Tits, tats, sweeteners, threats and philosophical principles

 Another rebellion comes to naught, as completely unpredicted by the Graun:

A controversial government Brexit bill that breaches international law has safely passed its final House of Commons hurdle, despite continued serious doubts among a number of Conservative MPs about the plan.

As context, if we still need any:

Boris Johnson argued the law-breaking measures were needed to counteract the possibility of the EU responding to a lack of a permanent trade deal in December by effectively blocking goods from entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, an idea critics have said is highly unlikely.

The Gurandia link to the article supporting the view that EC nastiness is 'unlikely' leads to a report from D Boffey, 'Brussels bureau chief', soon to be redundant I imagine:

The prime minister’s argument in favour of the internal market bill is a mixture of truth, untruth and conflation, although there are grounds to criticise the EU’s rather high-handed approach.

To support this:

The negotiations on what goods are deemed “at risk” [ in trade between the mainland and NI] are ongoing. But under the Northern Ireland protocol agreed by Johnson, a failure to agree on it would end in a default position of all goods entering from Great Britain being regarded as “at risk”, and therefore attracting tariffs....The prime minister has said that this would be an “extreme interpretation of the Northern Ireland protocol” and that it would “impose a full-scale trade border down the Irish Sea”. In reality, it is simply what was agreed.

So where's the untruth? Boffey seems to be arguing that because it is agreed it is untrue to suspect any  harsh interpretation. There might be more in the charge of 'conflation', especially given what we know about Johnsion's caddish character:

The EU has said the UK has so far failed to provide sufficient details of the so-called sanitary and phytosanitary regime for animal and plant products post-Brexit. The UK government says the EU has ample information. Either way, there is nothing in the internal market bill that would resolve this particular dispute. Critics argue that the prime minister has a habit of not letting facts get in the way of a good story.

These unnamed 'critics' [can they still have dinner parties discussing Lacan in Islington?] seem to be the final arbiters of what is true, untrue  or conflated. 

Meanwhile, those amiable EC negotiators, who only want a fair and reasonable deal have been active elsewhere:

British intelligence about terrorists and other serious criminals would have to be deleted from EU systems if the Brexit trade negotiations were to collapse, a former EU security commissioner has warned. ...prospects for a security deal – not generally thought to be a topic of controversy – were inextricably bound up with the overall negotiations, where there are sticking points about state aid and checks on goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. “This is not an area where they [the EU] are envisaging separate arrangements,” King said.

Is this serious? They would delete our information about their terrorists? Is King mixing up his tits and tats?

 

Who is doing the warning again?

Sir Julian King, who was the UK’s last commissioner in Brussels [and so is already redundant] 

Throughout, our skilled negotators are engaged in deep philosophical debate about 'the four freedoms', and  the 'values' and 'principles' invovled. Here:

Britain has offered a three-year transition period for European fishing fleets to allow them to prepare for the post-Brexit changes as part of an 11th-hour deal sweetener.

And here

Boris Johnson has been rebuffed by Brussels after making an eleventh hour attempt to break the Brexit logjam with new proposals on limiting state subsidies to ailing British companies.

According to Brussels sources, the UK’s paper on state aid, the most contentious of the outstanding issues, offered to lay out a series of “principles” on controlling domestic subsidies....But the paper failed to offer appropriate “governance” proposals that would allow Brussels to keep the UK to its pledges, EU sources said.

Looks a bit like there could be some untruth and conflation to me. Surely there will be no problems once we have all agreed? We need a profile of the characters of the Brussel negotiators to reassure us.

Boffey ( again) and Rankin ( normally pretty sound) sum up the other main issue with the balance for which Graun journalism is famed:

The EU has pushed for the UK to accept the bloc’s state aid rules, which do not allow unfair subsidies to be granted.

Who could possibly object to banning 'unfair' subsidies?