Johnson'll fix it?

Older Brit readers will remember a kids' TV programme screened by the BBC in peak viewing time called 'Jim'll Fix It' where popular TV entertainer, later revealed to be a serious serial paedophile and sex abuser, Jimmy Saville, answered viewer requests for help. Now it is Johnson's turn says the Graun, possibly dog-whistling those associations? (Too paranoid of me, no doubt)

Johnson preparing to ‘fix’ Northern Ireland Brexit deal

 Boris Johnson is preparing a “fix” to set aside some of the Northern Ireland Brexit arrangements in a high-risk move that could provoke a row with the EU and lead to further accusations that the UK is breaching international law.

“We have talked repeatedly to our friends and partners in the EU. We will continue to talk to them.

“But, as I have said many times now, we don’t rule out taking steps now if those are necessary.... the government reserves the right, as we have always said, as laid down in the protocol, to take remedial action.”

The government has always maintained its right to trigger Article 16 of the protocol, but this will force the UK and the EU back into talks.

Rees-Mogg hinted two days ago that the UK would be triggering section 38 (b) of the parent EU Withdrawal Agreement Act 2020, which restates the principle of parliamentary sovereignty....Giving evidence to the EU scrutiny committee this week, Rees-Mogg declared in relation to section 38 (b) of the withdrawal agreement: “We can do what we want, ultimately.”

But the move risks further accusations that, while the UK is free to legislate whatever domestics laws it choses [sic] , proposed changes to the Northern Ireland protocol may not be compliant with the international treaty signed with the EU.

Same old, same old...  What is domestic and what is EU? The EU has never let us go.

And accusations from whom? Have we not rediscovered realpolitik lately? Does anyone still find themsleves persuade by the Shadow NI Secretary saying:

 “If we just recklessly pull out of it unilaterally, how will any other country in the world sign a deal with us and think that we will honour it?” he said.

 

 

Northern Ireland set to return to the headlines

Just when the partygate issues looked like dominating the headlines again (war in Ukraine -- pshaw), Remainers may have to gird their loins around another old issue once more. Says the Graun:

UK will ‘reform’ Northern Ireland protocol if EU will not, says Rees-Mogg

He told MPs on the EU scrutiny committee that the protocol was written in such a way that it could be “superseded”.

“That is really important to understand because a lot of commentary that says: ‘Well, we signed it and therefore surely we should accept it lock, stock and barrel.’ That’s absolute nonsense.

“We signed it on the basis that it would be reformed. And there comes a point at which you say: ‘Well, you haven’t reformed it and therefore we are reforming it ourselves.’ And the United Kingdom is much more important than any agreement that we have with any foreign power,” he told MPs.

Blimey -- proper Red Wall fighting talk. 

 He also hinted that the UK would not be following a new EU move to put speed limiters on cars as some reports have suggested.

“It is not a policy that has received collective agreement,” he said.

Another vote-winner is my guess.

Rees Mogg’s comments on Northern Ireland comes as the EU and UK continue to negotiate a revised version of the protocol with a deal already agreed and approved to remove barriers blocking the sale of British medicines in NI which observes EU trade rules under the protocol.

Sources close to the talks say progress is not expected until after the assembly election with hopes a deal could be done on one of the main sticking points – customs paperwork.

 

 

Deja vu with Frexit?

 Some Graun worry abut Le Pen and the French elections reveal the operations of the EU in a familiar way. Let me say I have worries about le Pen all of my own, but they are different from the ones highlighted here. For the Graun: 

Many of her concrete policy proposals, however, blatantly contradict the obligations of EU membership....Her “sovereigntist, protectionist, nationalist” agenda would “totally contradict the French commitment to European integration [of other governments] ” and includes “proposals which are in total breach of the treaties to which France has subscribed,” he said....Key to Le Pen’s plans is an early referendum on a proposed law on “citizenship, identity and immigration” that would modify the constitution to allow a “national priority” for French citizens in employment, social security benefits and public housing – a measure incompatible with EU values and free movement rules....The same referendum would establish “the primacy of national law over European law” to allow France “not only to control immigration but, in every other area, reconcile its European engagement with the preservation of its national sovereignty and the defence of its interests”...Le Pen also aims to re-establish border controls on imports and people, violating EU and Schengen rules, and unilaterally cut France’s contribution to the EU budget – when the bloc’s multi-annual financial framework for 2021 to 2027 is already fixed. Further plans to cut taxes on essential goods and fuel would breach EU free market rules.

 

The EU as it exists today, Le Pen said earlier this year, was “neglectful of peoples, and domineering of nations”, an “intrusive and authoritarian” bloc locked into “a globalist, open-border ideology” that was “destroying our identity”.

 

We see the same old problems here though. Even if these policies are popular, even if they get the support of the electorate in France:

 

EU legal experts have pointed out that even so much as holding a referendum on the primacy of national law would be in breach of European treaties....[It would encourage others and this] .. “would be the end of a rule of law, values-based European Union”.

Keep doing the arithmetic until you get the answer you want

 Big scandal in the Graun about levelling up and the promise to replace the EU money for the regions in GB

‘An outrage’: Tories’ post-Brexit fund will not match EU grants until 2025

Well -- not a very long time to wait in the circumstances you might think but fair enough, they did promise, and apparently, the shortfall 'will leave English regions tens of millions of pounds worse off than when Britain was in the EU'

So scandal! No funds for regional development until 2025? Not quite...

The Department for Levelling Up insisted that it was “delivering on the UK government’s commitment to match the average spending of EU structural funds” by matching the EU’s £1.5bn in 2025. It said areas would continue to receive EU funding until the end of 2024..

Then a strange objection by those outraged (the Director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership it seems)  I really do not understand:

However, regional leaders and policy experts accused the government of using “smoke and mirrors” by counting old EU money over the next two years....Henri Murison, the director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, said: “We were promised that no nation would be worse off post-Brexit but, when you take out the smoke and mirrors, the data doesn’t lie.

But why would you 'take out' this 'EU money'? Why is it smoke and mirrors? It is still being provided. (NB see the endless argument that this is NOT actually 'EU money' anyway, but GB rebated money). Is there a real cut or is this an accountants' cut using figures projected on estimates of what the Government should have been providing had there been no 'EU money' until 2024 which is what the various 'regional leaders and policy experts' seem to have expected? An expectation that there would be more money after Brexit, which was opposed,  leads to a feeling of being worse off because it is only the same as when we were in Europe?

Neil O’Brien, a levelling up minister, took to Twitter on Thursday to defend the scheme, insisting that the government was “matching in real terms what each place got on average from the [2014-2020] programme”.

 But the outrage shifts ground again:

Whereas EU grants were delivered over seven years, the Shared Prosperity Fund model is for only three years....a “serious blow for levelling up” that would stifle ambitious long-term investment

Whatever the precise pros and cons, we are actually a long way from the simplicity of the headline, of course.

Save the luvvies own channel

Channel 4, like much of the BBC, broke cover as a  result of the great struggles over Brexit and adopted openly partisan positions as the spokespersons of the new petite bourgeoisie. Many specific examples of C4 news coverage of Brexit-related issues  have been provided in this blog. The culture wars have opened on different fronts, of course but are still raging, and, understandably, it looks like the Government has had enough and are proposing to sell it off altogether.

I am not sure I agree with this, which seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but I do think C4 News needs new editors and reporters. They now have the appalling E Wren who used to edit Newsnight, and still feature prominently the pompous and self-righteous callers-out and monologuists C Newman,  K Guru-Murthy and M Frei.

Nevertheless, the proposal has horrified luvvies and we can see the underlying schisms in things like the six pieces in today's Graun opposing the idea of selling off the Channel. Some are quite well-reasoned if a bit tone deaf to the issues of minority tastes: it is common to claim the Channel is popular because its programmes win luvvie awards for example.

Thus for the editorial:'... there are wonderful bright spots – shows such as Russell T Davies’ It’s A Sin, about young British gay men at the start of the Aids crisis, and the comedy We Are Lady Parts, about a Muslim women’s post-punk band'

Exactly the sort of thing we should all be interested in.

D Byrne (former Head of News) defends her former fiefdom by saying C4 News is broadcast for a whole hour and costs a lot of money -- but says nothing about the content being endless complaining and Boris-bating or Brexiteer-bullying in one or two notorious cases, or the waste of money putting C Newman in touch with G Lavrov only to have her ask him if he could sleep at night.

 Unfortunately, I needed to register to access the other 4. They seemed pretty repetitive.

The response to D Byrne's plea was inevitable and came in a letter to the Times today (April 7 2022):

Ms Byrne's myopic inability to acknowledge Channel 4's glaring left-leaning bias is sadly typical of the "nanny-knows-best" group think with which she and so many of her peers are infected that increasingly  divides them from the public, the very audience they are there to serve

Once they opted to nag us all so hard over Brexit they invited this sort of response I am afraid. They can't claim to be 'public service' any more: the veil has dropped.