Friday 24 February 2023

The NI Protocol - back to the impasse of 2018

I am starting to think Sunak is going to come a real cropper in his attempt to finesse the problems which are endemic to the Northern Ireland Protocol. Truss and Johnson are both warning him not to compromise at all with the EU and keep the threat to pass the Bill which allows ministers to unilaterally override the protocol. Others, some put as high as 50 Tory MPs, are saying the time has come to put the people of Northern Ireland first and the deal that Sunak is close to agreeing to is good enough. All this is in this Telegraph article by Nick Gutteridge.

Gutteridge says the former PM will "oppose any agreement that does not go as far as the Protocol Bill she drew up while foreign secretary" while Robert Buckland, a former justice secretary, said: “There would be a sizeable body of opinion that thinks the time for this sort of brinkmanship is well and truly over, and that it no longer serves any real purpose in terms of either relation with the EU or indeed our reputation in the wider world.”

The Conservative party seems close to splitting in two.

Also in the pages of The Telegraph is an article by the previous DUP leader Arlene Foster who says Rishi Sunak is making "the same mistakes as Theresa May and her merry band of advisers in December 2017."  Foster cautions Sunak about relying on Labour votes to get the new deal through the House of Commons, which she says would be a "brave strategy for any Conservative leader, given the defenestrations of recent years."

This is more or less the final confirmation that we are indeed going back to the impasse of 2018, as confirmed by a tweet from Daniel Kelemen a professor of political science at Rutgers University in New Jersey, the original author of the Irish Trilemma idea:

Foster's fundamental objection is about the UK's "territorial integrity" and her solution is to have "dual market access to both the EU and Great Britain via mutual recognition," something she admits  "was rejected by Brussels."

The Nolan Show on BBC Radio Ulster, hosted by someone called Stephen Nolan, has got wind of some 'new' proposals that the DUP are said to support, but it amounts to 'mutual enforcement' - as suggested by IDS in another Telegraph article in the last few days - which is another idea that the EU has already rejected:

These DUP/ERG ideas are said to have been sent to Sunak. I'm sure after weeks and weeks of detailed and painstaking negotiations with the EU, receiving proposals about a solution rejected four years ago must have gone down well in Downing Street.  

David Henig, tweeted a link to the Nolan tweet saying we are now "back to the mutual enforcement proposals that will never be acceptable to the EU, or indeed NI business or across communities. We'll be back to border drones soon at this rate."

And no sooner said than done. Bernard Jenkin told Sky News that he wants to go back to the Alternative Arrangements Commission, which I believe talked of drones cruising up and down the border, another solution already rejected by the EU as simply unworkable. This is him during an interview in the last few days:

Jenkin says this was abandoned because of a lack of time and now we have “unlimited time” to create an invisible north-south border. I’m sure Brussels would love to start work on that.

He has no idea how it might work and neither does anyone else.

Henig says the situation "speaks to the continued failure to accept negotiating realities" and I agree.

This may seem a radical idea but the obvious solution (to me at any rate) is to get all the parties together and thrash out a solution. And by 'parties' I mean all those who have an interest and have the power to agree on a solution. Neither May nor Sunak allowed the DUP (or Sinn Fein for that matter) to have a voice, except to repeatedly veto what they don't like after the negotiations are concluded. 

It's madness of course. In any normal negotiations and however tough they may be, eventually, this is what would happen. But it will never happen with the Northern Ireland Trilemma (NIT) because of one very simple reason:

It would only reveal the impossibility of finding a compromise beyond returning to the SM and the CU.

The DUP and the ERG, the main blockage to an agreement, badly overestimate our negotiating power. What are we going to do if the EU rejects their old ideas again, as they surely will? Pass the NIP Bill and override an international treaty?  We would be facing a trade war and massive US pressure. 

Brexit means no Tory (or even Labour) PM can be honest about the UK's international strength now we're out of the EU. We just don't have the economic or diplomatic clout anymore. The sooner the ultras have this explained to them in simple terms, the better.

Polling.

Just to end on a polling note and to show what an easy decision it would be for the government to opt for a closer relationship with the EU. A fourth polling company has come up with a recent survey asking if Brexit was the right decision or not. Kantar says 59% think it was wrong, against 32% who still think it was right. So, Kantar joins YouGov, Omnisis, and People Polling which all have very similar results. Kantar’s funder is unknown by the way.

The position is pretty stable and solid.  The nation and NI are being held to ransom by a dwindling band of nutjobs.

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