Brexit continues to hit new levels of farce as the House of Commons passed the amended UK Internal Market bill which will now begin its report stage later today. This was after Johnson agreed a compromise giving parliament a say in whether or not to break international law. I'm not sure the EU will appreciate the distinction. The bill is supposed to protect the Good Friday Agreement and is apparently essential to block the EU from imposing an extreme interpretation of the NI protocol. But as MPs were voting to support the bill, across the Irish sea, members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the supposed beneficiaries of it all, were adopting a motion rejecting it.
The motion in Ireland was proposed by the Social Democratic and Labour party and was supported by Sinn Fein and the Alliance party. The DUP and Ulster Unionists voted against it.
The SDLP then tweeted it:
The Northern Ireland Assembly just passed an SDLP motion rejecting the Internal Market Bill.— Social Democratic and Labour Party (@SDLPlive) September 22, 2020
The British Government wanted our consent written into the Withdrawal Agreement.
They should finally listen to what we are saying.
More 👉https://t.co/nvmBzgyNCK pic.twitter.com/JkqkB7L94J
It is surely another step closer to a united Ireland.
The motion specifically rejects any idea that the UKIM bill is needed to protect the Good Friday Agreement and makes clear that the assembly is against the breaking of international law.
As far as I can see the UK government is yet to comment but I think it's clear that the legislatures are now at odds with each other.
It's hard to imagine how Johnson could have made a worse job of Brexit as far as the integrity of the United Kingdom is concerned. He has gifted the SNP strong grounds for another referendum by pursuing a hard-as-possible Brexit - and one which they will almost certainly win this time - and at the same time by sheer bad faith and duplicity, has alienated the nationalists in Northern Ireland.
The NI protocol was always going to be a hard sell to Unionists but instead of selling it, he pretended the agreement barely existed. The inability to speak hard truths is not something Johnson likes to do and so he avoids it. He wanted to make both sides think he had achieved a miracle last October and that a circle had been squared.
What he should have done is, via the joint committee, negotiate reasonable compromises to reduce the paperwork and border formalities in a spirit of openness and co-operation. Instead we had denial and obfuscation, followed by sullen time wasting and finally an admission there would be checks - both ways - and finally a bill in parliament to backtrack on what he had agreed.
Now we have the EU parliament and the NI Assembly lined up against Westminster. It is a disaster.
His appearance on TV last night was a lesson in how to fiddle while Rome burns. The new rules are once again too fiddly and complicated as the government seems to be demanding people go back to work but stay at home as well. Go out to the pub but don't stay too long, and so on. Without a seriously efficient test, track and trace system it will never work - and eight months after the pandemic hit us we still haven't got a properly working system - let alone a world beating one.
I think the only certainty is that the new measures won't work and we will soon have a second lock down. Coming as the government struggles getting ready for Brexit, it will mean a delay to the transition period - or utter catastrophe.
It must also be clear now that the government's clumsy efforts to force people back to work and school came to soon. Johnson's optimism somehow prevents him planning for the worst case because he hopes it will never happen and closes his mind to the prospect.
The country will sooner or later have to think about permanent measures as we learn to live with covid-19.
