Backstop backfire

The Gruan has an item today about the proposed backstop in the May deal. But from an unusual angle. Some EU spokespersons are raising doubts about it too:

Brexit: Irish backstop could undermine EU standards, report says 

the backstop could in fact be...a brilliant deception device constructed by crack UK negotiators, which would allow a more reckless British prime minister to undermine the EU’s green and social standards while still keeping access to the European single market....To prevent Britain from diverting from EU standards on environmental or social protection after the backstop has come into effect, the customs territory would “include the corresponding level playing field commitments and appropriate enforcement mechanisms to ensure fair competition between the EU27 and the UK”...The new German report, however, warns that the wording of the deal means the EU side will find it impossible to stop a more aggressive Britain led by a Boris Johnson or a Jacob Rees-Mogg from flouting such standards while still being able to export British products into the single market....“If the EU wants to have a level playing field, it must not just set up the goals but also assign a referee,” said the author of the report

I must say I thought we had such a proposed referee, some secretive joint committee unanswerable to Parliament which would decide these matters. It's not enough for the paranoid, it seems:

a future government in London could in theory allow companies to self-regulate....“Even if there were an independent referee such as an arbitration panel, it is unlikely that such panel will ever identify a breach of the agreement on behalf of the United Kingdom because the objectives of the level-playing field clause have been defined in such an abstract way,”...

What exactly do they fear? Not a glut of cheap English strawberries, surely? No,even worse:

EU negotiators invoked the prospect of American chlorinated chickens, contaminated prawns or substandard Viagra arriving into the EU market via the UK – if the backstop was not watertight.

Presumably, it will be compulsory to buy these? And overall:

“The bitter reality for the EU is that the UK negotiated successfully in their interest to lower standards, limit freedom of movement but keep de facto market access,” said Franziska Brantner, a Green MP who commissioned the report.
If the UK’s main goal was to create a dumping zone, the British government certainly did a good job with the negotiations. But the question is whether lowering labour and environmental standards and consumer protection is actually in the interest of the British people. This deal shows the real intentions of the current British government.”

Marvellous implications follow. The deal should make it legally impossible for any Brexiteer to become PM after May? The Government of the UK will now become a permanent organ of neo-lib policies and so must have absolutely no say in any international discussions of standards? The only real solution is for us to revoke and let the EC decide what is in the interests of the British people.


Bureaucrats see no end for the need for tight regulation and no constraint on what they are entitled to do.