The BBC reporter who broke the story said, "To Unionists, such words would be seen as the ultimate betrayal."
I fear this is true, for the hard-line ones anyway who are already desperately unhappy with the Windsor Framework and this won’t help to calm their fears that Irish unification hasn’t been the UK government's plan all along.
I also read with interest an article in the Belfast Newsletter from a man who owns a transport management consultancy firm. He is said to be highly experienced in logistics and supply chains.
Paul Jackson says what is becoming obvious to anyone reading the details of the WF:
"The ‘Windsor Framework’ simply does not remove the Irish Sea trade border, it reinforces it. Now all EU customs formalities and health certification will have to be completed before entering NI, whereas some of it was done after entry under the protocol (supplementary declaration). This will all help to cause an irreversible fracture to trade between GB and NI as the supply chain is forced to realign.
"Goods which are not destined to go directly to an end consumer in Northern Ireland, such as wholesale supplies of timber or roof tiles for a building merchant, will be ‘red laned’ at Northern Irish ports and treated as if they are destined for the European Union, with full EU duties and tariffs having to be fulfilled before they enter the province. These goods may end up staying in NI, go back to GB, or indeed go on to another country, but because of the positioning of the sea border are treated as goods entering NI from a third (foreign) country."
Jackson says the UK government has kept the technical detail hidden from hauliers but the EU side has provided more detail in their information packs, which gives traders "a better view of the harm caused by the deal."
The Green lane, he says, "imposes a state-controlled requirement that traders must apply for trusted trader status on a strangely titled ‘UK internal market scheme’, required to upload customs declarations to a trader support service, where the businesses’ behaviours are tracked and monitored, and to make health declarations for certain goods."
"The trader must [also] ship to Northern Ireland with an authorised haulier and the movement across the Irish Sea is subject to 100% documentary inspection before even leaving the GB port and identity checks at the NI border control posts. The entire movement is subject to GPS tracking.
"The framework will create supply chain friction that will reduce choice and increase cost to the NI consumer. It will also reduce capacity for the movement of NI goods back to GB because there will be fewer trucks coming over here. It certainly will not restore GB to NI trading conditions back to pre Brexit trade levels.
"Simply moving the chairs around and calling it the Windsor Framework isn't enough to disguise a major trade border in the Irish sea.
"Diversion of trade via the EU is not a likelihood, it is a certainty."
I assume Mr. Jackson is a unionist first and foremost but I have to say his description of the WF matches my understanding of it.
Note also that the DUP’s former leader, Arlene Foster, has an article in The Telegraph (Rishi Sunak can still bring the DUP round to his Protocol plans)which rows back from the hardline of some of her colleagues and suggests the door is not yet closed.
The key and quite intriguing passage (my added emphasis) is this one…
"One example of the need for clarification is how the Framework relates to the Act of Union. The first of seven DUP tests for Mr. Sunak’s deal is that it should fulfill Article 6 of the Act, which states that all parts of the United Kingdom shall have the same allowances, encouragements and draw-backs, and be under the same prohibitions, restrictions and regulations of trade, and liable to the same customs, duties, imports and exports.
"It is not yet clear to me that No 10 is guaranteeing these obligations. The Framework’s legal position claims to “respect” the Act of Union by protecting the economic rights of people in Northern Ireland. Mr. Sunak’s view seems to be that, by dealing with practical issues, he is working towards a de facto harmonisation of trade between GB and NI, and therefore fulfilling Article 6 in a roundabout way. If this is indeed his intention, it might help if he sets it out clearly and outlines safeguards in law."
It presents Sunak with something of a dilemma. If he guarantees what Foster is asking for, he is essentially moving towards the kind of de facto regulatory alignment with the EU that Theresa May was searching for in 2017-18. It is the tail (NI) anchored by EU law and now wagging the GB dog.
Don't forget that many, but by no means all, Tory MPs supported May at the time and although Johnson got rid of most of the vociferous ones, there are still a lot who (a) don't realise what's happening or (b) just want an end to Brexit. It's hard to know which applies to David Davis and Andrea Leadsom, probably both.
Let me say, I can't see Sunak giving such an undertaking because if he did, the UK would be in the ridiculous position of having border and customs checks through red and green lanes but still aligning with great swathes of EU law. The WF template won't fit the UK and would mean the worst of all possible worlds.
Elsewhere, Brexit supporter John Bolton, briefly Donald Trump’s national security adviser and apparently thinking of running for president himself in 2024, was interviewed by RTE and said it is “inconceivable” that ‘foreign law should apply on any part of an independent country.’ However, when pressed on what his solution to avoiding a land border in Ireland was, he could only say there were “lots of solutions based on pre-screening and common sense” whatever that means.
There’s a border in the English Channel, he said, as if that was a model for the land border in Ireland. It starts about 4m 50secs in.
As the interviewer pointed out, this is after the best minds in the UK and EU spent six years trying to find an answer to the Irish trilemma. It’s clear that Bolton doesn’t have a solution and hasn't spent more than two seconds thinking about it.
