Johnson is blatantly campaigning ...[but should really be] in Dublin, the city that holds the key to somehow resolving the Irish backstop and averting a no-deal Brexit.
OK first point is that Government officials probably are 'in Dublin', i.e. talking to Irish official and politicians backstage. To back that up, Johnson is quite rightly indulging in the other part of successful negotiation -- pursuing displays of power to moralise his side (and himself) and issuing nonspecific threats.
Jenkins wants things kept nice and tidy as in the EC rulebook and will brook no exceptions:
Jeffrey Donaldson, chief whip of the Democratic Unionist party in Westminster, on whose goodwill Johnson wholly relies in the Commons, has dictated that “our bottom line is no hard border on the island of Ireland and no new border between Britain and Northern Ireland”. These are blatantly incompatible. You cannot both be in a customs union and outside it.
But there are already border-like differences between NI and the Republic -- different currency, different laws. People cheerfully travel and work across this 'border', we are told. The real block is EC protectionism and fears of widespread smuggling, already dealt with across many other borders. Varadkar and the EC have weaponised the issue by linking it with Good Friday, and the EC can brook no ambiguity. The current soft 'border' is not seen as dangerous, so why should any extension of it be? Do customs checks at ports have the same kind of symbolic significance and basic disruption that we are told haunts traffic barriers and armed border guards?
Jenkins knows this:
The only conceivable way through is some fudge to define “hard border” as somehow a soft one. [just as Good Friday did] It must still be a border, but at least some verbal compromise might kick the can down the road.
Who is against such a compromise? The UK, even under May, advocated this and said it would never impose a new hard border. Jenkins wants to ignore the role of the EC and do the easier thing -- kick Johnson and support the gallant Celts:
The compromise can come from only one quarter, Ireland’s prime minister, Leo Varadkar. Yet Johnson has not had the guts to meet him....Only Varadkar can reassure the 27 EU states that a transitional UK withdrawal agreement is feasible. He and Johnson must do a deal, and desperately soon.
Of course, the 27 EU states might want to urge Varadkar to make a deal too. The British and Irish Governments and the EU are no doubt exploring a deal away from the public gaze. Why should Jenkins suddenly get impressed by silly symbolism whereby Johnson must go to Dublin and the two leaders participate in one of those staged meetings for TV like Trump and Putin? This sort of show is also campaigning really.
Jenkins ends with a very old-fashioned conspiracy theory. Why does Parliament [somehow] not insist the two leaders meet?
Britain’s supposed leaders are currently in the grip of two followers of Leon Trotsky – namely Cummings and Jeremy Corbyn’s chief strategist Seumus Milne.That confrontation might help concentrate EC minds is demonstrated in the Times today (subscription still required):
It is not just British jobs that are at risk from a no-deal Brexit. As the clock counts down to October 31, everyone from French fishermen to German car workers is hoping an agreement can be reached
Belgian officials admit that the government will have an uphill struggle to convince the country’s voters that the economic impact of no-deal is a price worth paying to preserve the principle of solidarity with Ireland and the integrity of the single market.
Of course, threats from one side bring forth threats from the other.In this case, France is threatening to ban UK fish exports. In an older case,the threat by Democrat US Congresspeople to block a trade deal with the USA if the Irish are cross was met with a declaration by Republican Congresspeople that they would help the UK in any way possible.
We shall see who the Owl of Minerva craps on first.
No comments:
Post a Comment