Still unsure about travel but a new appeal -- to the shootin' set

The Observer recycles the earlier Graun story with the same indecisive results:

Travel chaos is ‘the new normal’ after Brexit, British tourists are warned

...a fierce diplomatic row erupted with France over the lengthy tailbacks affecting Dover....Former chancellor Rishi Sunak said the French “need to stop blaming Brexit and start getting the staff required to match demand”. Foreign secretary Liz Truss said she was in touch with her French counterparts, blaming a “lack of resources at the border”.

However, diplomats, French officials and border staff warned that the delays were a result of post-Brexit border arrangements struggling to cope in their first major test since Britain left the EU.

And then the story repeats what we were told earlier in the Graun (post below) about the possibility of passport checks being automated but biometric checks requiring people to step out of their vehicles etc

Elsewhere in the Observer, they seem to be really scraping the barrel and appealing to a constituency they have never engaged before, surely:

Game over for UK shooting season as bird flu and Brexit take a heavy toll

At least 93 gamekeepers have been made redundant so far this year and some shoots are likely to go bankrupt, according to Dominic Boulton, former chair of the Game Farmers’ Association and now its policy adviser....The initial signs of disruption came at the end of February when the first case of bird flu was discovered in the Loire valley.

After avian flu is detected on a farm, the birds are culled and 30 days later the farmer can start trading birds domestically – which for French farmers means within the EU. But international exports must wait for 90 days, under World Organisation for Animal Health guidelines adopted into UK and EU law.

The National Gamekeepers’ Organisation (NGO) campaigned for the government to create special licences allowing imports before the 90 days were up. After weeks of negotiations, ministers reached an agreement with the EU for a “bespoke arrangement”, but not France.

But then the Observer dries its tears for gamekeepers and owners of shoots (sorry --game farmers) and notes, in another curiously Freudian admission of doubt (I can't believe it is 'balance'):

“Even if we were still in the EU and operating under the 30-day rule, we would still have been in trouble,” Boulton said

 

 

 

Guardina nearly back to old liberalism -- ie can't make its mind up

An unusual seemingly non-dogmatic (or was it indecisive) headline in the Guardian today, but the rest of the piece looks like it was written by two people,one an optimist and one  apessimist

Kent travel chaos: is there a fix and should Brexit take the blame?

What is to blame?

In short, the big increase in post-pandemic travel combined with Brexit passport checks...

What happened at the weekend?

The port of Dover experienced a fivefold increase in car numbers year on year....on Friday it said it handled 11,000 cars, up from 1,200 on the equivalent Friday in 2021....On Saturday it handled just under 12,000 cars, compared with 2,400 this time last year, and 10,000 cars on Sunday compared with 1,900 on the equivalent Sunday in 2021....

Was Dover prepared?

Yes. The Dover chief executive, Doug Bannister, told LBC it was “absolutely true” that Brexit was to blame for the extreme delays caused by a new requirement to stamp British passports....The port had been preparing for months for the increase in traveller numbers but said it was let down by unexpected French border staff shortages....The French said there was a technical issue in the tunnel, which delayed their staff getting to Britain....By lunchtime on Friday the full complement of French staff were on site but by then the queueing had got “out of control” and Dover had a huge task to make up for lost time.

Back to normal at the foot of the column though:

Is Brexit to blame?

To a large degree, yes....[but read what you just said above fer Chrissake!] Criticising the French, as Truss did, was to deny the consequences of the hard Brexit the UK Conservative government fought for and won.

 But what of the future, assuming we do not rejoin?

Was the bottleneck caused by passport checks preventable?

Yes. The government rejected the port of Dover’s request for a £33m chunk of a Brexit infrastructure fund in 2020 to, among other things, double the capacity for French passport checks. It got just £33,000 instead.

Will passport checks be automated in future?

Yes. And there are plans in place for an electronic visa waiver system, called the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS), similar to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) in the US

However:

Biometric checks could require passengers to get out of their cars to go through an airport-style facial recognition barrier or fingerprint checks....Both Eurotunnel and the port of Dover warned that this was both a danger for drivers and passengers but also that there was no room for the extra biometric booths.

However again, and flip-flopping back once more

John Keefe, the head of public affairs at Getlink, the owner of Eurotunnel, told the BBC that one of the issues was that all the traffic was coming down one motorway, the M2, but significant improvements could be made if the A2, the old road to Dover, was upgraded to a dual carriageway to the port.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Queues? Bien fait por vous!

 According to the Observer:

Travel chaos is ‘the new normal’ after Brexit, British tourists are warned

Anger over lack of cash for Dover upgrade as Tory candidates vie to blame France for delays

Both Tory leadership candidates rushed to blame a shortage of French border staff for delays that saw some travellers waiting for hours....However, diplomats, French officials and border staff warned that the delays were a result of post-Brexit border arrangements struggling to cope in their first major test since Britain left the EU...New rules require all passports to be checked – a pressure that a series of experts regarded as the biggest factor that could not easily be fixed. Clément Beaune, the French transport minister, said yesterday that he was cooperating with transport secretary Grant Shapps to ease the issues, but added: “France is not responsible for Brexit.”...Pierre-Henri Dumont, a Les Républicains MP whose constituency includes Calais, told Sky News: “Because of Brexit, we need to have more checks on passports. We need to stamp every passport. We need to have checks on who is coming into the European Union.

“The shortage of French border force officials is a short-term, tactical problem,” said [a former ambassador to France] . “The long-term, serious issue is that this is the first time we’ve seen the full pressure on the border after Brexit. Even if it was a full complement of the French border force there would still be massive delays, because Dover port can’t cope with the volume.

There are now warnings that delays could become even longer with the planned introduction of biometric checks, under the EU’s new Entry/Exit System.

 I am sure French business will welcome the hsotility that will be felt by British tourists in turn.

Meanwhile in another story, a businessman writes:

Hermann Hauser, founder of Arm: ‘Brexit is the biggest loss of sovereignty since 1066’

Hauser is in big negotiations at the moment over the location of hisvarious important hi-tec concerns, and there have been several occasions on which Arm has appeared in stories about the Government and Brexit:

 [Arm's] future is deeply uncertain, amid concerns it will list on New York’s stock market, loosening its UK roots. The company has halted work on a dual listing in the UK, the Financial Times reported last week. That would be a major blow to Downing Street, which has lobbied hard for a London listing.

Hauser, now a venture capital investor in a series of UK tech companies, sold his shareholding in Arm in 2016 when it was bought by Japan’s SoftBank, but he is an outspoken advocate of it retaining its status as an independent company, and a UK tech champion.

American chip designer Nvidia tried to buy Arm in 2020, which “would have been an absolute disaster”, he says, speaking from his Cambridge office. He is in favour of an initial public offering that allows a diverse shareholder base to take minority investments and keep Arm as the “Switzerland of the semiconductor industry”, able to work with anyone....Arm is actually a great national asset. And probably the only company in the UK that has global relevance in the technology space.”

 

 

 

Boris has gone - but not struggles with the EU

For a while there was hope that Boris's defenestration would end proper Brexit because he was seen as the majopr impetus behind it (not Little Englandism or racism after all). That went with the return of the sly creeping 'wisdom' that all along everyone really knew that hard Brexit was an impossible dream and now we would just have to get on and negotiate a more sensible arrangement with the EU -- Norway, say, or even Rejoin.Poor old K Starmer had announced the abandonment of Labour commitments to either just the day before Boris mounted the windowsill.

There might be a slight setbck with that after the election contest for a new leader, which let the Brexiteers flex their muscles, since there seems to be renewed determination to scrap the Northern Ireland Protocol, not good news for the sly realists:

Truss vows to scrap remaining EU laws by end of 2023 risking ‘bonfire of rights’

Hundreds of laws covering employment and environmental protections could disappear overnight if Liz Truss becomes prime minister after she promised to scrap all remaining EU regulations by the end of 2023....Her Brexit plan would mean each remaining EU law and regulation would be “evaluated on the basis of whether it supports UK growth or boosts investment”, with those deemed not to do so replaced. Any EU laws not replaced would simply disappear at the end of 2023, just 15 months after Truss potentially takes power in September.

[Even] Sunak has previously said he will appoint a new Brexit minister to go through the remaining EU laws, with instructions for the first set of changes coming within 100 days of him becoming prime minister.

Opposition seems quite justified in some ways -- trade unionists fear it will be an excuse to further scrap rights, civil servants say it will be impossible in the time, or a massive distraction, given the huge number of laws still tor review. Responses naturally  include EU reaction.

EU launches four more legal cases against UK over Northern Ireland protocol

On Wednesday, the Northern Ireland protocol bill cleared the House of Commons at its third reading – the final stage in the Commons – by 267 votes to 195, and will arrive at the Lords in the autumn....

The EU court has the power to impose multimillion-euro daily fines on the UK and its judgments could be the first step towards the bloc taking punitive action through mechanisms within the Brexit deals.

Maroš Šefčovič, the EU’s Brexit commissioner, has not ruled out tariffs being imposed on British goods sold into the EU, describing the terms of the Northern Ireland protocol bill as “illegal”.

Said a Brit spokeserson: 

“It is disappointing to see that the EU has chosen to bring forward further legal action, particularly on goods leaving Northern Ireland for Great Britain which self-evidently present no risk to the EU single market,” the spokesman said.

“A legal dispute is in nobody’s interest and will not fix the problems facing the people and businesses of Northern Ireland. The EU is left no worse off as a result of the proposals we have made in the Northern Ireland protocol bill.

“We will review the EU’s arguments and respond in due course.”

 

 

Johnson stands against new axis

 The Observer tries hard to keep up the momentum:

Germany and Ireland denounce Boris Johnson’s bid to ditch Northern Ireland protocol

Rare joint declaration indicates hardening of EU position on plans that more than 70 Tory MPs failed to vote for

I love the last bit -- more than 70 failed to vote for it, later rephrased as 'more than 70 Tory MPs abstained or were given permission to miss the vote'.

an extraordinary joint denunciation by the Irish and German governments....[nay]...a rare joint statement condemning the UK for “unilaterally breaking an international agreement” [appears]  in the Observer 

Gosh! Unprecedented! On with the arguments...

recent elections to Northern Ireland’s assembly, which delivered a majority of members who back the protocol, showed support for the current arrangements.  

Actually, I am not sure that is so. Certainly the largest party supports the protocol.I'll have to check.

While the UK’s proposals passed their latest parliamentary vote last week, more than 70 Tory MPs abstained or were given permission to miss the vote...Some MPs are already plotting ways to stop the government from deploying the plans, which effectively override the existing agreement. One plan, drawn up by Sir Bob Neill, the chair of the justice committee, would hand parliament a veto over whether or not the new powers in the bill could be deployed.

There is the familiar moral background:

“unilaterally breaking an international agreement”....risks undermining the “rules-based international order” just as the continent is attempting to confront Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine....the EU and UK must stand together as partners with shared values and a commitment to uphold and strengthen the rules-based international order....the UK government’s actions were disrespectful [the last from Varadkar]

 And the usual claims to sainthood:

the EU had been and would continue to be “flexible and creative” to deal with issues that have hampered trade between the region and Great Britain....show the same pragmatism and readiness to compromise that the EU has shown. By working together – in partnership and with mutual respect – common ground can be found and challenges, no matter how difficult, can be overcome.”

 

Softer Brexit now Johnson has gone?

The Guardin is really on an up! Johnson has gone and so no-one supports a 'hard Brexit' any more (or will tell devilish lies to support one).

Collapsing public support suggests Brexit is anything but done

Most people think Brexit has gone badly, a UK survey finds, and Johnson has left behind a mess of problems for a new PM

...recent polling suggests support for Brexit in the UK has collapsed – and the outgoing prime minister’s critics might confidently argue today that Johnson leaves a mess of issues behind rather than the “certainty and stability” that he claimed to have secured 18 months ago.

For all of the talk in 2019 of having struck a great deal, the government has in recent weeks threatened to unilaterally rip up a hard won and crucial agreement over the post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland if the EU does not agree to a fundamental overhaul – despite the Conservative manifesto on which Johnson formed his government committing to no renegotiations.

Meanwhile, the trade deal has left Britain’s fishing communities screaming betrayal, unhappy with their paltry gains and facing expensive barriers to export what they have caught...There has been a “steep decline” in the number of trading relationships Britain has with the EU as small businesses have become bogged down in the new red tape, according to a study by the London School of Economics. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the government spending watchdog, said earlier this year that Brexit “may have been a factor” in the UK lagging behind all other G7 economies in its post-pandemic recovery.

most worrying of all for those who are protective of Johnson’s Brexit legacy is the changing face of public opinion. The latest YouGov poll has found that every region of the UK now believes Brexit was an error, with 55% of those questioned believing that Brexit has gone badly compared with 33% who say it has gone well.

Steady on a bit though...

Few in Westminster, beyond the Liberal Democrats, are suggesting that the UK is poised to rejoin the EU. But the very manner in which Brexit was “done” appears to have left it brittle, the polls suggest. Britain’s relationship with the 27 EU member states remains a stubbornly open question. For those who believe that Britain’s destiny remains as free-wheeling country outside the EU’s single market and customs union, there can be little confidence that anything on that front has been settled.

 

It was always Johnson's fault though:

Those who worked alongside Johnson in government, and in opposition to him at the negotiating table, point to the cause of this mess of issues being not only the substance of what was negotiated but that it was done with a misplaced boosterism....

“He certainly pushed the boundaries of what one could expect a British prime minister to do very, very far,” Riekeles [diplomatic adviser to M Barnier] said. “He negotiated, signed an international agreement and had the House of Commons ratify it one day, only to walk back on it the next.”

Riekeles added: “If the objective was to satisfy an important part of the Conservative party and to tick boxes in terms of Brexit rhetoric, then of course they got that. But not if the aim was to have the best possible relations with the EU and properly get Brexit done – get it done and start a constructive relationship where one works together in a neighbourly way, to address common and global problems. Instead, relations are very complicated, and the cost of that is bigger for the UK than the EU.”

[Barwell,former Chief of Staff for T May]  saidJohnson was the least willing to compromise of all the Brexiters and refused to acknowledge the difficult choices that had to be made over Northern Ireland’s special circumstances, describing the problem as the “tail wagging the dog”....[and he] would be surprised if we rejoined in the medium term but I would be equally surprised if a future government didn’t negotiate a closer deal.”

Brexit, he [Barwell] suggested, is far from done.

Rejoice, rejoice! Hang on though...misery arrived for Graun readers today:

Hummus supplies to dip as weather and Ukraine war cause chickpea shortage

Growers are warning of a global chickpea shortage, endangering supplies of hummus just as barbecue season gets into gear...The price of a range of hummus products in the main British supermarkets has risen by up to 100% since January, according to data supplied to the Guardian by the research group Assosia. 

To be fair (why?), the rag also reports that

Chickpeas are a key source of protein in India and the Middle East, where households are already struggling to cover rising costs of food imports such as wheat.  ...a development which could have serious consequences for countries that rely on the pulses as an essential source of protein.

 

 

Remainer hopes rise as Johnson seems doomed

The media has its cocks in a hoop over the internal collapse of confidence in Johnson, of course, and we might expect to see Remainerish themes re-emerging in any leadership contest. One such might be a vintage kite in the ever-ready Graudian:

UK food exports to EU fell 19% in 15 months after Brexit, show figures

The £2.4bn fall driven by decline in exports of perishable goods due to red tape and costs

The fall was driven by a decline in exports of perishable goods, from British strawberries to cheese.

My God -- we export British strawberries? No wonder there are shortages in Islington when Winbledon is on [see blogs passim]!

The value of food exports to the EU dropped by £2.4bn in the first 15 months after Brexit, according to analysis of HMRC data...Data tracking exports since 1 January 2021, when the Brexit transition year ended, show UK food exports dropped by 19% to £10.4bn in the 15 months to 31 March 2022..This was down from £12.8bn in the previous 15 months, according to the review of the detailed commodity data by Hazlewoods chartered accountancy firm.

I am sure everyone now knows that those 19 months were also months of other serious interruptions to trade, but maybe some people are still likely to  fall for it. However, even el GHraubn comes clean as early as the second para:

However, overall exports, which were hit by the double whammy of Brexit red tape as well as decreased demand in hospitality due to the pandemic in 2021, recovered in the first three months of this year, the figures show....

There might be bad news for Remainers too: 

HMRC official commentary on the first three months of data indicates that exporters are adapting their operations to the new barriers.

And

In the first three months of 2022, exports to the Republic of Ireland jumped by 67% while exports to France rose by 28.5% and the Netherlands 40%....The increase in export to the Netherlands and Ireland could be linked to the energy crisis and the war in Ukraine, with a 50% month-on-month jump in March in exports of mineral fuels to those countries... up £548m (to more than double the value) and £435m (to more than three times the value) respectively.”

 

Over-blown EU tit for NI tat

Signs of how petty and self-defeating the EU can get today with the final confirmation that the UK is to be punished over its recalitrance over NI by being excluded from EU science programmes:

EU scraps 115 grants for UK scientists and academics amid Brexit row

One hundred and fifty grants were approved for British applicants after the then Brexit minister, David Frost, successfully negotiated associate membership of the £80bn Horizon Europe programme but most will now be cancelled....

Ratification of the membership has been in abeyance because the UK has not implemented the Brexit trading arrangements agreed under the Northern Ireland protocol.

With the deadline passed, it has emerged that just 18 of the 150 academics will take up the grants but must move to an EU institution to get the funds.

Who is supposed to benefit from that exactly? Some EU folk might, in a literal sense, but,overall, does it actually benefit anyone to politicise science and academic stuff as blatantly as this? Another thing  -is this an 'excessive' retaliation for any economic penalty the EC might be able to demonstrate as a result of the Protocol being removed? They won't be able to reduce any fish exports as well, will they, if they are  only allowed to be 'proportionate' in response?

Some academics do not seem to mind:

Thiemo Fetzer, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick who was approved for €1.5m (£1.28m) of funding for research into media and geopolitics, confirmed he was one of the 18 who had reluctantly decided to move to the EU.

He said: “I am relieved as this whole Brexit process has eroded my trust in the UK’s institutions and this Horizon Europe association was just another incarnation of this.

“I take some comfort knowing that with the ERC being hosted at a great place in Europe I am also developing an exit strategy from the UK like many other academics from the EU I know. I really fear that the UK is going down a very dark path and there is a Germany in the 1930s feeling to all. [sic]”

Economists -- still stuck in the 1930s. 

But for others:

Last month, Nicholas Walton, a University of Cambridge astrophysicist studying the Milky Way and hoping to play a major part in the European Space Agency’s (Esa) next big observation project, revealed he had been forced to hand over his coordinating role on the €2.8m pan-European Marie Curie Network research project to a colleague in the Netherlands.

Which must be a tad galling.

UK Research and Innovation said the government had guaranteed funding for “all successful applicants to the first or second wave of Horizon Europe Grant awards”. It said its guarantee scheme was open and provides funding to researchers and innovators unable to receive their Horizon Europe funding “while the UK is in the process of associating to the programme”.

Labour U turn to oblivion?

 This is what the Graun suspects today:

‘Is it a U-turn?’: what Keir Starmer has said about Brexit redress

Labour leader’s latest words on Brexit close door on former ambition to soften or overturn it

Keir Starmer felt so strongly about the Brexit referendum result in June 2016 that he quit as a junior shadow minister under Jeremy Corbyn.

A few months later he returned to the Labour frontbench as shadow Brexit secretary and spent the next four years campaigning to mitigate the result, which he described as “catastrophic”, while at the same time retaining voters in “red wall” constituencies.

But he was a remainer.

He campaigned against a no-deal Brexit and for a second referendum to give the people a “confirmatory vote” on any deal with Brussels.

Yet in a speech on Monday night the Labour leader will make clear that the party will neither seek to reverse Brexit nor soften Boris Johnson’s hard Brexit by returning to the single market which included the free movement of people and goods across the EU.

The article has lots of past quotes indicating Starmer's clear intention to remain or rejoin, and leaves its own question unanswered, but in another piece, there is a different emphasis:

Labour’s approach is to seek to de-dramatise the issue, by focusing on practicalities, instead of reopening old political wounds:

 Labour says there is a “landing zone” in negotiations between the two sides, however, which would include seeking a veterinary agreement to cover agricultural goods, allowing many of the cumbersome checks to be lifted.

For other goods, Labour says it would work with businesses in Northern Ireland to put in place a trusted trader scheme to reduce the proportion of exports that need to be subject to checks.

Starmer says Labour wants to negotiate mutual recognition of professional qualifications with the EU, for example, to allow UK professionals such as lawyers to practise more easily in the EU and vice versa.

And Labour would seek access to cross-border scientific endeavours such as Horizon

Starmer argues that the current standoff over the protocol is hampering the UK’s ability to collaborate with the EU on other issues, including security – and says Labour would try to strike a new agreement.  

Point five, perhaps the least developed, is broadly about what the UK can now do to maximise the benefits of being outside the EU. Starmer says Labour would “use green investment and a commitment to buy, make and sell in Britain to ensure we are best placed to compete on a global stage”.

He also suggests the party would take a new approach to trade, which would “put people, communities, rights, and standards at its very heart”, though it is unclear what that would mean in practice.

 almost the most striking element of it is what he says he will not do – argue for the UK to rejoin the single market, or restore free movement.

As he puts it: “With Labour, Britain will not go back into the EU. We will not be joining the single market. We will not be joining a customs union. We will not return to freedom of movement to create short-term fixes.”...he now believes there is little to be won electorally from revisiting the issue, and whatever the hopes of many party members, hopes to, as he puts it, “move on”.

Couple of obvious points -- (1) what will happen to the Remainer/ Islington Tendency in the Party? Off to the LibDems? (2) will the former Labour supporters who voted Brexit be convinced and return to the fold? 

No chance

 

 

 

 

Now it gets very personal...

N Cohen of the Observer appeals to older readers with this today:

Stab-in-the-back: the nasty old myth that Brexiters are exploiting to explain away the disaster

He explains the allusion to Nazi excuses for the loss of World War I, perhaps to set up the astonishing character assassination of Lord Frost and all Brexiteers that follows.

The mediocrity of Lord “Frosty” Frost isn’t ordinary. There is an epic quality to his failings. The parochialism of his nationalism and irresponsibility of his conspiracy theories have allowed one paunchy man to embody the entire collapse of modern conservatism into know-nothing paranoia.

Without visible benefits from Brexit, betrayal narratives are all the leaders of the Brexit right have to hold the movement together.  ... You were betrayed – we were all betrayed! – by saboteurs who turned victory into defeat....Brexiters do not accept their defeat. They imply rather than acknowledge failure by shifting responsibility to others. And no one shifts as reliably as Lord Frost. He is as regular as a bowel movement....Don’t blame us, blame the civil servants, he courageously declared last week....The emasculating consequences of subcontracting decision-making to the EU meant British officials could not draw up “genuine proposals for liberalisation and change” now we were out

The emasculating consequences of subcontracting decision-making to the EU meant British officials could not draw up “genuine proposals for liberalisation and change” now we were out...Niall Ferguson, a historian himself, apparently, said the referendum had taught him that the public was ready “to pay a significant amount” to divorce from the EU. He forgot, I suspect because he had to forget to stay in with the right, that the Leave campaign of 2016 dismissed warnings of significant costs to the public as “project fear” and that the Conservative government of 2022 is so scared of revealing the true price that it won’t publish an economic assessment of the damage....The refusal of the civil service to give Brexit its “wholehearted support” explains why Brexit Britain has failed to turn the UK into what it calls “a leading voice for civilisation”.

The Trumpian special pleading and Orwellian denial of reality go unremarked because too many people, including too many on the left, fear the loneliness of breaking with the tribe and the vituperation that will follow. [Or perhaps only paranoids can see it?]

The career of Frosty the Strawman makes my point for me. By 2016 he had left the diplomatic service behind after a characteristically unimpressive career in the Foreign Office, to work for the Scotch Whisky Association. He opposed leaving the EU, as David Cameron, Liz Truss and most of the Tory mainstream did, and warned audiences with surprising prescience that Brexit would cost each citizen about £1,500 a year.

When the Tory mainstream charged right, Frost charged with them, scrambling over the bodies of his comrades to get out in front. As he rose without trace, his Brexit boosterism earned him commissions from the Telegraph, a seat in Johnson’s cabinet and a peerage in less than four years.

The refusal of British Conservatives to accept responsibility predicts a future in which they go all out to destroy the independent institutions that failed to make Tory dreams come true. Lord Frost has already resigned from Johnson’s cabinet so he can urge Conservatives to go further and faster to the right. He may be an unscrupulous mediocrity, but that does not stop him clearly seeing the Conservative party’s final terminus.

 

My God, Cohen is bitter! And so personal!  He is another candidate for a fit of the vapours caused by Brexit if he is not careful, like that other poor Guardian columnist. He just must be tired of waiting for chaos in the streets, outbreaks of scurvy and people walking round with no Italian trousers. He will end up shouting at the traffic. What a sad decline of a once-excellent journalist.

 

Ireland proposes simple majority rule in Northern Ireland

Breathtaking inversions in today's Graun story from the Republic where L Varadkar prophesies the breakup of the UK following the removal of the protocol -- like he cares!

Johnson risks breakup of UK over Northern Ireland protocol, says Varadkar

Varadkar said Boris Johnson’s administration had been undemocratic and disrespectful and tacitly accused it of being dishonest and dishonourable....if you continue to impose things on Northern Ireland that a clear majority of people don’t want, that means more people will turn away from the union.

This from a political party wanting to break up the UK for decades, at times condoning (maybe unofficially) military force, regardless of what a clear majority in NI wanted. T

“What the British government is doing now is very undemocratic and very disrespectful to people in Northern Ireland because it’s taking that power away from the assembly.”

A majority of voters supported parties who expressed concern over the Protocol. One of the reasons for scrapping the Protocol is to get the Assembly working again.

Just recently, the Assembly has made Sinn Fein the largest party for the first time, hence the recent support by the Republic, but that does not mean the majority favour Irish unity, of course. Sinn Fein has boycotted the UK Parliament for years, which might be seen as a tad disrepectful to the people who elected them.