I have always believed that it is the details and the implementation of Brexit that will finally bring about its demise. James O'Brien, of LBC radio put it better when he tweeted the other day that ‘Brexit’ falls apart when you have to write it down. And so it is proving at the Irish border which continues to be a huge problem for the integrity of the UK. Johnson will certainly go down in history as the man who simultaneously broke the union and ruined England. This is his unavoidable fate.
To cap a terrible week for the government, The Telegraph headline this morning is about Johnson being "set to opt out of Human Rights laws". With King Boris in charge we are soon going to need a new Magna Charta.
How anybody could ever trust him to do anything properly is beyond me. He seems utterly useless at everything - exactly how he has always seemed - and to see him tinker with our fundamental freedoms would be disastrous. However, it is in my opinion another dead cat moment, although the table is piled high with them already.
He claimed yesterday that the EU was a threat to the integrity of the UK:
I think @theresa_may must be sat at home reading this, sipping a cup of tea, going “MY deal actually had this solved, and then Johnson came along” pic.twitter.com/u3QMyhLu4V— Jon Worth (@jonworth) September 11, 2020
But as this tweet shows, the problem he is now pointing to is the one Theresa May had solved, and for the very same reason, but he rejected and resigned over. Having agreed to a border down the Irish sea he now claims that the EU are "threatening" to cut off food supplies to NI - because of the border (which the UK government will operate remember) that he signed up to an rushed into British law.
The WA (Article 16) has safeguards which includes:
"If the application of this Protocol leads to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade, the Union or the United Kingdom may unilaterally take appropriate safeguard measures. Such safeguard measures shall be restricted with regard to their scope and duration to what is strictly necessary in order to remedy the situation. Priority shall be given to such measures as will least disturb the functioning of this Protocol."
There is no "threat" and cannot ever be such a "threat" - it is all nonsense - scaremongering if you like, but it will no doubt keep Brexiteers happy with something to complain about.
The border is proving the first point of contact with reality and Johnson's reaction is - as usual - to try and alter reality to accommodate Brexit. Unfortunately, it is bound to fail.
The Irish sea border is now a matter of international law and while there may be some minor concessions, people and businesses are going to have to get used to border formalities. It is and always was the price of Brexit and it is this agreement that Johnson himself negotiated and signed into law.
So, if anyone is a threat to the integrity of the UK it is our own prime minister who, for personal ambition, opposed May's deal which would have preserved that integrity.
As for the Irish border, I give you this tweet from Steve Richards:
There’s no answer to the Irish Question with a hard Brexit. The government’s latest attempt at an answer is to break the law that Johnson hailed as oven ready. That’s no answer. T May awaited ‘technology’ to answer it...a long wait. There’s no answer.— steve richards (@steverichards14) September 12, 2020
