The Graun balances on a sausage

Lots of background manoeuvring here over the provisions (sic) of the Irish Protocol and the end of the grace period in June after which we have to implement the full idiocies of EU policy on 'allowing' goods into NI from the mainland. 

 

Newsnight last night miscalculated and got the balance wrong and had 2 EU critics on for 1 supporter. One was a Trump delegate to NI who criticised Biden's reported approach to Johnson -- he had issued an unprecedented demarche (diplomatic rebuke) over Johnson's recalcitrance and had urged him to settle with the EU (confirmed today by the Times). N Dodds was allowed to voice his suspicion that the EU did not care about the Good Friday Agreement at all, as when it threatened to suspend it to block vaccine trade, and was using the issue to punish us for Brexit. Unlike the previous night, everyone's sound feed worked well too. E Maitlis did not rant either -- surely it cannot be that she only rants if she has the crowd behind her?. What happened?

 

The Graun had three pieces of various degrees of partisanship;

 

The first reported the official views of both sides (EU patience is wearing thin, UK is confident settlement will be reached), and made some simple debating points. The one I have never heard before is the EU point that the crisis can be mostly solved quite simply:

“If you are sending sausage, cheese or meat products to Northern Ireland the very easy solution is to just put the sticker on it: ‘for Northern Ireland only’, and … we agreed on a simplified export health certificate [which could still be the real problem?]. Do you think that one of these things has happened? No, none, nothing was done,” he said.

Other areas where substantive progress was not made, according to the UK, included freedom of movement for pets without passports, trusted trader status for agrifood suppliers, and tariffs on steel and parcels...Progress was made on guide dogs entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain and the EU’s repeated request for access to UK customs IT systems. The EU had promised further proposals on the supply of medicines and livestock movements, Downing Street said....

In particular:

In a statement, the UK side said no substantive progress had been made on the prospect of a veterinary agreement, which the EU believes could mean 80% of the agrifood checks disappear and could work as a temporary measure...Ministers have objected to the proposal on the grounds that it would mean London observing EU laws again, just six months after Boris Johnson went ahead with a hard Brexit, severing the country’s links to the bloc’s trade rules.

This gets us to sausages and chicken nuggets(eventually)

 

The second item explains in more detail:

the EU is insisting that the full gamut of ​​​​​​sanitary and phytosanitary controls will need to be imposed from 1 October on imports from Britain on meat, fish, eggs and diary [sic], including time-consuming export health certificates (EHCs), which need to be completed by a vet or other qualified person. This would be a killer for trade, making it overly expensive for products to enter Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK....The EU has so far demanded dynamic alignment, if only temporarily, between UK law and its rulebook for these controls to be dispensed with. That is not something the UK will countenance, largely on ideological grounds: they didn’t do Brexit to sign up to EU law

In particular:

From the end of this month, a grace period on an EU prohibition on the sale of chilled meats imported from outside the bloc is due to come into force. The UK could unilaterally extend the grace period on that ban again – but such a move would almost certainly lead to the EU taking the British government to binding arbitration and potentially enforcing tariffs on UK goods entering the single market in retaliation for breaches of their agreements....It is claimed by Frost that many of these difficulties, arising from erecting a regulatory border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, couldn’t possibly have been foreseen in the scale and scope they are now taking.

One final possibility, which again I have never seen raised before, certainly not in the Graun, appears in a third piece

Politico on Wednesday reported that EU officials and diplomats had floated the idea of checking all goods coming from the island of Ireland into the rest of the single market. Such a plan, if confirmed, would mean throwing Ireland under a bus so is unlikely to be a runner. However, it will fuel the UK’s position that the EU is prioritising the single market over peace in Northern Ireland.

Overall, an unusually balanced,almost 'investigative' piece from el Gordo. Perhaps it is detecting a change in the wind. After all, the Times reports that:

New polling and research by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) found that the majority of those surveyed in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Austria now held the view that the European project was “broken”....[In particular] Around 62 per cent French people polled perceived the EU as “broken” rather than “working well” ahead of their own presidential elections in April.

 

 

What do Labour remainers want now?

I've almost forgotten this blog, which shows how things have moved on. The disputes about the protocol in NI continue to aggravate, of course, and Newsnight and the Graun do their best to blame Boris's Brexit deal (with some justice), avoiding the malicious EC/Eire campaigns to weaponise the issue. There are some signs that sense is prevailing behind the scenes.

A re-run of the issues appeared with the latest local election results (one by-election too), with a nearly complete story of Labour disaster. Debates about what happened inevitably took a characteristic form in the Remainer press -- how Starmer had failed to win over Labour Brexiteers (not that he had really tried). That was going to be difficult because it was clear the metropolitan Labourites still hated their guts as ignorant racists after Brexit. 

So what does metropolitan Labour want now all the last straws have been grasped -- the Deal has been ratified, so there is not even the forlorn hope of a Norway option. There just might be a hidden bond if the UK is forced to sign the EC common agreement on veterinary standards but is that even likely?

The blessed L Elliott, one-man beacon of sense in the Graun has put it well:

Until Labour remainers properly accept Brexit, the party will be stuck in limbo

Labour is now more fundamentally split over Europe than the Tories were under Thatcher and Major. The bulk of the party’s supporters voted remain and still feel strongly that the result of the referendum was bad for Britain. A significant minority, concentrated in towns such as Hartlepool, voted leave and have resented being told that they got it wrong.... Responsibility for this rift lies primarily with the hardline remainer element in the party...

Immediately after the referendum, the assumption was that leave voters would quickly regret what they had done and show buyer’s remorse. When that didn’t happen, Labour remainers threw their weight behind the campaign for a people’s vote, a second chance for those who had got it wrong first time to come up with the right answer. This culminated in Labour’s worst general election performance since 1935 – and a much harder Brexit than would otherwise have been the case...

...the remainer left [my only objection -- the metropolitan new petite bourgeoisie are ultra libs, not left] kept up the fight. Its conviction that life outside the EU would be disastrous was apparently confirmed when the government decided to organise its own vaccine procurement programme separate from Brussels. As talks on a new trade deal rumbled on into the autumn of 2020 there were confident predictions that the economy would collapse, supermarkets would run short of food and the M20 would become a lorry park.None of this has happened

When voters in industrial Britain made their unhappiness about being forgotten known in the Brexit referendum, they were patronised and vilified. The government, through infrastructure investment, the siting of vaccine plants in the north east and the relocation of part of the Treasury out of London is at least seen to be doing something

Remainers often give the impression that they welcome bad economic news on the grounds that it makes rejoining the EU more feasible. This is not a good political look.

Alternatively, remainers can allow Labour to re-coalesce around the following propositions: Brexit has settled the UK’s relationship with the EU for years if not decades to come; there are advantages as well as disadvantages to life outside the EU; there is a duty to improve the lives of those who voted to leave in June 2016.

I don't think they will be sensible though. It's too cultural a matter, too connected to social distancing and class politics.That will remain (sic), although it might take different forms, some of which we are seeing already -- sexual identity politics, struggles over heritage. We can only hope the new forms take over rapidly, but the old duty to improve the lives of the despised is more remote than ever. They voted for Brexit -- serves the nasty racists and misogynists right!

Covid trumps Remain

I am only an occasional reader of the Speccy, and took up one of their free schemes only to read the report of the Euro poll on racism by R Tombs,. But they also have this today:

A poll out today – carried out by JL Partners for the often fanatically pro-Remain Bloomberg – shows that 62 per cent of people believe that leaving the EU helped the UK roll out vaccines more quickly than it could have done as a member. Another 67 per cent believe the EU has been ‘hostile’ to the UK during the row over vaccine supply. And, reflecting on all that, 54 per cent of people would vote to stay out in a rerun of the referendum, one of the highest margins in favour of our departure since the vote itself back in 2016. Bre-mourse? Bre-grets? Those it seems are now safely in the past. If there was a vote – a People’s one, or some other sort – we know what the result would be. Brits are now firmly of the view that we did the right thing by getting out. In effect, it has shifted public opinion decisively in favour of leaving. 

The effect may be even more dramatic internationally. Over the last five years, most businesses, trade bodies and governments bought into the standard hardcore Remainer narrative. Inside the boardrooms of Tokyo, San Francisco, or Dubai, insofar as they took any interest in the matter, they largely accepted it was a vote driven by racists, nostalgic for the Empire and hoodwinked by some deceitful slogans on the side of a bus.

Northern Ireland and Brexit

It's been a while. There has been other news of course,and I have been devoting Brexit time to reading R Tombs's excellent book This Sovereign Isle. There has also been a bit of a hesitation in forming up a suitable narrative to account for the upsurge of violent protest in NI. It is obviously the result of Brexit related matters such as the absurd obstructions developed by the EC to disrupt trade between NI and the mainland, even for goods which remain in NI, but there are additional factors such as perceived bias in policing the Sinn Fein funeral which obviously broke Covid regulations. Newsnight has tried to pin it all on Boris and his Brexit deal, of course, introducing that as an obvious background 'fact' and inviting people to comment on it (although T Villiers managed to get in the obvious counter about the EC weaponising the border  before being cut off).

The Graun today has the ever-reliable J Freedland

The consequences of Boris Johnson’s careless Brexit are playing out in Belfast

the true, founding purpose of the European Union: to ensure that a continent mired in blood for centuries would not descend into conflict again...shared membership of the EU had proved to be the key that unlocked peace in Northern Ireland after three decades of murderous pain...these were the life-and-death arguments for continued UK membership of the EU,

Nothing to do with building a cartel or imposing a European model of government then? Nothing to do with shared culture or migrating birds now either?

Of course, violence has many fathers....[but]...The incendiary difference this time is Brexit. From January, British goods arriving into Northern Ireland became subject to EU customs checks for the first time....This is the ineluctable logic of Brexit. 

And there are the personal inadequacies of Johnson:

“there were moments when PM had to rip up grid, cancel break, let people down, stay up late, hit phones, spend, flatter, arm twist and do nothing else for week”. This, wrote Fletcher, was just such a moment. Yet Johnson is doing none of those things. What’s worse, if he did decide to get a grip, who among us thinks he would be capable of it? ...

Of course, as Freedland admits, common membership of the EU actually did not remove the border between Ni and the Republic. The two remained separated by all sorts of things,including currency, laws and history (including murderous pain) and, to some extent, language. But:

So long as both the UK and Ireland were in the same EU club, the border between them could be blurred, allowing people in the north to identify as British or Irish or both without too much friction.

What prevents that today? Ludicrous trade regulations and spiteful bureaucratic delays imposed uniquely on this trade, designed to punish the UK, weaponising the border, as the EC promised to do from years back. Johnson might be inadequate in not recognising that the EC would continue to do this. He now surely has a strong case for suspending the protocol to preserve the peace?

 

Crisis and emotional necessities

 P Toynbee makes some good points about Tory incompetence but still loses it and ends with a silly rant. Shame. There is a case to be made about how the UK Government failed to anticipate the difficulties, including the ones the EC would create in their continued weaponisation of the Irish border and the ratification of the TCA, well explained in Briefings for Britain last week. They are a bunch of botchers and improvisers

David Frost and Michael Gove seem never to have known that each boatload of seafood needs 71 pages of customs forms; nor did they understand the fatal fish “depuration” rules that left stock rotting on the dock.

Political optics were all that mattered to these brilliant negotiators, so they thought they could abandon the services and the banking sector, despite services making up 80% of our economy and financial services 10% of tax receipts. So City firms have moved £1.3tn of assets to the EU already, and within one month Amsterdam has overtaken the City as Europe’s largest sharetrading centre.

They might be forgiven for never knowing the EC would play such a determinedly obstructive game? But they should have prepared. Other Toynbee arguments are less convincing:

Seetru, a Bristol industrial valve-maker I’ve followed throughout Brexit.[why?] ...[sent]...Half its exports were to the EU: as UK exports to Germany fell by a shattering 56%, its managing director, Andrew Varga, finds his products “stuck for eight weeks in German customs, swamped by bureaucracy, massively clogged”. Fearing the loss of his just-in-time customers, he’s flying his products to Germany at “10 times the cost”.

He calls “doctrinaire and ideological” the creation of a UK kite mark, forcing him to re-register 30,000 products under two systems. “That,” he sighs, “is what they call sovereignty.” Brexit never “took back control” or escaped “Brussels bureaucracy” but instead blocked the borders with impenetrable thickets of red tape.

So "Brussels bureaucracy" blocked the borders really? Then there is this:

“Au revoir to au pairs”, mourns the Telegraph, with no visas for student family helpers because they earn under £20,480. The British Cactus Society mourns the loss of its industry to customs barriers. Students mourn the needless loss of Erasmus, its inferior Turing replacement abandoning cultural swaps for teachers.

Deep irrationality and ignorance prevails:

The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph barely cover the EU trade fiascos, says Dr Andrew Jones, part of an Exeter University team monitoring Brexit media stories since the referendum...Prof Katharine Tyler, of the same Exeter team – and currently re-interviewing voters from Lincolnshire, the south west and Newcastle – finds no shifting views in either leavers or remainers. Nor does she expect real-world effects to have much impact given Brexit’s strong connection to national and personal identity. Bad trade news bounces off sovereignty-seekers, for whom any economic price was always worth paying.

And the point of this?

The remain ship sailed long ago, but the boat to Norway may eventually dock here...The only answer is Norway-shaped: putting all the UK into the single market and the customs union restores frictionless trade, with no Irish borders.

Alas, for Toynbee

Britain is still emotionally [!] miles away from recognising that necessity.

EU plays for time?

Daggers if not sabres seem to be drawn with the news that

EU poised to take legal action against UK over Northern Ireland

The Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, said last week the UK would unilaterally extend the grace periods, arguing that the government had to act to protect the interests of Northern Ireland and keep shelves stocked.,,,Šefčovič, the EU’s co-chair of the joint committee overseeing implementation of the withdrawal agreement, subsequently accused the UK of breaching both it and, potentially, international law, as well as a “clear departure” from constructive cooperation.

I love that 'constructive cooperation' bit 

Britain would have several weeks to respond but could face sanctions or even fines if it did not comply with an ECJ decision.

The commission is also set to send a second letter, this time to the joint committee, accusing the UK of breaching articles 167 of the withdrawal agreement, which require both parties to consult and act in good faith in implementing it, allowing the treaty’s dispute settlement mechanism to be triggered.

Who would enforce the fines? 

 A UK government spokesperson said: “These measures are lawful and consistent with a progressive and good-faith implementation of the protocol.”

Some interesting background was provided by the invaluable Briefings for Britain last Sunday. C Bell suggests:

chaos is being deliberately manufactured in the EU by bureaucratic officiousness and malevolent obstructionism...The EU has plenty of form in this area. Two weeks ago the French refused to ratify the EU-Mercosur trade deal on the flimsiest pretext, after twenty years of negotiations. We heard a lot about the Walloon parliament delaying the much vaunted Canada-EU deal, but it is still only provisionally in force, four years after it was signed. Meanwhile, the EU benefits from zero or reduced tariffs on its exports to Canada while chapters on investment and financial services of greater benefit to Canada are yet to be brought into force.

The longer it can drag out ratification of the TCA, the more benefits it will hope to extract from the UK in return for granting minor concessions on border paperwork (a complete anachronism in the digital age) or a lifting of the bureaucratic blockade the French are imposing on lorries from England ...the possibilities for mischief-making are infinite.

There is no better example of crass insensitivity than Commission officials deciding that British bangers and mash can no longer be eaten in Belfast because they refuse to recognise UK food and SPS standards which are identical to the EU’s

NI sabres are rattled

 Two aspects of the old Northern Ireland issue today. First:

The British government has been accused of breaking international law for a second time by the European commission after ministers said the UK would unilaterally act to give Northern Ireland businesses time to adapt to post-Brexit rules....the government had to act to protect the interests of Northern Ireland and keep shelves stocked.

Šefčovič later spoke to Frost on Wednesday evening to inform the British cabinet minister that the EU would “respond to these developments in accordance with the legal means established by the Withdrawal Agreement and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement”.

 One predictable response soon appeared

Loyalist paramilitary groups have told the British and Irish governments they are withdrawing support for the Good Friday agreement in protest at Northern Ireland’s Irish Sea trade border with the rest of the UK.

The warning came hours after the British government was accused of breaking international law for a second time by the European commission after ministers said the UK would unilaterally act to give Northern Ireland businesses time to adapt to post-Brexit rules...

[A Loyalist spokesperson said] “Please do not underestimate the strength of feeling on this issue right across the unionist family [!] ... accordingly, I have been instructed to advise you that the loyalist groupings are herewith withdrawing their support for the Belfast agreement until our rights under the agreement are restored and the protocol is amended to ensure unfettered access for goods, services, and citizens throughout the United Kingdom. If you or the EU is not prepared to honour the entirety of the agreement then you will be responsible for the permanent destruction of the agreement.”