The Guardian today quotes D Frost, one-time chief negotiator with Brussels over Brexit:
“Shaped as the protocol is by relative UK weakness and EU predominance in the withdrawal agreement negotiations, it enshrines a concept – the all-island economy – which suits the EU, Ireland, and their allies politically but which does not exist in real life,” Frost wrote in the foreword.
Naturally, el GHrun chooses to emphasise UK weakness in its headline, but Frost goes on:
Frost said that applying the protocol should have taken into account the “economy reality”[sic] of trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which the report says is minimal. Only 4% of the goods and services produced in Northern Ireland cross the border to the republic, while 16% go to Great Britain, and 31% of imports to Northern Ireland are from the rest of the UK, the report said.
“As it was, the EU’s purism and its casually destructive handling undermined east-west links from the start and are now bringing the Belfast (Good Friday) agreement itself into great peril.”
The former Northern Ireland first minister Dave Trimble, who was leader of the Ulster Unionist party at the time of the Good Friday agreement, agreed there had been a “destabilising effect” by talking about the all-island economy.
“Today the Irish government has a different language in which the island economy is an endlessly repeated theme,” Lord Trimble said. “The Irish government sharpens unionist fears that there is some all-island economic propulsion leading to political unity. This has had a destabilising effect.
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