Post
by macliam » Wed Oct 13 2021 1:51pm
So, today we'll find out what the EU are offering as a salve to the issues with the Protocol, but whatever they offer, David Frost has already gamed the result in favour of confrontation.
In his Lisbon speech yesterday, he set out issues that he knows cannot be resolved within the current agreement (an agreement that he negotiated and agreed) and so left open the option for the UK Government to ignore parts of the protocol - which was put in place due to the British Government's failure to suggest any practical way to avoid a "hard border".
There was no mention of the significant advantages to NI of their position within the EU single market and the absence of checks on the border with the Republic. There was no suggested solution to the actual issues reported over the past year - but, now that the EU are suggesting remedies for the "sausage wars", etc., Frost has upped the ante by insisting that the ECJ be stripped of oversight of this access to the single market. A demand that he knows cuts to the very root of the EUs governance - and which has never been challenged by the other third-party states that have access to the single market. It is a return to the cherry-picking of the Brexit negotiations.
The "reason" for this demand for a "new treaty" is because the existing Protocol "is not supported by one community" - that being the Loyalists, represented by the DUP.... a pro-Brexit party at odds with the overall vote in NI. It does seem odd that this minority is now so important, given that the majority view on Brexit was completely ignored
But to what end is Frost pre-empting the EUs offering and demanding the renegotiation of a treaty he agreed in 2019? Do the government want NI out of the single market? Do they want border-checks reinstated? Are they trying to force the EU to establish a hard border to protect their singe market? Or is it, as Dominic Cummings says, that Johnson's government never intended to abide by the agreement with the EU anyway?
Just because I'm paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get me