There have been some curious headlines of late; Donald Tusk has said that a Canada +++ deal has been on the table since day one whilst May says it hasn’t, even though both the EU’s Canada style deal and May’s Chequers deal hive off Northern Ireland to the EU by keeping them in both the Customs Union and the Single Market.
The President of the EU Commission and the Prime Minister of Ireland have both already guaranteed no hard border even with no deal. Juncker and Varadkar have given unambiguous guarantees that they won’t put a hard border, under any circumstances, between the Irish Republic and NI – including no deal. The fact that Ireland has guaranteed no hard border in the case of no deal means that they clearly have no intention of constructing a hard border in the absence of the EU’s backstop – this is abundantly clear from the Taoiseach’s stated position as made to the Irish Parliament.
“… we are not drawing up any plans for a border between Northern Ireland and Ireland full stop. Because there isn’t going to be one and I have made very clear to my counterpart in the UK and also to the other EU Prime Ministers that under no circumstances will there be a border full stop.”
If the backstop is genuinely about concern for Ireland, not about trying to force the UK into a certain position, why is Ireland’s own commitment not sufficient? And why, therefore, is it being reported on RTE that Theresa May has agreed to a permanent backstop for NI and that any backstop cannot be temporary.
The UK government is saying the EU have agreed to an extension of the transition period whilst the EU are saying it is TM’s proposal. Either way it doesn’t help. It is simply a very expensive and unpopular way of drawing out the same problems for longer. Even the People’s Vote campaign calculates that the true cost of a delayed Brexit will be £182.5bn by 2025 - mostly because of the hit to economic growth. The cost of one extra year of transition is £8.2bn - cash handed straight to the EU without any say in decisions.
There are rumours that Ministers have been considering the possibility of a mitigated no-deal instead: hand over some cash in exchange for basic legal agreements on aviation, passports, haulage etc. and then negotiate sensible future arrangements outside of the Article 50 process. Given the current state of the negotiations, and the appaling way they have been conducted, this is starting to look more and more appealing even from a No Deal leaver like myself.
If there is one upside of the negotiation fiasco it is the ability to see the political class and senior civil service in all their glory. From whichever part of the political spectrum they come from they have shown themselves to be the self-serving, arrogant, parasites they have always been. The sad part of this is that the Brexiteers are worse than the Remainiac’s. At least them lot stand up for their convictions and do something about it. Brexiteer MP’s have shown themselves to be all talk and no action and as the saying goes actions speak louder than words.