This week will see the start of the blood-letting in the Tory Party. The Chancellor, Phillip Hammond announced on live TV yesterday that he would resign on Wednesday because he could not serve in a cabinet which was willing to contemplate a no deal Brexit. The Justice Secretary has also announced he will go. Stewart and Clark will do the same or be sacked.
To make matters worse, on Radio 4 this morning Norman Smith, the BBC's political correspondent, claims Johnson intends in the first week of his premiership to ramp-up no deal planning and then sit back and wait for the EU to crack. He won't go on a tour of European capitals, but expects the EU to offer him what he wants.
We will see what happens to the pound later and in the next few days. I can confidently predict the EU will face him down. They may offer an olive branch or two, but as for reopening the WA or making serious concessions, forget it.
None of it bodes well for party unity with six Tory MPs already said to be in talks with the LibDems according to The Sunday Times (HERE) and now we see the makings of a heavyweight cabal of ex-ministers on the back benches ready to organise die hard remainers into a coherent force to prevent the catastrophe of a no deal Brexit. The Guardian carry a similar report (HERE).
Meanwhile, Tory MPs on the extreme right are almost certainly eyeing up Farage's Brexit Party as their future and happier home in the event Johnson let's them down - as he most assuredly will. The Tory party may not survive Brexit. It is the wedge being driven between the factions. The broad church's beams are cracking under the strain.
In his weekly Telegraph column, which has become a sort of government gazette lately, Johnson claims the 'technological pessimists' are blocking frictionless trade at the Irish border:-
"It is time this country recovered some of its can-do spirit. We can come out of the EU on October 31, and yes, we certainly have the technology to do so. What we need now is the will and the drive."
In his weekly Telegraph column, which has become a sort of government gazette lately, Johnson claims the 'technological pessimists' are blocking frictionless trade at the Irish border:-
"It is time this country recovered some of its can-do spirit. We can come out of the EU on October 31, and yes, we certainly have the technology to do so. What we need now is the will and the drive."
On this subject he did not seem aware that the Alternative Arrangements Commission had published their final report on Thursday of last week. Greg Hands grandly announced (HERE) that, "The Alternative Arrangements are now codified to replace the Irish backstop in any Brexit scenario".
Unfortunately, it does nothing of the sort. The mainstream media totally ignored it as far as I can see. Nobody is really interested in the AAC's utterances any more - except Johnson perhaps as a
fig leaf to cover his lack of any detailed plan. The announcement came on Brexit Central which is the usual place to read utterly lunatic ideas about resolving Brexit problems. You can therefore deduce for yourself what chances the report has. It has risen without trace as the saying goes. Why so?
First of all it seems to be more or less the same as the interim report released a few days ago and 'trashed' in the words of the Telegraph's Europe editor, Peter Foster. It was also described as, 'inadequate, unrealistic and lacking credibility'. This clearly didn't shame the AAC who simply carried on as if it had been greeted by cheering Brexiteers and the EU together as the long awaited answer to the Gordian Knot that is the Irish backstop.
The final report talks about replacing the existing Irish protocol in the Withdrawal Agreement (which the AAC call Protocol B) with a new, slightly modified one called Protocol A, plus an alternative, protocol (C) more extensively rewritten and which sets out a process for dealing with disputes. Are you still following this? These new Protocols all look mind-numbingly complicated to me which is probably why everyone has given up on it.
The AAC acknowledge the humiliating responses to the interim report on page 211 (page 211 mind) and say this:
"We acknowledge the issues raised and have addressed them to the best of our ability in the report. How these issues are addressed in practice will be down to the UK government, the EU and others.
"Many of the comments suggested additional work which needs to be done. We agree and recommend that further work is undertaken, not least, to determine the costs of implementing and administering Alternative Arrangements, to develop case studies of how the proposals will work together and to ensure Transit functions well for small traders.
"Our ambition was to start a conversation about how to resolve Brexit, within the various constraints, and avoid the UK leaving without a deal. We hope we have at least accomplished that much. Thank you again to those who responded to the Interim Report".
"Our ambition was to start a conversation about how to resolve Brexit, within the various constraints, and avoid the UK leaving without a deal. We hope we have at least accomplished that much. Thank you again to those who responded to the Interim Report".
It is in effect 268 pages of closely typed waffle to 'start a conversation' around the so-called alternative arrangements and make them appear solid when they represent nothing more than pure wind. Very real problems still exist but are to be the subject of 'further work' to be 'addressed in practice' by the UK government . It's a very lengthy and very expensive way of concluding they have no technological answer to the backstop. The AAC also appear to think there has been no conversation going on about the backstop for the last two years - for heaven's sake.
They were told when the interim report was published there was no point in producing a final version until some monetary figures were included in it. The final report contains nothing on the permanent, crippling cost of implementing and operating the tortuous and highly bureaucratic Alternative Arrangements described.
One can only despair. Contrary to Johnson's claim, we do not 'have the technology', and the AAC do not possess either a can-do spirit or the will and the drive.
One can only despair. Contrary to Johnson's claim, we do not 'have the technology', and the AAC do not possess either a can-do spirit or the will and the drive.
A few days ago George Walden in The New Statesman said that Brexit was the result of the surge in immigration which occurred under Tony Blair's government from 2004, when the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia all joined the EU alongside Malta and Cyprus. This may be so, but the impasse we are now in was created even before that. The Good Friday Agreement was signed on 10th April 1998 and this was the instant when leaving the single market and the customs union became virtually impossible for the United Kingdom.
Nobody involved in the peace talks ever thought we would leave the EU and they used the joint membership of the UK and Ireland to build a creative ambiguity about the status of the invisible border. Unionists could still believe there was one while nationalists could believe there wasn't. And it worked.
Unwittingly (and thankfully) we were locked into the single market and the customs union. One might think of it as the unseen foundation of the invisible border.
Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister and deputy PM has been speaking about our own incoming PM to the BBC and says the Withdrawal Agreement will not be reopened or renegotiated setting up a future collision between Boris and reality.
I don't think there is any doubt that without the 2017 election we would now have a WA which separates Northern Ireland from Great Britain. Mrs May would have forced the DUP to accept the original backstop which included just the six counties. I am not saying it would have passed the House of Commons, but it would have stood a greater chance.
What I don't see is any alternative arrangements that allowed a regulatory and customs border to be created without any new infrastructure as the GFA demands. It's an international treaty lodged with the UN and cannot be wished away.
One solution to Brexit would be to give the people of NI a vote to decide where they want the border to be hardened or not. This could be along the line of the existing 310 mile land border today (or a slightly revised one) or down the Irish sea. This would use the 'border poll' provision in the GFA as a way of resolving Brexit.
As far as I can see, with present and foreseeable technology, a border down the Irish sea is the only way to keep things exactly as they are now on the island of Ireland - but at the cost of the integrity of United Kingdom.
The poll would have to make clear that if Northern Ireland chose to remain in the UK, the inevitable result would be a hard border with all the risks of a return to violence. I don't think that would be acceptable to anybody.
Martin Selmayr at the EU Commission is alleged to have once said the price of Brexit will be Northern Ireland. He denied it but it is almost certainly true.
Martin Selmayr at the EU Commission is alleged to have once said the price of Brexit will be Northern Ireland. He denied it but it is almost certainly true.
