When President Macron said that sending supermarket supplies from Toulouse to Paris was different from sending them from Liverpool to Belfast because in the first case they were in the same country he revealed a common international misunderstanding about the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. Fed on a diet of EU and Republic of Ireland spin they all see the issues in Northern Ireland from the Irish Republican viewpoint. They ignore or simply do not understand the majority community in Northern Ireland who are strongly of the view that Northern Ireland must remain an integral part of the UK, as much a part of the UK as Toulouse is part of France. There are quite a lot of Americans who also need to be told this. They sometimes seem to think the UK is holding onto some colony in Northern Ireland against the will of the people. As the Good Friday Agreement makes clear Northern Ireland is fully part of the UK by virtue of popular majority support. It could be changed by a referendum or border poll. Recent polling shows an insufficient level of support for any such change showing there is no need to hold a poll.
When challenged by the UK view that the current arrangements over trade between GB and NI are not working, the EU argues two contradictory soundbites. They say the UK entered into an international Agreement called the Northern Ireland Protocol, and that must be fully enforced and can never be changed. They also argue that the Good Friday Agreement is central to the wider issues of good peaceful government on both sides of the border on the island of Ireland.
The truth is the EU’s aggressive and excessive approach to implementing their view of the Protocol is undermining the Good Friday Agreement. Their actions have alienated the majority community in Northern Ireland, who see the EU trying to force them into dependence on the Republic, severing important links with their own country, the wider UK.
Nor is it true to say that the EU’s view of the legal requirements of the Protocol are correct. The Protocol, like the Good Friday Agreement, seeks to balance the interests of the UK and of the Republic/EU .It is meant to uphold Northern Ireland’s s full membership of the UK’s internal or single market, yet the EU is doing everything it can to stop goods, animals and plants passing from GB to NI. The UK government needs to set out its legal view of the EU’s need to respect the UK single market to comply with the Protocol, and its various suggested fixes for the restrictions and frictions deliberately placed in the way of GB/NI trade by the EU.
I did not myself vote for the final UK/EU Agreement, fearing bad faith by the EU especially on fish and Northern Ireland. The Withdrawal Act I did vote for contained the crucial sovereignty clause which gives us the legal basis to act unilaterally if the EU refuses to negotiate a sensible compromise. We also have such rights under the Vienna Convention on Treaties should we need to renounce the Protocol. The EU/UK Agreement also gives us the right to suspend the Protocol if it is not being fairly and sensibly enforced. It is time to take control of our own internal trade and demonstrate that is legal as well as right.
June 16, 2021
Good mornng,
It’s rather too easy to produce a looong list of things wrong with the WA and the NI Protocol; some deliberate, some accidental. After the transfer of responsibility for it passed from May to Johnson one glaring error was the law and court to which claims are to be sent for resolution. To identify the ECJ as final arbiter was unforgivable. I’m sure all the lawyers in government said so, and yet here we are.
June 16, 2021
Good article in yesterday’s Telegraph. The whole FTA and WA will be ditched by the end of the year.
No other country would accept a third party ruling part of its territory.
If Boris accedes to the intransigence of Brussels and allows Northern Ireland to be practically annexed by Brussels the Tory party will be history.
After all there is very little worthwhile in the FTA and commerce will soon adapt to WTO rules, that is what we should have done in the first place. May has a lot to answer for.
June 16, 2021
JR, your spin about a nasty EU does not hold up to any reasonable scrutiny. It was your MPs, party and govt failures that are at the heart of the disaster out and predictable problem. Like the on- going lockdown nightmare- where is the cost benefit analysis to economy, non Covid deaths, NHS waiting times as saving NHS is allegedly at your PMs decision making.
The Fake Tory govt knew it was giving away/annexing N.Ireland. Both Johnson and May made repeated claims what a UK PM would never do and made promises to the DUP. All assurances and promises reneged on by your party and govt. on despite what JR claims. Read articles by Sammi Wilson who reasonably exposes your govt.
Many experts made it clear how awful it was. The Spectator published a 40 point article, yet with an eighty seat majority and many claims to leave deal or no deal the EU were rightly confident Johnson would cave in to its awful demands, as he always does. The blame falls squarely with your MPs, party and govt.
June 16, 2021
I don’t think that Sir John is looking for someone to blame. He is merely observing that the EU’s behaviour is unacceptable and that we don’t have to put up with it.
June 17, 2021
JR’s alleged his test was: was the deal better than WTO. JR should now explain how the deal is better than WTO. I seem to recall Martin Howe QC raised concerns many many times even at meetings with JR present. So no, his criticisms are of his own making. When making a deal why would you not expect the other side to vigorously set out to ge what they want? How many warnings do you need ie article 16 over blocking life vaccinations? EU even stopped vaccinations to Australia and the UK provided instead! How weak of JRs govt. Remember the line by line examination of the divorce bill? JRs govt refuses to FOI requests to set out how much we , the taxpayer, are paying. Hammond tried to make it sound like £39 billion. However no such sum was ever agreed only principles and for the ECJ to decide!
This govt failed on every level of Brexit despite spin and propaganda to make sound a success. The ‘observing behaviour’ is a ludicrous comment. You would have to be totally stupid to think the EU would not behave this way. To suggest this is an insult to JR who is very intelligent, especially as he wrote so many blogs highlighting EU behaviour.
June 16, 2021
Hope, I understand your frustration. And I share it. But we nearly didn’t get even the BINO we have now. It was a close run thing. Remain MPs in the Remain Parliaments 2016-2019 nearly overturned our Leave win, trashing our constitution in the process.
Northern Ireland remaining in the EU’s single market is a legacy of the concessions made by Theresa May and Ollie Robbins. I agree that Boris Johnson could, and should, have ripped up the WA after his 2019 general election win. But he allowed his desire for an EU-UK trade deal to overcome any realism about the WA. That was Johnson’s error, not the whole sorry mess.
June 17, 2021
Nick, No this is not the case. There was a choice WTO and trade on world terms. JR set out the prospect on many occasions. He claimed his test would be whether the deal was better than WTO. It is reasonable to ask JR to set out based on his voting how this deal is better than WTO. N. Ireland issue was well known and written about. Johnson had an eighty seat majority and did not have to sign it! That is why he had an election!!
As Cummings revealed yesterday he cannot wait to leave, write and make money. It strikes me from the messages Johnson’s heart is not in the job but what opportunities it can provide him. How long do we have to wait before Fake Tory MPs dump him? It was tortuous watching May, yet Johnson awarded a lot of the treacherous bunch with titles and guaranteed an increase in pension via House of Lords.
Reply I did not vote for the final deal and diD think WTO exit better
June 16, 2021
so we will have a border between Ireland and NI that willl hep the peace process?
June 16, 2021
There always was a border bill
Did you not know.
Will the EU go in and build a border?
June 16, 2021
“The whole FTA and WA will be ditched by the end of the year.”
That’s the crux of it. A lot of people will waste a lot of time this year debating the WA and NIP on moral or reputational grounds, but it’s completely irrelevant. In the end it will come down to one thing, are the WA and NIP worth the bother?
That’s all that counts. Is it worth all the constant bickering with the EU – and more to the point, their constant hostility towards the UK – to have the FTA, Is the FTA important enough to the economy to put up with all the WA and NIP grief, or should we just drop the whole thing and trade with the EU on WTO rules.
Personally, I think it was worth trying to make the WA and NIP work. In fact, with any partner except the EU, they probably would have worked. But negotiating a WA may have been worth it just to show good faith, but showing good faith towards the EU turns out to be a waste of time.
So now the question ceases to be one of principle and becomes just the very simple one of whether the trade-off of WA for FTA is worth the bother. Remember, if we ditch the WA, all the stuff about the EU and its precious “principles” simply goes right out of the window. It’s not just the WA and NIP – a whole range of issues that would otherwise go on bothering us for ever simply stop and the EU loses all leverage in one go.
June 16, 2021
From the comments today, I think we can see the next Remain strategy at work. Remain will try very hard to convince you that agreeing to the WA and NIP was a step that cannot be undone. They will try to convince you that there is some mythical law that forbids a country from removing itself from a Treaty.
There is no such law, and the more Remainers try to convince you that there is, the louder you should demand their evidence.
Let’s remember that the French themselves freely signed up for NATO membership in 1948, and just as freely took themselves out of NATO in 1966.
No Treaty is for ever and no country is for ever imprisoned in a Treaty that the other party refuses to administer in good faith. As with any contract, bad faith by the EU absolves the UK of any moral compulsion to sty with the WA, and then the decision to denounce the WA simply becomes an issue of self-interest.
It is a sign of the deep weakness of the Remain position that they are spending so much time and effort on inventing and fabricating “laws” and “rules” that simply do not exist. If they had a strong position, they would not have to invent anything.
June 16, 2021
Ian Wragg – What you ralking about – half the world had to put up with Britain ruling parts of its territories
June 16, 2021
If you are still standing up for England John, Have a word with Gove and say that EVEL was put there for a reason and certainly not for a Scot to take it away
June 16, 2021
Northern Ireland is a different country, however Toulouse and Paris are both in France. As for being part of the United Kingdom Northern, Ireland has made clear they want to remain united. I see Macrons point of view ,yet I see your point of view. The Good Friday Agreement was created with a lot of hard work and emotional input . It should be respected.
June 16, 2021
Margaret B – 5 days ago — “Only 30 per cent of voters in Northern Ireland would opt for a united Ireland in a vote, according to a new opinion poll.” The Times
June 16, 2021
President Macron was 100% correct to say that sending supermarket supplies from Toulouse to Paris is different from sending them from Liverpool to Belfast. This is because President Macron has not agreed an international treaty which puts a customs border between Toulouse and Paris. The Prime Minster of the UK by contrast has agreed an international treaty which puts a customs border between Liverpool and Belfast. And you voted for it. We can only begin to solve this problem if UK politicians admit what they signed up to under the Protocol.
I did not vote for the final Agreement. The U.K. version of the Withdrawal Agreement I voted for contained a U.K. override.
June 16, 2021
Ben Habib said that at the recent court challenge of the NI protocol, it was stated by the UK QC that the Protocol actually overrides the Act of Union… so NI is apparently now not part of the UK.
He also stated it had been done illegally as there has been no vote on it.
If that is correct it’s been kept very quiet in MSM.
June 16, 2021
John didn’t vote for it, so some here will apparently assume that it is therefore not binding on the UK.
Whether he did or not, it passed with his party’s votes, however.
Yes, Mr. Macron was 100% correct.
And it IS binding.
June 16, 2021
No it isn’t, there is a sovereignty clause that Bill Cash insisted on inserting.
June 16, 2021
Check article 16 MiC
Already used by the EU
June 16, 2021
Martin, A treaty is only binding whilst both, or all, parties agree it is. Since the EU is not complying with the provisions in the WA to respect UK national sovereignty and our single market, then we have zero incentive to persist in the face of EU intransigent hostility. It therefore makes sense for the UK to abrogate it, don’t you think?
June 16, 2021
You are not a stupid man. You know that the UK cannot override an international Treaty by relying on a national law. So why do you persist in such obviously wrong claims?
June 16, 2021
no need to do so. the EU are clearly in breach – both of the NI protocol and the Belfast Agreement. all we need them to do is implement the protocol on the basis agreed. perhaps you should read it.
June 16, 2021
So in which court are you going to make that claim then?
June 16, 2021
Because many Tory voters gladly accept those claims, perhaps?
June 16, 2021
Has it been tested in a court of law yet Martin?
June 16, 2021
As I say, in which court’s jurisdiction might that be?
June 17, 2021
Isn’t there a ‘World Court’ in the World Trade Organisation? To take matters of trade discrimination.
June 16, 2021
1930s Germany was unable to override the Treaty of Versailles – careful what you wish for and take delight in celebrating.
June 16, 2021
No, Sir JR is not stupid, but you certainly seem to be! Firstly, of course any country can resile from any international treaty, either in whole or in part. After all, no government can bind its successors. That’s the whole point of democracy, independence and sovereignty.
And secondly, the NIP has within it clause 16, which allows either side to do precisely that: suspend the agreement in whole or in part. So to do so is NOT in contravention of the agreement, but to USE the agreement. If section 16 was never intended to be used it wouldn’t be there. It was put there as it was foreseen that it might be needed. And now it is.
So let’s USE the agreement the way it was intended to be used, by suspending those elements that are causing problems.
June 16, 2021
Germany does it.
June 16, 2021
Hold on, Malone, you seem to be leaving out of this the Leave voting majority in the UK.
We, the sovereign national electorate of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland were offered only two options, as legally enshrined by Parliament – Remain under the terms negotiated by David Cameron, or Leave the EU completely.
There was – literally – no other option offered. In particular neither the EEA option, nor the Northern Ireland Protocol version were on the only ballot paper the electorate was ever given on this issue.
The attempts by the Remain Parliaments to keep the UK in the EU, in whole or in part, was, and is, a betrayal of a guarantee by Parliament to honour the result of the Referendum.
June 16, 2021
thank you for indirectly explaining ‘literally’ – it gets misused on here regularly, or should I say from time to time?
June 16, 2021
NIckC
We signed a protocal to avoid a border it is that simple
June 17, 2021
Because what we have at Belfast is not a border.
https://image.assets.pressassociation.io/v2/image/production/07e16df5adb2a730a7517e69c5d80770Y29udGVudHNlYXJjaCwxNjEyMzU3ODYw/2.57350405.jpg?w=640
“New checking facilities at Belfast Port”
If those “checking facilities” at Belfast on the island of Ireland were transferred to the UK side of the actual international land border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic then would that not be described as part of a “hard border on the island of Ireland”?
June 16, 2021
Malone
“And you voted for it.”
No we did not, and you know it.
June 16, 2021
British and Irish civil servants had already worked out post Brexit border arrangements that would cause minimal disruption.
The EU organisation then stepped in and blocked them from continuing to talk to one another. The Northern Ireland Protocol is simply a device to cause disruption and tie the U.K. into EU influence. No wonder they don’t want to change it.
Facts4EU site has details on how a practical Anglo Irish solution was deliberately destroyed by the EU organisation.
June 16, 2021
O come off it! You know perfectly well that “the crucial sovereignty clause” is irrelevant to international Treaty law and gives no legal basis to act unilaterally (and you know no lawyer would ever make such a claim). You know too that the Vienna Convention does not give the right you claim, and you also know that Article 16 does not allow us to suspend the Protocol if it is not being fairly and sensibly enforced, Article 16 is FAR more limited than that. My question -why are you so determined to mislead your readers? Don’t you feel any sense of responsibility for being so inaccurate about what the Protocol (agreed to by the UK government as the oven ready deal) meanS
Reply The UK has plenty of legal routes to rid us of this hostile EU attack on NI
June 16, 2021
Wilhoit’s observation that Conservatism consists of essentially one proposition is applicable here.
He said that centrally, it is the creation of In Groups whom the law protects but does not bind, and Out Groups whom it binds but does not protect.
Generations of Tory rule have effectively created that position with domestic law and its legal system, which exclude most ordinary people from the pursuit of justice – notably by attacks on legal aid etc. of late.
They seem to have grown accustomed to having it their way on that basis, and are now apparently astounded that they cannot also have international law operate in the same way, with other countries being the Out Group.
I very much hope that the hard fact that they cannot has come as an unpleasant shock to them.
June 16, 2021
Garland doesn’t say whether they are an International lawyer or not? What their qualifications are to make these statements. Please do.
John, If we have plenty of legal routes then why in six months are we still waiting for one such avenue to be pursued?
June 16, 2021
Garland, Oh come off it! You know perfectly well that “the crucial sovereignty clause” is part of Parliament’s legal approval of the WA and is therefore relevant to international Treaty law. Moreover Vienna is clear that states have the right to sign, and to abrogate, treaties.
The Northern Ireland Protocol isn’t working. Therefore it will be scrapped sooner or later. Not least because the EU (with the support of Remains like you) will refuse to re-negotiate it. Unfortunately the EU empire, and Remains, are too dim to realise that. The EU is making the same mistake it made with David Cameron.
June 16, 2021
Spain could say the same for Chapter X of the Utrecht Treaty – just abrogate
June 16, 2021
Oooh, you are AWFUL.
But I LIKE it.
June 16, 2021
NIckC
YOu are being judgemental and letting your emotions taking off again about your none defined empire
June 16, 2021
It is not a “hostile attack”, it is an expectation that the UK implements checks that it freely and willingly signed up to implement by the date it freely and willingly committed to implement them by. This government should stop embarrassing our country and instead start doing what it promised to do.
June 16, 2021
Peter P, you seem to know a lot about this – which checks are we obliged to do?
On which products are the checks required?
How many of those products go to Northern Ireland from the Mainland? Can these products be self-sustaining in Northern Ireland? Whilst we wait for the court case.
June 16, 2021
It wasn’t freely signed up to. The Vienna Convention holds a treaty entered into under duress is not valid.
June 16, 2021
Why check a UKsupermarket lorry delivering goods into their own stores in NI?
How likely is it that a major supermarket chain would try to cross the border and sell the lorryload in the South?
Have you examples of any illegal activity of this type or any others over the last few months?
June 16, 2021
You think that annexing part of another country isn’t hostile, Peter Parsons? Well, I suppose you’ll be ok with the UK annexing Calais then?
June 16, 2021
It is indeed time to take control of our own internal trade and demonstrate that is legal as well as right.
Matt Hancock has claimed that “everybody got the Covid treatment that they needed” and that he had never been advised people were not receiving care.
Interesting and careful choice of words. So was Hancock told that “everybody got the treatment they needed from the NHS” or did he not bother to ask the NHS? Was Hancock therefore just guessing when he gave this surely incorrect assurance?
My information is that only about one in nine people (who died of Covid in the first wave last year) received proper intensive care treatment and some hospitals put in age cut offs for treatment as low as 75. Was this really the case? Did the NHS really fail so very badly?
Is it remotely possible or likely that Hancock really does not know the position?
June 16, 2021
I don’t think we did ‘save the NHS’. It shut down. It really did shut down.
I have not seen a doctor after a serious leg injury. Not once in thirteen weeks. Not even when I went to casualty. “Sorry. Go home. Take a pill. see your GP when the swelling goes down.”
My private Physio sent a request for a referral to my nearest knee clinic and so far not even a letter of acknowledgement from the admin 11 weeks later. (I do know I’m in the system from insider info)
I do understand.
But please don’t tell us we ‘saved the NHS’. And it was never going to just disappear anyway.
June 16, 2021
The NHS, particularly NHS management, is not fit for purpose.
June 16, 2021
NOTING that nothing in this Protocol prevents the United Kingdom from ensuring unfettered market access for goods moving from Northern Ireland to the rest of the United Kingdom’s internal market …
DETERMINED that the application of this Protocol should impact as little as possible on the everyday life of communities in both Ireland and Northern Ireland
RECALLING that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom and will benefit from participation in the United Kingdom’s independent trade policy,
HAVING REGARD to the importance of maintaining the integral place of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom’s internal market,
The protocol itself provides a legal basis for challenging the EU’s behaviour.
Reply Quite right
June 16, 2021
Exactly. There is no question that the EU’s approach breaches both the protocol and the Belfast Agreement. It is important that the govt responses like with like using legal arguments, and robustly defends any legal action.
Those who say the EU is being overly bureaucratic or ‘purist’ (ie some ministers) miss the point – perhaps to be diplomatic. The EU is tempting to weaponise ancient antagonisms in NI in a last ditch attempt to shoehorn the U.K. into economic and regulatory subordination to the EU. A prosperous and successful U.K. outside the EU, with project fear debunked, is seen – unfortunately – as an existential ideological challenge to the EU’s federalising mission.
There were good arguments both for and against Brexit during the referendum and after. But none for leaving but remaining bound to the EU’s laws and regulation, as nearly happened under Mrs May. The govt must be robust in its response.
June 16, 2021
So why are we in the position that allows France and the EU to insult us and get away with it? It is because ‘Boris’ allows it and does nothing but waffle. He loves his words and himself, nothing else. He likes getting away with his BS. It’s a game to him.
And his party MPs are not brave enough to call him out directly.
June 16, 2021
Giles B, Excellent. It’s almost as if the EU, as well as the EU supporting Remains, have not read what their EU empire has signed up to.
June 16, 2021
Nick C
Can we please have some facts and figures which justifies what youa re writing again?
June 16, 2021
Why don’t you provide these facts and figures to bolster your own opinions in your own posts bill?
June 16, 2021
I suspect that the ROI and British governments, left to their own devices, could sort this problem out. But if the NIP is stopping British foodstuffs getting onto NI supermarket shelves then it has to be scrapped.
P.S. I haven’t heard of a single case of British foodstuffs, obstensibly bound for NI, being smuggled across the Irish border of late. Have you?
June 16, 2021
S W
Indeed, and even if that was the case, then surely that would be a Republic of Ireland problem, which required a solution from them, with perhaps help from Northern Ireland.
I thought written into the present agreement with the EU, Northern Ireland had the opportunity after 4 years to either revise the terms of the agreement, or to cancel it if it was not working, or am I mistaken ?
June 16, 2021
perhaps there is massive consumption of fresh sausages in the Republic, that goes un-noticed and possibly smuggled? And the EU think it is very important.
June 16, 2021
At one time it seemed that the Irish could sort it out with us, but the EU intervened:
https://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2021/04/27/the-question-s-over-scottish-independence/#comment-1225090
“… a former senior Irish diplomat, Rory Montgomery, saying that initially the Irish government had been open to suggestions on how customs checks and controls could be performed without any need for a hard border on the island of Ireland but they “ran into a brick wall” with the EU Commission …”
June 16, 2021
Denis,
It was the EUs way of pointing out to the Irish government that they were no longer a sovereign country, but a tool to be used to facilitate the EUs ultimate intentions.
June 16, 2021
Sea Warrior, Smuggling was illegal even when the UK was trapped inside the EU.
June 16, 2021
S_W,
Were the NIP to be implemented it would give rise to sausages flying south in a Prohibition business of wonderous propotions. Have even considered opening a banger/speak easy. Don’t speak with your mouthful.
June 16, 2021
The choice of Toulouse though good for sausages would have better been Corsica or any of the islands off the French coast. The principal was a good one.
The Americans are notoriously geographically unaware. Confirmed by my own experience in the USA. Not only unaware but disinterested.
You do not seem to accept, in print at least, that the NIP was created for the very purpose that the EU are using it, to divide the UK and should we falter to enwrap us in some new clause to our separation that would bring us back into EU control. Witness the offered Vetinary Agreement. Do not fall into such an elephant trap.
The next step is to remind them that if they do not back off, the next step will be Clause 16 suspending the NIP and then if necessary, resort to the Vienna Convention. Boris and the conservatives have much to gain and retain from short decisive action than the prolonged playground spat that is currently running. It might balance the flack he will attract from keeping the country closed down for a further four weeks.
June 16, 2021
Agricola,
So, what are you proposing as an alternative a border between Ireland and NI?
June 16, 2021
Bill Brown.
Only if the Republic of Ireland chooses to create one on their territory. Those manning it will have little to do as trade across that border is miniscule. Left to the ROI and the UK it would be dealt with electronically on trust. The only people engaged in smuggling were the terrorists, currently largely dormant, but no doubt open to any opportunity. Both the ROI and the UK have the law to deal with such eventualities.
Your border hopes are very dated and passe.
June 16, 2021
There is not a border in the whole world between countries with different laws on tariffs and non-tariff rules which is electronic. That is because no electronic technology exists which can tell what is horse meat and what is beef, what is a medicine and what is an illegal narcotic. The “electronic border” is just one more Brexit fairystory. Please, finally, five years on from the referendum, try to live in the real world
June 16, 2021
They don’t want to, so will not even try.
June 16, 2021
You plainly have no experience of international trade Garland
How do you think non EU nations deliver goods into the EU and have done for decades without queues?
June 16, 2021
Agricola
I am really sorry but this just shows you do ot udnerstand the dingle market and how it operates, try again
June 16, 2021
Technically the customs border is still coincident with the international border, and so technically Brandon Lewis was correct on January 1 when he tweeted “There is no ‘Irish Sea Border'”:
https://twitter.com/brandonlewis/status/1345057483887411200?lang=en
Article 4 of the protocol:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/840230/Revised_Protocol_to_the_Withdrawal_Agreement.pdf
“Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom”
In other words, the customs territory of the UK still extends to the land border with the Republic.
And clearly there can be no absolute rule that customs checks must always take place at the actual customs border, or we would not now have EU mandated customs checks on goods destined to cross the land border into the Republic being conducted away from the land border at Belfast and Larne and other EU designated points of entry to Northern Ireland, but with those checks and controls also encompassing the much greater volume of goods which are not destined to end up in the Republic.
And quite apart from that novel, bizarre, “let’s throw some needles into a haystack and then examine every blade of hay until we find all the needles and can check them” game there were already various places north and south away from the border and away from the coast where customs checks were performed.
For example, in the Republic, mentioned here in March:
https://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2021/03/23/a-new-framework-for-our-economy/#comment-1217593
“A spokeswoman for Revenue said: “Revenue has anti-smuggling teams at all main ports and airports and at the main postal depots, who routinely profile imports and exports and carry out X-ray examinations and physical examinations based on risk assessment.”
Well, what a pity that nobody mentioned those Irish anti-smuggling teams at “main postal depots” in the Republic back in the autumn of 2019 when Irish politicians – and then Angela Merkel – got themselves into a bother about Boris Johnson’s suggestion that there could be “customs clearance depots” not at the border itself but well back from the border.”
June 16, 2021
agricola
+1
June 16, 2021
Agricola, Yes you’re right. Especially about the tantalising offer of alignment to EU rules. It is not so much an elephant trap, more ongoing blackmail by the EU – they have zero incentive to make the NIP work. Does Boris Johnson see this? I doubt it.
June 16, 2021
NIckC
Who proposed the protocal and its Irish Sea border? Boris
June 16, 2021
For all of John’s protestations he knows as well as anyone that this idiotically termed protocol is here to stay.
Both the person that now resides in the Whitehouse and Merkel back the NIP and see it as a weapon to coerce the current PM of GB who, let’s face it, is utterly captured by a form of collectivist and internationalist politics that is completely alien to normal, decent minded, moral British people ie the majority population
As an aside. I’ve just returned from Tesco’s and entered the shop without a mask. No one stopped me and if they had I would have left the store and told them to kiss both cheeks. If Johnson, Bidet and all the other flotsam can swan around in Cornwall without adhering to CV19 rules then so can a far more important section of my nation ie the British people
June 16, 2021
The protocol is here to stay only until 2024 (I think the date is) when the NI Assembly can vote to ditch the entire thing. Which plainly they will do if Macron and co continue with their antics.
Of course the driver for the current spat is that Macron is hoping to be elected again next year but is shipping votes to le Pen – populist anti-English rhetoric is one of his tactics to get more votes.
June 16, 2021
Boris is the PM of the UK – not of ‘GB’. You’re not Marcon, are you?
June 16, 2021
Maybe he’s just predicting the future.
June 16, 2021
You’re hard man.
You’ll be drinking from those taps labelled “not drinking water” next…
June 17, 2021
(
June 16, 2021
The current PM is unwilling to go to WTO terms. This despite the fact that we have had more than enough time to ensure we are adequately prepared for it. Despite tough words from Lord Frost too, which are only to provide cover in the media and buy time.
So the dance continues. I suspect lots of work is being done on various government statements to make the present catastrophe sound like a success. Though I suspect various individuals in the EU organisation will be doing the exact opposite.
June 16, 2021
Regarding the masks there is no need for anyone to be wearing one now. You don’t need to see a doctor in order to have an exemption lanyard. In fact it is now too difficult to see a doctor anyway.
Please. Either get a sunflower lanyard or make a lanyard yourself saying “hidden disability” and this avoids some poor sod working on minimum wage being forced to challenge you. I can assure you that most don’t want to do so but may be put in an awkward position by you not wearing one.
I have not been challenged either.
I genuinely have mild claustrophobia after a distressing childhood incident when I was pinned down for twenty minutes and my nylon coat crushed over my face for twenty minutes – a form of water boarding. I have hated having my face covered since but have, thus far, complied with the mask wearing for the good of the country but no more.
Boris has blown the best vaccination effort the world has seen.
He’s a lying jelly of a man who is suffocating our economy.
June 16, 2021
Dom, I am not convinced the NIP is here to stay. It is patently not working. There are three ways out: the UK signs up to alignment with EU rules; the NIP is renegotiated; the NIP is scrapped. Of course the EU has us over a barrel so won’t re-negotiate – why should they? That leaves alignment or scrapping. I have no illusions – Boris Johnson would prefer to fudge. But call me an optimist, I think the NIP will be scrapped because alignment is such an open betrayal.
June 16, 2021
So the European Union, which “needs us more than we need them” has us over a barrel, does it?
How did that happen then?
Whatever changed?
June 16, 2021
Martin, Whenever have I ever said that the EU “needs us more than we need them”? The EU has us over a barrel because of the NIP, signed and ratified by this Tory government, in the face of opposition from huge numbers of Leaves. I cannot recall a single Leave on here thinking the NIP was a good idea – we wanted WTO. Remember the WTO that you opposed, because you wanted us tied to your EU empire?
June 17, 2021
Your Tories have a majority of EIGHTY.
What I or anyone else in the opposition parties want or wanted has NOTHING to do with the present position.
And that goes for every other decision taken by the Government.
June 16, 2021
Well done oh maskless one! And respect.
We have to urgently claim our freedoms back or they will disappear forever down the Great Leader’s gullet. Like a cormorant with a fish.
The nodding dog Parliament will not help us!
June 16, 2021
We are approaching the time where the Government should trigger Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol to suspend its operation in so far as it adversely impacts economic activity. Such unilateral action expressly provided for in the Protocol would not be a breach of its provisions. No point flogging a dead horse. Lord Frost appears more than capable of handling the details.
In any event we cannot have the President of France acting under the umbrella of the EU legislating for what is going on in Northern Ireland.
Also Just to let you know that Rishi Sunak is due to be interviewed by Andrew Neil tonight on GB News at 8:00pm
June 16, 2021
Capable is certainly not a word I would use to describe unelected bureaucrat Mr Frost.
He has negotiated the two worst deals in our country’s recent history.
It is a wonder he is not in prison. Yet.
June 16, 2021
But remaining in the EU, or in the EU’s single market, would have been even worse, Andy. Promises not kept by our Parliament are a canker on the soul of our nation, as I’m sure you will agree, upon reflection. The bad bits of both agreements are the Remain bits.
June 16, 2021
The current problems are a consequence of leaving, and choosing to leave in a manner which involved erecting barriers to trade which were not there before. Leavers created this problem, no one else.
June 16, 2021
Peter Parsons, The current problems are a consequence of not leaving fully. Unless you imagine that the annexation of Northern Ireland by the EU is Leave? It’s certainly not the Leave described to me by either the Leave or the Remain campaigns, or promised by the government prior to the Referendum.
June 16, 2021
andy with his threats of lefty show trials and gulags.
The lovely caring open minded democratic left seen here again.
June 16, 2021
Andy says that he is not on the Left.
June 16, 2021
Then he is not reflecting correctly on his opinions stated openly on here MiC
June 17, 2021
I’d say that his self-assessment is fair, but seen from an extreme, unbalanced perspective that might look different.
June 17, 2021
MiC
I would say that almost everyone who reads your pal andy’s posts on here would consider him to be left wing on the political spectrum.
His views are displayed on here every day and some of the policies he calls for are quite extreme.
June 16, 2021
GB News and especially Andrew Neil’s 8 pm segments are interesting to watch I like the way he allows guests to speak I just wish they were challenged a bit more and asked to expand such as the NFU rep last night. I also wish he wasn’t surrounded by a black studio, the sound quality on guests microphones will hopefully be sorted out soon and the busy office behind Michelle is too distracting especially when she is distracted with her earpiece and iPad but it is so unusual to hear someone like Michelle I’m still in shock. Lady Colin Campbell was very interesting last night.
The divisions the Twitter left are trying to create with their
June 16, 2021
Be aware that article 16 of the NI protocol does not suspend the said protocol it merely initiates a mechanism to bring any single area of dispute to the joint committee to be resolved
June 16, 2021
I think it is worth noting that the French Republic has 5 overseas Departements, regarded as integral parts of France and retaining exactly the same legal status as Departements physically within France’s European borders.
Two Depts are in the Caribbean, one is on the NW coast of South America, and two are in the Indian Ocean.
Perhaps Mr Raab, as Foreign Secretary, could point this out to Msieu Macron at some relevant point in the NI discussions?
June 16, 2021
There are also hard borders and customs checks between France and those overseas Departements. As I am sure M Macron knows
June 16, 2021
Mr Macron didn’t sign a deal putting a border between mainland France and any of its offshore departments.
The Tory Brexitists not only DID sign a deal putting a border between GB and NI, they also negotiated this deal all by themselves – and they got the public to vote for it at a general election.
At some point you really do have to accept culpability for your own mess.
June 16, 2021
No, Andy, the deals were subject to terminal influence by the Remain Parliaments 2016-2019. The artificial sea border exists due to concessions to the EU, made by Theresa May and Ollie Robbins (both Remains) early on. At some point you really do have to accept culpability for your own mess.
June 16, 2021
NickC, not true: the formal negotiations leading to the UK-EU TCA started on 2 March 2020 (1) between the representations respectively led by Lord Frost and Michel Barnier. So your usual white noise about the influence of remainers in Parliament is just that, white noise.
What had started before were the negotiations on what became the so-called Withdrawal Agreement, i.e., the Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community.
(1) consilium.europa.eu
I find funny that you are creating your own mess by being unable to distinguish between those.
June 16, 2021
NickC, have you forgotten Theresa May on 21 September 2018 ‘I will never agree to a border in the Irish Sea that separates Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK’. Or are you rewriting history to please your prejudices?
June 16, 2021
The Northern Ireland Protocol was negotiated by Boris Johnson after he became PM. He took his deal to the country in December 2019 – the Withdrawal Agreement was his ‘oven ready deal.’ It was a great deal he said. You probably voted for it to Get Brexit Done.
With his new Brexitist government Johnson passed the Withdrawal Agreement in January 2020 with the backing of virtually all Tory MPs. Virtually all other MPs opposed it. In the European Parliament Farage’s clan all voted for it. So did the Tory Brexitists. The other British MEPs all opposed it.
I am genuinely laughing my head of at your mess and your pathetic attempts to accept culpability for your own actions. Bit of a gutless snowflake, aren’t you?
June 16, 2021
NIck C
your memory is very short and Ollie worked it out with Boris not with May, her solution was different look it up
June 16, 2021
They got a minority of the public to vote for it. This government did not get its mandate from a majority of the votes cast, but from an unrepresentative electoral system.
June 16, 2021
Neither do governments elected under PR.
The only way you get a government with a real majority of votes is to have a final election with all parties removed except for two.
June 16, 2021
Peter P, The government got the mandate to Leave from the Leave win in the Referendum, according to the rules laid down by Parliament.
June 16, 2021
Strongly agree with your comments. Whilst the NI Protocol is in place there is scope for a future UK Government to drift us back into EU laws and oversight by signing up NI (and then the wider UK) to EU standards so that ‘essential checks to safeguard the Single Market’ are removed. I would say that is a virtual certainty should a Labour led government come to power.
June 16, 2021
It is inevitable in future anyway. Why do you want pointless bureaucracy at our borders? Did anyone much care about chilled meat standards before 2016? Providing the meat was safe was it an issue? The next generation will deal with the pointless Brexit red tape by slowly aligning with the EU until we eventually go back it. It is inevitable.
June 16, 2021
“Geography is destiny” as someone once said.
June 16, 2021
Who? Our position is an island – separate. Geddit?
June 17, 2021
So are Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Crete, Cyprus, and Iceland – in the EEA.
Oh, and Ireland, in the European Union too.
June 16, 2021
A post of hope over reality by andy.
June 16, 2021
More deluded propaganda from Gummer’s “independent” Committee for Climate Change. Why on earth does this tax payer funded organisation even exist? It is does huge net harm.
Where is the red team of climate realists to debunk their mad and insanely expensive agenda?
https://www.theccc.org.uk/
June 16, 2021
It is by far the most biased committee in history…even the title of the committee is biased
June 16, 2021
I don’t claim to be an expert on the NIP, but it seems that the goods likely to be exported from NI to Ireland are miniscule. We were told NI would benefit from being in the Customs Union as well as being in the UK internal market but it appears they are no longer in the UK internal market. Otherwise, how can the EU ‘ban’ UK goods from going to NI? Do we have a UK internal market, or not?
June 16, 2021
No we don’t have a UK internal market. Boris and all the Tory MPs who voted for his deal gave it away
June 16, 2021
“Bad faith” by John in the context appears to mean expecting people to do what they have signed a treaty to say that they would do.
That’s quite interesting.
As I have said, you are going to hear far, far more from now on about the European Union than you ever did while the UK was a member, and there is no end in sight to this, not for many years.
John’s endless pieces like this are just one example, but they perhaps quicken the curtain-twitching voter – for now.
It’s just hair-of-the-dog to those beginning to suffer a hangover, from their drunkenness on brexit spirit.
Some people need to sober up and to dry out properly, I think.
June 16, 2021
Martin, Why do you persist in assuming that the UK is incapable of existing perfectly satisfactorily outside the EU empire?
June 17, 2021
What a silly False Dichotomy of Absolutes.
June 17, 2021
Strange response MiC
Over 160 nations exist outside the EU.
June 16, 2021
Time to test the sovereignty clause. If it stands up to legal challenge the problem goes away.
If not then a referendum in Northern Ireland is required. Once that is won by the Unionists the protocol will have to be scrapped.
The EU commissars are happy to ride roughshod over those who disagree with them until they are challenged at which point fudge and compromise become the order of the day
June 16, 2021
Insightful and comp0lete common sense…. Is Boris listening?
I suggest two other elements apply to the way the EU behave.
One, people like Macron and some other EU elites get by through bullying, not diplomacy.
Two, by making sure we have big problems over NI it satisfies the EU lust to punish the UK for daring to leave their enclave.
June 16, 2021
Boris does not seem to be in listening mode (other than perhaps to theatre designer graduate Carrie. He is in an insane, big government, high taxes, lock down for ever, spew ever more red tape, piss money down the drain mode and go for expensive unreliable energy and £3 trillion net zero carbon mode too.
Insanity and Sunak seems no better. With his tax increases and endless attacks on the productive sector. He is interviewed tonight by Andrew Neil.
June 16, 2021
Sir JR
Can I just remiand you there are still negotiations going on to fix the problem, but you are alaready saying we should leave th protocol. which will mean a new border between Ireland and NI, which will not help the peace agreement in NI.
So, hold your horses stop the emotional language and threats and give the negotiations a chance. The alternative is worse and emotinal generalisations at this stage helps nobody.
June 16, 2021
There has been a border between Eire and the UK since 1922. Didn’t you know? No “new” border is needed. And one of the options is to leave the protocol, so why shouldn’t JR say so? Don’t get in so much of an emotional flap in protecting your EU empire, Bill.
June 16, 2021
NickC
I aprpeciate your lecture and input it is very valuable and appreaciated teh contant and the facts might be distoted and not quite up to scratch but at least you do try
June 16, 2021
Only the EU is demanding a border.
Neither NI nor the South wants one.
Do you reckon the EU might invade and build a new version of the Berlin Wall bill?
June 16, 2021
LOGIC dictates a border according to what has been agreed.
June 16, 2021
Who is LOGIC MiC?
June 16, 2021
Well Frontex is operating and is armed routinely. So the EU will just deploy the EU army aka Frontex.
June 17, 2021
Peter 2
Grow up and stick to the facts as they are presented
June 17, 2021
Your abuse is unwelcome and ironic billy, seeing as you never present us with any facts when you post.
I repeat there is a border now and there has been for decades.
Both sides will not construct another one so are you telling us that the EU will invade and build a Berlin/Trump type wall?
June 16, 2021
Apparently one may not take a ham sandwich from either Ukraine to Poland or England to France (and presumably now vice versa if we wish to exert full control at our border). By the same token ham sandwiches and sausages are not to be taken from NI to ROI unless the ham and sausages conform to EU rules which can only be the case if NI follows EU rules for ham and sausages. Many will feel that the whole issue of stopping us taking our ham sandwiches to France is a load of nonsense but it is the EU rule, actually just paralleling the USA which will not let us take in ham sandwiches, fruit etc. This will become more difficult if we want Australian meat to go on sale in NI. There is nothing to stop an individual taking a purchase from NI to ROI. The only way out of this is for EU to allow our rules to apply to ROI or a hard border to be built between NI and ROI so everything and everybody can be physically checked.
June 16, 2021
The way round it is for ROI (if they have nothing better to do) is to fine anyone caught who takes these things from NI to ROI. If they really want to do anything so moronically stupid. Alternatively they should just forget about such trivialities and worry only about trucks loads of ham. What about people who have just eaten the ham do they have to wait at the border until it has passed through them?
Brexit illustrates more and more the damage done by the EU with damaging red tape and endless pointless bureaucracy.
June 16, 2021
Actually baines I think you would find most of us don’t care about taking a ham sandwich over the border, the irony when 60% of the pork consumed in the UK comes from Denmark something we need to address quickly.
It is not the only way out of it. We can discover what are the goods that are having trouble going from the UK mainland to Northern Ireland, can they become self-sufficient in them? Principles are one thing but if Northern Ireland want to keep their EU passports and common travel area within Ireland then that was the deal on offer and what was signed up. If our politicians won’t solve this the UK public can help things along with selective purchasing.
June 16, 2021
It is perfectly normal for there to be strict rules on foods at borders. This is designed to keep people safe. My family got stopped on arrival in Australia because our 10 year old daughter had a piece of fruit at the bottom of her bag that we didn’t know about. Was it a hostile act of the Aussies to drag a kid out of the customs queue, search her bag and threaten her parents with a £250 fine for a piece of fruit? What do you reckon Brexitists?
June 16, 2021
Serve you right andy.
Did you not read the rules and abide by them.
It seems you want the UK to abide by a strict interpretation of the rules but complain when it negatively affects you.
June 16, 2021
In Australia you cannot cross state borders with fruit.
June 16, 2021
Lord Frost will appear before the Commons Northern Ireland Committee today:
https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/120/northern-ireland-affairs-committee/news/155817/minister-questioned-on-ni-protocol/
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/0f2762db-c000-4443-bb78-65da4688884f
June 16, 2021
I was staggered by this answer from Lord Frost:
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/0f2762db-c000-4443-bb78-65da4688884f?in=11:07:24&out=11:08:07
Why on earth did Boris Johnson and he ever accept a duty to control the movement of some goods WITHIN THE COUNTRY in order to protect the EU single market?
To protect the EU single market the UK only needed to impose legal controls on the goods being carried across the land border from the UK into the Irish Republic.
June 16, 2021
Denis, the UK has accepted there can be no checks between NI and Ireland. Peace demands that. And so the UK has accepted controls WITHIN THE UK. Have you today finally understood that? That is the oven ready deal. If you can grasp that, maybe we can finally move forward realistically, and the UK can do what it promised, ie do checks between GB and NI
June 16, 2021
GF
There are checks now and have been going on for years.
There is even a TV programme showing customs and excise officers stopping vehicles on both sides of the border checking vehicle taxes and the legitimaticy of contents of vehicles.
Did you not know?
June 17, 2021
Of course there can be and there are checks between NI and Ireland.
You still miss the simple longstanding point that said checks need not be performed at the actual border between NI and Ireland, with no need for stern faced uniformed customs officers to hold up the traffic as per the propaganda images:
https://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2018/09/13/there-are-other-options-to-chequers/#comment-960455
“… and it would be incomprehensible that the UK media keep using those pictures, and that the UK government never says anything about it, if it were not for the obvious fact that far from wishing to counter anti-Brexit propaganda the UK government is actively contributing to it.”
And you miss the less simple and more recent point that the goods to be checked at Belfast and Larne under the protocol are all the goods entering Northern Ireland, not just the small fraction destined for the Republic.
June 16, 2021
This is the crux of the whole prblem and is an absolute DISGRACE. It is the worst failure to defend British interests since Lord North lost the American colonies.
Why the hell should we care about the EU’s single market – let alone take responsibility to protect it??? It is madness!
The claim is that this was done to ‘protect the peace in NI’ – but this is garbage. If it was believed that a ‘hard border’ North-South was against the spirit of the Belfast Agreement (it certainly was not against the letter of that agreement – read it yourself if you don’t believe me) and would emperil the peace (not true, but I accept some people believed this) then all we had to do was say ‘we won’t build a hard border’. That’s it. And yes, this might mean some leakage of UK goods into the RoI (and hence the EU) but so what? That was never our problem! Let them leak through – why should we care about it???
The whole point is that Boris betrayed Britain’s interests and unity when – for God knows what reason – he suddenly accepted that the UK should care about the EU’s single market. I certainly don’t and nor, I suspect, does any other Brexiteer.
June 17, 2021
Parliament did say “We won’t build a hard border”, at least not without the agreement of the EU and therefore the Irish, but long after that had been put into UK law:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/16/section/10/enacted
it was still being pretended that the UK government was willing to do so, and the UK government did nothing to contradict those claims.
June 16, 2021
So true Sir John.
This part of the EU and particularly President Macron’s punishment schedule. We mustn’t loose sight that the Belfast Agreement never had EU involvement – it was the RoI, NI, the USA and the UK Government that brokered the peace. Part of the was it was only the citizens of the island of Ireland that could change things. In the EU citizens do as they are told or get punished.
We also need to remember that the EU Commission forced those in the RoI to vote and keep voting until they voted correctly and accepted that it was the EU that was their Rulers. Their Yes – No referendum was only going to be accepted once ‘Yes’ was the outcome! In the EU’s eyes the ROI is people they don’t trust so the keep them supressed.
The cynic in me also sees the punishment agenda in Macron’s Government owned Energy Supplier in the UK (EDF), over the last 2 weeks they have announced the closure of 4 UK based nuclear installations. Not to be replaced – just closed. The UK is to be forced to accept the EU as their energy supplier. UK development and industry is to be forced to accept EU prices and rules on energy until it submits to their(the EU’s) over arching rule.
This endless punishment regime will continue until the UK Government does what it was asked be the UK Citizen’s – leave the EU!
June 16, 2021
UK(EDF) should be nationalized , the decision reviewed then solutions to end dependence on external connectors with suitable UK based capacity preferably renewable and or existing safe plant.
June 16, 2021
On the other hand, there are precedents for one-country-two-systems outcomes in international treaties, for example in Hong Kong where the trade arrangements negotiated by Mrs Thatcher’s government have been acceptable to the Chinese for more than twenty years now.
June 16, 2021
Totally off topic!
Sir John, why do you need to moderate the comments?
It gives the strong impression that there are topics that you don’t want discussed…. Why?
It’s an attack on free speech, you have no apparent interest in preventing Doris Johnson laying waste to the United Kingdom, content to be a member of the establishment and awaiting your elevation to the HoL where you can sign in, collect your £300 per day and enjoy a subsidised meal and perhaps snooze on the benches!
The whole system is rotten to the core and you’re part of the problem there are a great many sensible proposals aired here but the chances of you doing anything about it are ZERO
The Conservative Woman seems happy to post pretty much everything as long as it doesn’t contain certain words and I expect that it’s got a far greater circulation
And I think that the chances of this surviving the moderation are ZERO
If someone makes an offensive comment then
Reply I moderate comments especially when someone makes an unproven allegation against a named individual. I also delete false comments about me where I have already rebutted the point.
June 16, 2021
Lester – well said. If it does not fit the narrative it does not get published. And the G7 gathering of globalists was all in the peoples interest!!!!!!
If this gets published I will be amazed.
June 16, 2021
When we threatened to ditch the Protocol last time there was a howl of protest from the elites about breaking international law Boris backed down and sent Gove who claimed everything was sorted. Obviously it wasn’t and as usual he crumbled to the EU.
With people like Blair quick to say we should align with them will anything be different this time?
June 16, 2021
Well, the choice is clear.
It seems to be the break up of the UK, and quite easily a return to The Troubles in Ireland, or a massive split in the Right, and in their voters, caused by Alignment.
I wonder if the Tories will put party and power before country and peoples lives?
Any clues from the past?
June 16, 2021
Martin, YOU voted Remain. YOU supported the Remain Parliaments 2016-2019 as they attempted to overturn our Leave vote, trashing our constitution in the process. But YOU thought that was a price worth paying to remain in the EU, or at least in the EU’s single market. YOU nearly succeeded. And the plight of Northern Ireland locked in the EU’s single market is solely down to Remain. Without Remain undermining our vote to Leave, NI would be as free from the EU as GB is.
June 16, 2021
Aw, there there now…
June 17, 2021
Nick C
this is all part of your illusions it has nothing to do with the facts on the grond or the actual historical context of what needs to happen on the Island of Ireland. (source EIU UK AND EU)
June 16, 2021
Good to see a report on Brexit opportunities and a new unit being set up to make sure we explore them properly. These ideas and, eg, the Australia trade deal illustrate how essential it is the govt does not cave into the EU’s demand for regulatory ‘alignment’ (ie subordination) as a ‘solution’ for the NI issues.
June 16, 2021
Unfortunately a proper analysis of exactly the issues between the terms of the Protocol and the GFA has never been made by a leading UK newspaper. We have learned more here from our host and and Denis Cooper that the whole of the media put together.
Like so much else, the government never give us this information either. I had high hopes there would be more push back when Boris employed Alegra Stratton as his media spokesman but that came to nothing.
Why does the government not go on the offensive and produce and distribute a well argued factual paper through the media and diplomatic channels to put matters to rights ? Rather like the line by line forensic analysis of the EU’s preposterous Brexit bill, famously presented to Barnier and Co by a sadly unknown civil servant. Unless, of course, the arguments do not legally favour our side………………….
June 16, 2021
The better defence to suspending this arrangement is that it was signed under a pincered coercion. The Benn Act had forbidden a no deal Brexit and the EU took advantage of that by offering the lousiest deal following May’s capitulation. Johnson could and should have made more of this at the time and stated that he was signing under duress, which would have given him leeway to renege.
June 16, 2021
International rules based organisation wishes to apply International rules !
Redwood claims ” Not my fault! ”
Dog bites man
Maybe you should have had a cooling off period .They are there exactly to prevent people who do not understand what they agreed from the consequences of their own stupidity. More aimed at old ladies and dodgy savings plans than International Agreements but ..
June 16, 2021
good analogy @New – the cooling off period also serves as protection against monopolistic, cartel-minded suppliers and their unreasonable clauses.
June 16, 2021
I am sure the negotiators saw the NIP as a compromise to get Brexit done. The trouble is the good old British compromise (fudge) requires that both sides act fairly and accept what has been agreed. It seems that the EU cannot or more likely will not play fair in their determination to punish the UK and want to twist the words to to what they see as their advantage, which is actually alienating the people they seek to impress. We must give notice that after 5 months of this, we are no longer prepared to accept interference in the UK internal market (against the spirit of the agreement) and such products as the EU are putting the brakes on will be reciprocated in imports from the EU plus a few more that matter to the EU. Failing to bring this to a conclusion within a short time, we must withdraw from the whole edifice, which surely cannot be a much worse position than we are now in. If they want to damage exports to the UK further than they already have, so be it.
June 16, 2021
A fair and true appraisal
June 16, 2021
Well I guess it is a easy mistake to make, with our nation often being known as Great Britain and Northern Ireland, along with NI having a historically separate governance (other than during “The Troubles”), the fact is NI was historically far closer to the Status of the IoM, the CIs, even Gibraltar than were Scotland and Wales.
Nor is this confused identity just political, when France takes part in the Six Nations rugby tournament for example they field one all France team that includes their overseas territories, the United Kingdom fields three (England, Scotland & Wales) whilst Eire and NI fields an all Ireland team -and yes I do understand the reasons for this, before the trolls roll in.
As for Macron’s comment, whilst crass, ill-informed, I’m sure some Brexiteers will make a crisis out of what was obviously a miss-speak…
June 16, 2021
but it wasn’t a miss-speak Jerry. He used an incorrect statement to make a point. Trumpian some might say.
June 16, 2021
@NS; It is you, and many others, it would seem who needs to look up the definitions of the words “Nation” and “Country”, not Macron!
June 17, 2021
You can deflect towards text book definitions all you like Jerry but it is an inescapable legally accepted fact that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom.
And if asked in a referendum they would say they want to continue to be part of the United Kingdom.
I presume you accept the vote of the majority to decide what future they want?
June 16, 2021
Let America have Northern Ireland. They’re clever enough to know how to deal with it and it would sort out the sausage crisis too.
(H/T to Peter Hitchens.)
June 16, 2021
Big problem facing UK economy for future, reading today, is that production of electric cars here in UK is decreasing fairly rapidly.
What a disaster. Whatever people think about electric cars, the demand for them is growing and growing, and there is BIG money to be made out of them. And high productivity / skills etc. And this kind of tech is developing rapidly and alongside similar types of tech.
We lost ARM. We don’t produce our own top-notch brand cars like Audi, Mercedes, BMW. We don’t want to mess up here as well.
Government needs to do what it can to support / encourage the high tech / digital sector in this country – boosting, greatly, wealth, skills / productivity / exports.
June 16, 2021
Nissan are now building their next generation Qashqai in Sunderland and are to send battery manufacture from Japan to the UK. Nissan wants electric cars to be built here and Japan. Qashqai represents one in five of all cars built in Britain, so not so gloomy as your first sentence. The new battery plant will provide thousands of new jobs and 200,000 batteries per year.
June 16, 2021
Great news, didn’t know
June 16, 2021
Once again I urge that the UK government should take the initiative and set up a system of export licences to regulate the carriage of goods from Northern Ireland across the land border into the Irish Republic, and so whether or not it would be deserved do the EU the favour of unilaterally acting to protect its single market while keeping the land border open. Then if/when the UK government decided that enough was enough with the Irish protocol that alternative protection of the EU single market would already be in place.
June 16, 2021
Well said Sir John. Sovereignty trumps all the posturing and a subject they pretend does not exist as it undermines everything the EU house of cards stands for – not built on rock but shifting sands.
June 16, 2021
I wonder what M. Macron would say if someone suggested that Corsica was not part of France?
June 16, 2021
He would say that is not true. However, Boris has signed a deal which says Northern Ireland applies EU law on goods and food. Do you see the difference?
June 16, 2021
As GileB details above – he has not
June 16, 2021
Grey Friar
“Boris has signed a deal which says Northern Ireland applies EU law on goods and food. ”
Well he woul do, because :-
1) He thinks he has the mandate.
2) He does as the hell he likes because he thinks that’s what an election manifesto is for.
3) He’s half Belgian. (de Pfeffel)
4) He’s a remainer just like his predecessor.
5) He’s a catholic.
The guy is’nt going to stand up to the EU and defend British sovereignty. He is’nt one of us.
June 16, 2021
Nobody in France is proposing putting a customs border between the mainland and Corsica. If they did they would a) be bonkers and b) be expecting checks. Because borders mean checks.
No offence to you lot but have any of you ever actually crossed a border? Do you know what a border is? Borders are a pain in the backside – they create barriers to trade in goods and services. They create barriers to people. They are a pointless bureaucratic faff.
Why are you surprised – that having demanded you take back control of our borders – that the border you have erected is a pain in the backside? Or were you only hoping your border would be a pain in the backside for everyone else?
June 16, 2021
andy have you ever been to Felixstowe or Hull or other major ports, where thousands of large containers from outside the EU arrive are unloaded off ships and put on trains and lorries for delivery to customers every single day.
No queues, no problems.
June 16, 2021
Borders let you keep out undesirables. No wonder you have experienced problems with them.
I never have. Even US, Australian, and Polish (some decades ago) border personnel have been friendly.
June 16, 2021
Andy
“Because borders mean checks.”
Only if someone wants trade to cross them.
June 16, 2021
..and annuvver fing Boris’s ‘great deal ‘won him an election, it got approved by Parliament, and he signed it.
A joint committee agreed the implementation of the protocol. The UK co chair of the committee was M Gove.
A UK command paper sets out the detail of the implementation and the joint committee agreements on implementation. Paragraph 35 of the command paper shows the government knew that the end of the transition period some goods could no longer move from GB to NI.
I can supply the link
End of
June 16, 2021
But it isn’t Leave, Newmania. By definition. Part of the UK remains under EU control. We were promised by Parliament, and all players, that Leave meant leave, fully and completely. That’s what we voted on – Leave or Remain. Only.
June 16, 2021
The only position which was defined – by treaties – was Remain.
There was no definition of Leave. Once the UK had ceased to be a member under the treaties then it had left, and so any obligation under the advisory referendum was discharged completely.
You have never been asked what post exit-arrangements the UK should make with the European Union – which is what these are – nor as to any other accommodation.
They can form part of party manifestoes and be decided or modified by elections at any time – which is perfectly normal.
Get used to it – there will be no end to these debates in your lifetime, thanks to your Leave vote, and stop your endless and groundless whingeing.
You have EXACTLY for what you voted – continual strife.
So smile.
June 17, 2021
Remain wasnt defined MiC
Many people who voted remain had different views on what the EU would be like in the future.
Some wanted a United States of Europe
Some wanted us to join the Euro, others were opposed.
Some wanted the EU to return to being more of a trading bloc.
Some did not want ever more member nation to join others wanted expansion.
Others refused to accept the EUs ambition for its own army.
June 16, 2021
Not true ( of course ) but whether you think the sort of hard Brexit was what the country wanted or not its what the Conservative /Brexit Party decided we are getting .By doing so it chose to sell N Ireland out and as we see did so knowingly.
Whining about it now, is like a smug greedy Etonian scoffing umpteen pies and then crying about the fact he is getting fat
June 16, 2021
Exactly – Leave Means Leave
June 16, 2021
Wish you’d keep the ROI out of your arguments. Your differences are with the EU with whom your PM and government signed an international agreement.
Also lets be clear about the makeup of the UK – it comes in two parts – the United Kingdom of GB and NI – Prior to 1922 it was the UK of GB and Ireland – and prior to 1800 mainland Britain which included Scotland from 1707 was called GB.
So you see NI is a colony of sorts especially when we look at the results of the 1918 GE in the whole of Ireland which gave SF overall 75 seats out of a total of 105 – but that was not good enough for Lloyd George and the British Govt they then set about drawing a border – yes a colony of sorts that still costs the British taxpayer 15 billion pa – maybe more
June 16, 2021
I have up to now never heard a politician give such an honest and succinct description of the Northern Ireland situation, well said Sir!
I spent almost thirty years of my life fighting Republican terrorism within the MOD family, but new all was lost when Blair sided with terrorists and finally left for England when I wss expected to accept a Republican terrorist as minister for my children’s education .
My hope now is to see the protocol scrapped and Northern Ireland firmly in the embrace of the British family.
June 16, 2021
Sorry!
KNEW! A typing error
June 16, 2021
MFD, Well said. And thank you for your service.
June 16, 2021
MFD
“…….new all was lost when Blair sided with terrorists”
Indeed so. In fact Gerry Adams is on record as saying all Sin Fein and the IRA had to do was wait because eventually tyere would be a British PM “soft enough to give us what we want” He was right, was’nt he.
June 16, 2021
We should renounce the N.I. protocol as not fit for purpose and instead legislate very stiff penalties for the smuggling of animals, plants or goods deemed illegal in the EU, such as vaccum cleaners with a motor in excess of 900W, from the UK to the EU.
Such a measure should be sufficient for the EU who are not worried by a constant flow of illegal migrants into the EU.
June 16, 2021
Agree – however we should treat the border with NI/RoI the same as our channel border Eng/France
June 17, 2021
Agreed! We must not be blindfolded by the scheming of republicans
June 16, 2021
The UK govt needs to be on the front foot and be prepared to take the fight to the EU by using every possible legal means open to the UK within the WA. Hopefully this should only mean using the terms of the WA to stonewall and frustrate the EU by spiking their guns before they take retaliatory action ( from the EU’s point of view a good PR exercise that informs the world that they must have a genuine agreement ). Retaliatory action via tariffs, etc are a good way of damaging the UK whilst awaiting for their complaint to be heard by the ECJ. Should the EU take action then the UK must respond and respond in days not after months of debate and more wasteful negotiation. Ben Habib’s article for Brexit Watch and Sir Hannan ( Telegraph ) are a good read on this subject.
Failing a reset by the EU after a UK retalitory response then tear up the Trade Agreement and WA. My preferred option.
Boris needs to have a comprehensive plan in place to mitigate any attack on our economy and Islands. By now we must have many many reasons to take retalitory action under existing agreements including best endeavours and good faith. Such measures should be aimed specifically at the economies of Germany and France.
A trade war is not desirable but that does not mean we should not retaliate. Preparation for war is our best defense.
June 16, 2021
The rest of Europe is saying something similar:
“Bye, British!”
June 16, 2021
With a 90 billion trade deficit the UK won’t suffer as much as Germany and France as consumers start buying from other non EU countries.
June 17, 2021
Plenty are pleading ‘Welcome Brits’. They need to put food on the table, and the EU bosses do nothing about it.
June 16, 2021
The EUs clause of ‘level playing field’ with trump any future negotiation for changing the WA and T&CA
June 16, 2021
I want the licence fee that I pay transferred from the fascist, racist BBC and directed to GB News that is now fighting to defend freedom of expression, destroy Marxist attacks on our nation’s culture and demography and expose both main parties complicity in trying to wrap us up in laws to silence us and to protect the 2 party status quo
June 16, 2021
Yes, it was only the other day that I saw a mob of jeering, lurching, tattoo-headed BBC journalists threatening a joiner for flying the England flag from his van…
June 16, 2021
Who’d doubt it in Cardiff?
June 16, 2021
We must support GB News as it is under attack just as President Trump was from the Left and the liberal fascist establishment. They want it to fail along with like thinking corporates who are starting a boycott.
June 16, 2021
Strongly agree with your comments. Whilst the NI Protocol is in place there is scope for a future UK Government to drift us back into EU laws and oversight by signing up NI (and then the wider UK) to EU standards so that ‘essential checks to safeguard the Single Market’ are removed. I would say that is a virtual certainty should a Labour led government come to power.
June 16, 2021
MPC
“I would say that is a virtual certainty should a Labour led government come to power.”
I’d be happy with that. I’ve been a conservative voter all my life, but next time I will vote Labour, not because I think they’ll do better, but just for the purpose of punishing Johnson and his like-minded bunch of treasonous cowards.
It’s gone past saving the country now, it’s about taking down the culprits.
June 17, 2021
Statistically Steve, if you no longer vote FOR, and now vote AGAINST then you change the outcome by 2 votes, not one.
Power to the People !
June 16, 2021
There is a front page report in today’s times that Gove is proposing to appease the SNP and its supporters with the intention of “saving the Union” by removing the current half-baked arrangement for voting on English-only legislation at Westminster. Whatever is he thinking of ?
The only thing that will “save the Union” is the common sense of Scottish
voters when they finally realise that Scotland would be an impoverished
backwater without the support of billions of Bank of England pounds
every year handed over by English taxpayers.
Our host used to champion English votes for English legislation but not any more. Time to man the barricades again.
English voters most definitely do NOT want an extra layer of politicians so the only solution acceptable to English voters would be to allow English MPs to sit as an English Parliament at Westminster having the same devolved powers as given to Scottish MEPs. The very idea of returning a veto over English legislation to second-rate SNP politicians like Blackmore and his motley crew is unthinkable.
As for the hated and outmoded Barnett formula, English voters should remember that, without the three devolved regions, England would have almost no deficit at all.
O campaigned for English votes. KI suspended most of the campaign when Brexit was possible to put my efforts into that.
June 16, 2021
I understood that Brexit had to come first but, as I said above, its now time to man the Constitutional barricades again.
The best form of defence is attack, so the campaign for proper Devolution with English MPs sitting as representatives for England on carefully-crafted devolved issues, at least as broad as those enjoyed by Holyrood, needs to be restarted again. The question is, Sir John, are you up for it ?
June 16, 2021
But you say as to Europe, “it’s not about money”.
Why should the Scots not be equally non-materialistic and ideals-motivated then?
June 16, 2021
CHRISS – Gove is a viper in a nest of serpents.
June 16, 2021
One of the basic problems in any negotiation with the EU is that our team post May will have approached the separation agreement from a position of good intent. May was on their side so anything she agreed, said, or did was dishonest.
I once stated that based on a friends experience during Concorde developement, you had to fight for everything that had been agreed was yours, after the agreement. It has been bourne out by the NIP interpretation. The french in particular do not come to such a negotiation in good faith. Look at how their self interest at Versailles sowed the seeds of WW2. The only time sincerity manifests itself in french negotiations is when they surrender. I see this as a feature of their political class, not of the people.
Barnier made it clear in print after the reality of our decision in 2016, that the UK would be punished for having the temerity to leave the EU. We should therfore not be surprised at their behaviour. Added to which they are terrified of our potential for great success and what it might suggest to other teetering EU members. Time for a resolute Albion to lay it on the line for them, take it or leave it.
June 16, 2021
+1
June 17, 2021
Agricola,
This punish jargon is very tiring, everybody in Europe is interested in a sucessful UK, so they can sell more good and services
June 17, 2021
I agree with you bill.
Businesses in Europe are keen to trade with us and we with them but the EU elite are doing their best to make it difficult.
June 16, 2021
Macron reveals the mindset entrenched in Brussels for many years that NI is not a legitimate part of the UK.
To better aid his understanding, the example of the UK government halting shipments of Toulouse sausages to Corsica could have been made.
June 16, 2021
If the EU wants to have a pernickety, maximalist approach to the border between the UK and the EU….then let them put up a hard land border between North and South!
See how they get on with that!
June 16, 2021
Well….why on earth is the NHS keen to collect more data when it can’t even deal accurately with the data it already has?
Oh…it wants to SELL it!
June 17, 2021
And if you don’t opt out by June 21. Then you are permanently opted in for medical data sharing.
That seems to have been sneaked in undercover of COVID. Completely untrustworthy governance.
Add in Globalist and or EU vaccine passports. Then Social scores and woke marxist cancel culture starts its enforcement.
June 16, 2021
So what’s going to happen when Scotland gets independence because there will no longer be GB or UK
In fact all of the treaties heretofore signed in the name of GB will fail as will treaties signed in the name of UK
June 16, 2021
The first thing that happens is a hell of a lot of cheering on both sides of a new border.
The north will be known as the New Workhouse, and the southern part will be England Alone Again.
June 16, 2021
Increasing High Tech in this country also boosts Jung’s famous psychological insight of the True Masculine Male.
The True Masculine Male (which we need to encourage more and more in our great country), depends on the following Masculine Virtues: King, Warrior, Magician (in Renaissance sense – not Paul Daniels) and Lover of Life.
Magician is very much about being skilled in something important to do with the natural world (it also means other things too). That includes MAKING THINGS. Using high skills to make things is a particular masculine virtue. Now Socialists ruin this by making things people don’t need. But making things that people need (i.e. quality cars / computer servers / computer chips / satellites – and other high tech stuff) is something that men get a huge kick out of. It also taps into men’s sense of patriotism. That they make things that they then export. The Germans have this sense of both masculine and patriotic satisfaction when they build and export great German cars like Audi, BMW or Mercedes, or that Californians get to a degree in Silicon Valley when the build and export high quality tech.
And then there are all the invaluable services based around High Tech / Digital.
Another reason, from the great Jung (whose psychology is inspired by the Greco-Roman / Judaeo-Christian world – and by all the male hero-like figures inhabiting this world), why we need to focus far more on boosting High Tech / Digital in this country.
Sadly, modern man is far more divorced from the great virtues that made men real men in the past. Men are no longer inspired by the great Greek heroes, by Roman virtues such as we saw in Marcus Aurelius, virtues of the ‘King’ that we see in Cyrus the Great in the Bible, or by the rites of passages of more primitive people that turn their boys into real men.
We need to return to all this more. This has to become more mainstream in our Conservative philosophy if we really want to make our country as happy + great and as masculine (for men) (and feminine for women) as possible – in good way – as it can be.
June 16, 2021
ouija boards, magicians, clairvoyants, freemasons, astrology.
All outlawed by Catholicism.
June 16, 2021
As I was saying, ‘Magician’ doesn’t mean Paul Daniels!
Magician is a Renaissance word meaning someone highly skilled in something.
The Catholic Church has a lot of time for the psychology of Jung as his psychology is rooted in Judaeo-Christianity and the Greco-Roman world. It’s not just The Catholic Church but lots of people including atheists.
If you’re happy with our young men turning out to be wimps and posers and so on, fine. But I am not. I want our young men to grow into proper men. Like Jung’s famous archtypes: King, Warrior, Magician, Lover of Life. This is PROPER, TRADITIONAL CONSERVATISM!!
June 17, 2021
Lastly, by helping to turn our young men into proper, real men (i.e. by focusing them on the famous Jungian Male Arch Types) , they will take far more responsibility for themselves, including finance and health – both mental and physical – and their families, instead of relying on state, and leading to far higher productivity, patriotism / public duty and sense of adventure about life – including in business, sport, the arts etc ..
Thus saving the tax payer billions of pounds whilst making our great country more interesting.
The Duke of Edinburgh Award is good because it helps to address this issue of trying to turn boys into proper men – but far more needs to be done. By politicians and those in high places who these politicians rub shoulders with / have influence over – those in high places such as people in business, education, the media, arts etc
June 16, 2021
Who cares what Dominick Cummings says / thinks – like hardly no-one (outside The Westminster bubble).
Cummings is no match for Boris. No doubt, Matt Hancock, will be OK, too.
Cummings isn’t nearly as smart as he thinks he is.
June 16, 2021
My understanding is that this Protocol is without prejudice to the provisions of the 1998 Agreement in respect of the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and the principle of consent, which provides that any change in that status can only be made with the consent of a majority of its people.
Is this not true?
If the protocol is impeding sovereignty should it not be for the people of NI to vote on whether they want to retain or scrap it?
June 16, 2021
The civil servants where clever they include a clause of acceptance by the people of NI or if they wish to exit from the agreement – The first consent vote is due to take place in December 2024
Maybe their consent should have been asked prior to the start of the NI protocal
June 16, 2021
Reading this reader’s letter in today’s Irish News I can understand why some unionists are alarmed.
“Ireland is again reunited”
“There were two certainties exposed in the media last week. First, Emmanuel Macron stated truthfully that Northern Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom. It always was and will be part of a country called Ireland which has 32 counties. Unionist politicians often quote the 1801 Act of the Union as the reason for being a United Kingdom. Sadly this much quoted act is like our 100-year-old partition – it was delivered at the barrel of a gun or sword so is like all such acts, illegal, null and void. If Ireland had not been partitioned by Britain with force, Ireland today would be an Irish speaking 32-county nation. That is indisputable and should now be returned to its rightful place.
Secondly, the so-called Protocol or border at the Irish sea, this is 100 per cent correct and the only place for Ireland’s border – it is natural permanent and enforceable.
The unenforceable so-called British border put across Ireland 100 years ago in now history and redundant. Ireland is again reunited.”
June 16, 2021
If England held a referendum on a proposal to re-unite Northern Ireland (NI) into the Republic of Ireland and wholly into the European Union (UK cedes the territory of NI). Additionally, if the EU Parliament and the US Congress, at the same time, both significant geopolitical stakeholders voted on the same motion; How do you think such a vote would go? How quickly would Boris et al, jump at the opportunity to get rid of NI for ever?
June 16, 2021
Boris would jump at the chance tomorrow
June 16, 2021
Sorry I got that wrong – Boris already has !!!
June 16, 2021
Could England not rather hold a referendum on disowning Yorkshire?
June 16, 2021
England has been one country for more than 1,000 years and will remain so, unless plans by the EU and in future, Labour, to divide it up with regional devolution destabilise it, like devolution has to Scotland.
English voters would almost certainly vote to ditch NI and Scotland from the UK, and who could blame us ?
June 16, 2021
The three crucial words I take from John’s post are: ‘It is time’.
It certainly is. An exercise of Article 16 would not be enough, given the political nature of the ECJ.
The NI Protocol must now be abrogated without delay. The EU has paraded its bad faith, and its determination to stir up violence and breach the Belfast Agreements. This in itself is adequate cause for resiling from the NIP, under the 1967 Convention.
But how to persuade John’s mealy-mouthed Tory colleagues that ‘it is time’? Their only use of time is to temporize, and at the prospect of the sensible IMB, they had a collective fit of the vapours.
June 16, 2021
+1
June 16, 2021
Agree
June 16, 2021
+1
June 16, 2021
Off topic, but I see that Priti Useless has decided NOT to deport a foreign criminal after all. Despite all her brave talk all it took was a left-wing rent-a-mob and she immediately caved in. Because obviously, what we need more of in Britain today are criminals.
And you wonder why the Conservative Party is neither believed nor trusted? Priti Useless epitomises all that is wrong with it: cowardly, deceitful and unreliable.
June 16, 2021
The NI protocol isn’t working, isn’t fit for purpose and has proved to be problematic to both the EU and the UK
The sensible thing to do now is to revoke the whole protocol and amend the WA and T&CA….I therefore predict that the protocol will main for the lifetime of this government
We need to be honest (like President Macron), NI is still in the EU which just leaves the old UK as GB
June 16, 2021
GC – Macron – honest!!!!!!!! wake up. He “won” his election with 66.6% of the vote.
See any references there!
June 16, 2021
I wasn’t implying that Macron was honest I was pointing out that we should be honest in our appraisal of what he said i.e there are 4 countries that make up the UK of which 1 is NI
June 16, 2021
will ”remain” for the lifetime of this government
June 16, 2021
Firstly, Sir John, I would ask you to call it the Belfast Agreement (its proper name) and not the ‘Good Friday Agreement’, as this is what the IRA like to call it to give it religious significance.
But the real problem is that Macron is half right. Belfast IS different to Toulouse. Because the French government would NEVER agree to allow any part of France to secede. Nor would any other country. But the UK, governed as it is by traitors – both Labour and Conservative – keeps saying that areas like Scotland or Northern Ireland CAN leave, if they want. This is even written in the Belfast Agreement. It is a ******* disgrace. And, of course, for all its clauses stressing that NI is part of the UK, the NIP *does* specify that NI to be treated differently to the rest of the country. That, after all, is the reason you did not support it!
So Boris HAS betrayed NI – and the whole of the UK – by signing the NIP. And now he has to try to solve the problem he created. He only has three options: (i) a complete surrender to the EU; he would probably like to do this, for an easy life, but realises that it is politically unacceptable; (ii) retaining the Protocol but stating very firmly that British standards are *equivalennt* to those of the EU and therefore no checks are necessary; this would avoid the embarrassment of having to scrap a treaty he himself signed so very recently, and while upsetting the EU would be seen as factually undeniable and thus be impossible to criticise by his opponents; and (iii) biting the bullet and scrapping the NIP altogether; this would be the best solution in the long-term, but Boris is much too cowardly to do so.
June 16, 2021
The NI protocol must be binned and Boris must resign for making such a mess of our exit from the EU when he could simply have chosen to walk away and fall back on WTO terms.
June 16, 2021
DJ – Boris is part of the Globalist UK Establishment.
June 16, 2021
Fully Agree – and sooner the better
June 16, 2021
DavidJ,
Agree with your proposal but it’s not going to happen.
June 16, 2021
An unsatisfactory answer to your question this morning: it was not the implementation by the EU of article 16 which has made people lose faith in the NIP. It is the NIP itself which is destabilising the country and the union, as was intended. And of course the Belfast Agreement. There are many bad things about the BA but one of the worst is the power it gives to Sinn Fein/IRA to dissolve the Assembly whenever they think they can gain a republican advantage from doing so. Ransom politics, the unionists call it.
June 16, 2021
At the G7, Macron revealed to the uninformed what the true purpose of the gathering was all about. “…….good to have a President ? who is part of the CLUB and willing to cooperate”. Wake up people.
June 16, 2021
Let’s face it. This is a Republic of Island problem ( and of their own making in their attempts to annexe NI )
The UK acts as a guarantor of the GFA and will not erect a physical border.
NI does not want a physical border and will not erect one.
The ROI says it does not want a physical border although may be forced to erect a barrier by the EU
The two faced and untrustworthy EU don’t give a damn but want to punish the UK for Brexit so may force RoI to erect a barrier on the border.
The problem is for the RoI to resolve and theirs alone. The clear and logical and only outcome to resolve matters for the RoI is to do one of two things 1.. Force the EU to back down or 2.. Leave the EU and join a good and trusted Union (UK)
It’s about time the UK stopped bending over backwards to alleviate other countries problems and in this case encourage RoI to own it’s own problems
June 16, 2021
Frost is in the news trying to negotiate over British sausages for goodness sakes, just how big a problem is this sausage issue? Why isn’t the Northern Irish farming community able to supply their own sausages? How much meat do the Northern Irish farms produce? How much is exported? How much is imported?
This all seems blown up out of proportion. What would be the problem with a reciprocal ban on EU sausages and chilled meat into the UK from the EU a level playing field on those products we are banned from exporting? Surely the large UK sausage and chilled meat producers are all exporting into the EU still or have they been banned?
June 17, 2021
The trivialising media want you to think it is just about sausages but it isn’t. It is about the EU’s aim to annex Northern Ireland as the punishment (price, they call it) for Brexit.
June 16, 2021
I think the EU is being very transparent. This message in the Guardian in particular – “Diplomatic sources said that while the UK’s level of cases per 100,000 people had been within the criteria for inclusion on the list, the exponential growth of infection by the Delta variant had proven to be an obstacle. There are serious concerns about Delta and surge of numbers,” an EU diplomat said. I’m guessing it will magically re-open to take our money come July then we’ll get another bout of covid from Europe to deal with in September.
So how many more people are the UK testing? It is just pathetic and I hope some enterprising cruise companies open up a few of their ships to sail vaccinated tourists with covid negative tests to the sunshine and back again and just take the market, stopping in Gibralta, the Channel Island maybe Morocco and back again.
June 16, 2021
When it comes to NI, Macron is showing the same lack of knowledge as Biden.
President Biden warned the UK not to break the Good Friday Agreement by setting a hard border with Eire. He had to be put right by the PM but I still wander if he has actually grasped the fact that it was indeed the EU who were threatening that outcome, not the UK.
Rather reminiscent of Mr Obama outrageously warning us that to vote to leave the EU would send us to the back of the queue for trade with the USA.
I’m sure he had little clue on how the EU functioned because in no way would the Americans accept laws from another country albeit in a Union. Could we ever see Washington taking orders from say, an unelected cabal based in Mexico City, as part of the NAFTA?
If you know nowt about the subject, it’s best to keep quiet because you cannot then be made to look a fool.
June 16, 2021
I think for the record it should be remembered that the British Government did handle the independence of Ireland badly forcing an uprising against British rule. However there was a settlement that would have made Ireland like Canada , Australia and New Zealand in relation to the UK. However this sparked the Irish Civil War. More Irish were killed in the Civil war than in the uprising against British Rule. The two main political Parties in the Republic of Ireland today are descendants of the two sides of the Irish Civil War. The settlement of the conflict by the Irish themselves was that the South became a republic and the North rejoined the UK. Unfortunately in the North there was ongoing prejudice between the Majoriy Protestant Irish and Minority Catholic Irish with unequal opportunities of employment and civil treatment of the Catholic Irish and hence more fighting in the North.
The point here is that all the people on the Ireland of Ireland are Irish and you cannot have a boarder dividing a Country. The people of Ireland don’t want one. They use euros in some parts and pounds in other parts of the country. Even different VAT for items. That did not course a problem before Brexit.
The EU are just out to make a problem and create trouble. For the sake of a few sausages they are a willing to provoke fighting between the Irish and create Civil unrest. Macron should do his homework on Irish History before opening his mouth. He should also note the strong Irish links to the UK and vice versa to the extent of complete free movement of Britons through out the British Isles. No passports required.
The French do have an Historical habit of fanning the flames when there is a bit of a rift between the countries of the British Isles.
June 16, 2021
Sir John
Respect !
😳😳
June 16, 2021
We have the wrong man in No.10 John.
June 17, 2021
The Party never learns from its mistakes.
June 16, 2021
UK death rate today 9 – tonight our esteem MPs are voting on a one month lockdown extension….with 9 deaths today I’m sure they’d like the extension for six months
Or as saga wouldn’t say…todays death rate is a 10% decrease
June 16, 2021
When you read the history of the place.. the total history for eight hundred years it’s not hard to understand why so many foreign’s would see Ireland through irish republican glasses. In the overall run of things we have nothing to be proud of – to give one example we coerced Ireland into the UK by force corruption and bribery but forty years later helped very little during the great famine 1845.. worse still we stood by and facilitated the evictions and then the mass emigration of 2 million.. and all this time Ireland was part of the UK and the Empire.. so in the end Ireland went it’s own way and who could blame them
June 16, 2021
Well said. We’re approaching the point where Artivcle 16 will need to be invoked.
June 16, 2021
JR
“The UK has plenty of legal routes to rid us of this hostile EU attack on NI”
…….then I suggest your boss is given a rocket up the proverbial and be told to stop cowering to the EU.
June 16, 2021
Sir Redwood
Not looking good for your party, or Johnson, is it ? 🙂
June 16, 2021
If anyone really cares about whether the WA and NIP can be terminated – they can – the whole question is dealt with in detail in Articles 60 and 62 of the VCLT (Vienna Convention on the law of treaties 1969).
Don’t take my word for it. Look it up.
June 16, 2021
Thank you JR for again voting for the freedom of the British people. As the covid dictatorship is bolstered by the so-called Opposition, I am more convinced that ever that only events outside of these islands will lead to its downfall.
June 17, 2021
I read somewhere yesterday that notices of liability are being served. I have long thought ( but didnt know the mechanics of how it could be done) that if people ( or Actors in the common parlance )
were given a list of facts and still went ahead with complying then they could be held PERSONALLY accountable.
June 17, 2021
Looking for something else yesterday I came across this comment which JR published in September 2019:
https://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2019/09/16/the-sovereignty-of-the-people-and-the-battle-of-government-and-the-judges/#comment-1056066
From which I abstract:
“… what puzzles me is that the new UK government under Boris Johnson still does not point out to the EU that the integrity of its Single Market only requires that goods which are actually entering that market conform to EU rules. For example it is simply none of the EU’s business that the dreaded “chlorinated chicken” circulates freely within the US, it is only when there is a risk that some may enter the EU Single Market that the EU has any legitimate interest. Likewise when the UK has become a “third country” like the US it will be none of the EU’s business whether or not we allow “chlorinated chicken” to be legally produced or imported and bought and sold within our own territory, their only concern need be that none of it spills over the border into their territory. And the UK Parliament could easily pass a law to control what can be exported to the EU, and most especially what can be included in that 0.1% of UK GDP which is driven across the land border from Northern Ireland into the Republic, so why is this possibility still being ignored?”
Now having heard what Lord Frost said:
https://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2021/06/16/president-macrons-revealing-view-of-northern-ireland/#comment-1236999
I understand that Boris Johnson has gone beyond Theresa May’s gratuitous acceptance of responsibility to ensure that Brussels/Dublin did not fortify their side of the land border:
https://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2018/05/28/social-care-and-the-nhs-2/#comment-937422
to a sense of “duty” that if necessary we must risk breaking up the UK to preserve the EU single market.
June 17, 2021
Another shameful capitulation to the IRA from HMG. It is reported they have allowed Sinn Fein/IRA to blackmail them into over riding devolution (again) to impose republican legislation on the Province in return for the IRA not dissolving the Assembly (again.) The Belfast Agreement must go and with it the politics of ransom. What is the matter with Lewis? Alister Jack wouldn’t do this sort of thing in Scotland. As Arlene Foster correctly said, it is feeding the crocodile.
June 18, 2021
Stepping off an plane at Martinique some years ago I thought I had landed at the wrong airport. The same designer/architect as was used for Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris had obviously been employed and the police and customs officials all wore exactly the same uniforms as in Paris. Indeed, when one digs a little deeper one discovers that the whole island is a ‘Department’ of Paris. Same in Guadeloupe. And Reunion (Indian Ocean) and, naturellement, Corsica. So for Macron to make a howler like that is beyond hypocrisy.
NB: I think it poor form to make a distinction between GB and NI. I know NI is part of UK but should it not therefore be described also as part of GB. I think the correct distinction should the ‘the mainland and NI’.
June 20, 2021
Great Britain is a geographical name, not political. It distinguishes the big island of Great Britain from Brittany.
June 24, 2021
If we were to stop citizens of the Republic of Ireland voting in UK elections, including elections in Northern Ireland, we might well see the Sinn Fein vote fall. It must be easy for a Republican household in the north to include a bogus resident when the form for an election is sent out, then to call up someone form the south to vote. If that were to break the Good Friday Agreement, so much the better. Go ahead, make my day.