory MP for Rochford and Southend East and a former Brexit minister and close ally of Johnson, said talk of the ECJ retaining a role would also be a “wedge” to fulfilling Brexit.

“It won’t just be the so-called ‘Spartans’,” he told Sky News, referring to the nickname given to the few dozen diehard purists. “There will be a large number of Brexiters, possibly the majority of the parliamentary party, and potentially running into treble figures.”

The Guardian claims up to 100 Tory MPs are expected to defy Sunak. No wonder there has been no announcement so far.

In a clip posted on Twitter recently, we see Sir Bill Cash bellyaching that he doesn’t “think there's any other democratic country in the world which has got an arrangement whereby part of its territorial and constitutional jurisdiction is decided by another country.” He is talking of course, about Northern Ireland.

The old fool doesn’t seem to realise the EU isn’t a ‘country’ anyway. But Cash is more guilty than anyone. He 'led' the ERG's Legal Advisory Committee on the Trade and Cooperation Agreement along with Martin Howe Q.C., Barnabas Reynolds, David Jones MP, Christopher Howarth, and Emily Law. 

This bunch of idiots - the so-called 'Star Chamber' produced an 'opinion' on the TCA dated 29 December 2020, which contains this section on the NIP:

Northern Ireland. Much of this Agreement does not relate to Northern Ireland as a result of the Northern Ireland Protocol to the 2019 Withdrawal Agreement. The Protocol and other parts of the Withdrawal Agreement currently remain in place whether or not this Agreement is ratified. The Protocol provides for continuing direct jurisdiction of the European Commission within Northern Ireland and binding ECJ jurisdiction. It leads to checks being required between Great Britain and NI. The position has been somewhat ameliorated by recent agreements in the Joint Committee.

That's it. There's nothing else on Northern Ireland. Cash, again explicitly recognises that "continuing direct jurisdiction of the European Commission within Northern Ireland and binding ECJ jurisdiction." 

In a book by the historian Robert Blake, Cash is described as being "indefatigable... a constitutional lawyer of great expertise".  In fact, he qualified as a solicitor in 1967 and that appears to be the extent of his legal expertise. 

The sorry truth is that he (and all the other ultras who voted for Johnson’s flawed deal) supported it because it was the only way they could see of getting Brexit done. Simon Clarke MP admitted as much on the Today programme this very morning. It was like borrowing money at an extortionate interest rate from a loan shark because it was the only way to get the next fix, not knowing or caring if there was any way of paying it back.

Kate Hoey is another MP, and former Labour Europe minister (now Baroness Hoey), who voted for Brexit and the WA. She is quoted in The Express saying if the new deal is within the existing protocol, the DUP won’t be able to agree to it and she “warned that US President Joe Biden better abandon his plans to visit for the [25th] anniversary.”

They (and about 350 others) all voted for the WA which explicitly contains provisions for a lot of EU law to apply in Northern Ireland.

Last Friday, in a briefing to the EU 27 member state ambassadors in Brussels, European Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic said that the deal "would be within the existing protocol", according to Irish broadcaster RTE. He was also crystal clear that the ECJ's role in determining EU law will not change.

This means that the DUP and their supporters are unlikely to accept the agreement and the Stormont Assembly will not be able to reconvene to restart the devolved Government in Northern Ireland.

They have all lost the plot. It’s hard to know who is worse, Johnson who started it all by expressly calling for an Irish border, or men like Redwood and IDS voted for something to which they now object. Didn’t they bother to read it?

To understand what a terrible dilemma Johnson has made for his successor, have a look at this video:

If you don’t know the man who is speaking, he is James Hugh Allister KC, a barrister in Northern Ireland and founder of the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV). He has led the party since its formation in 2007 and is an assembly member for North Antrim, the party's only representative in the Assembly.

He is talking about never allowing 'terrorists' into the Stormont executive. DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson cannot appear conciliatory at all for fear of the TUV outflanking him to the right.  If the talks have the slightest risk of meeting all seven of the DUP’s tests, Donaldson will have to find an eighth. 

A Unionist who tweets a lot has another angle. He’s worried that talk of NI not being represented in Brussels will be met with people suggesting Dublin takes over that role, what he calls "proxy representation.":

He makes a good point and you have to sympathise with him and the Unionists.

You also have to feel some sympathy for Sunak. Johnson suggested the Irish border, got the EU to accept it, denied it was a border, agreed on it, forced it through parliament, and won an election on the strength of it. The men who helped him do it - Redwood, IDS, Cash, et al, and the DUP are now threatening Sunak unless he gets rid of it!

If Sunak himself hadn’t supported it all one might feel even more sympathy.  The EU must be watching all of this with growing alarm, as we all should.

I note that in recent times commentators are recalling the words of the Unionist politician Sir Edward Carson, sometimes referred to as the architect of division in Northern Ireland, speaking in the House of Lords on 14 December 1921, "What a fool I was. I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative Party into power.”

No doubt Sir Jeffrey Donaldson will have those words tattooed o his body at some point.

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