Wednesday Brexit

The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) is an international agreement, and is guaranteed by the USA. In a tweet this morning, Brendan Boyle, a representative of the US congress, has stated that if the GFA cannot be guaranteed then there will be no trade deal with the US.

"The Good Friday Agreement is an internationally binding treaty signed by the UK and Ireland, and guaranteed by the United States. There is absolutely no ability for any one party to the agreement to unilaterally re-write it."

This is a remarkable turn of events.

That the UK political class is pretty much all on holiday suffering from Brexit-induced exhaustion means that maybe this will be missed or forgotten by the time the Parliament reconvenes on 23rd April.

There are approx 73 days left before the end of October when the UK is next scheduled to leave the EU, and before then the issues which have so far remained unsolved, have to be solved.

The Irish Border issue is part of that WA that needs agreeing, but that in itself is Brexit in a nutshell, in that the backstop means that if all else fails, the backstop is in force. And as originally written, that would have applied to NI only. But after an appeal by the UK Government, the backstop was then changed to apply to the whole UK.

This represented the only major concession to the UK by the EU. The change was requested because, as originally written, this would have created a customs border between N and the rest of Britain. But the change means that now the customs border would not happen, but that would make it impossible for the UK to negotiate trade deals outside the sphere of influence of the EU.

Now, I have given the desire of the UK to negotiate its own trade deals, post-Brexit. The UK has not negotiated a trade deal since it joined the EU at the start of 1973, any UK trade negotiators work for the EU. The UK has been negotiating for the past three years with our closest neighbours and friends, the EU, and have screwed that up at every turn. But the EU is patient, to a point, and is allowing the UK leaway to find solutions. This will not happen in hard-headed negotiations with the US, China or Japan.

As Japan has stated that it will not roll-over the FTA with the EU to the UK as it thinks it can do better with a fresh agreement. This will take time and resources.

The desire for the UK to negotiate its own trade deals is rather like Reg's desire to have babies in the Life of Brian. Reg couldn't, as he "didn't have the equipment", and the UK just wants to roll over most of what it has, as its all too difficult. But this shows what the EU does for us.

If the dream, though unspoken at least openly, is a trade deal with the US, then this has to factor in the GFA and all party's obligations under international law.

The backstop and Irish border in general shows how little Brexiteers and the ERG gave thought the only physical border between the UK and EU (Gibraltar-Spain excepted), and they constant whining that the border issue is a fallacy as it is invisible, but then all borders are. A simple visit would show then how the slinky border weaves over roads, streams, fields and back again. A hard border would require three frontiers in less than a mile of country lane in places.

The Brexiteers idea that technology could do the job fails to recognise that by their own reports, such solutions require multi-agency cooperation and the past record on such projects are poor, and best estimate that such technology might not workable until 2030.

And it seems business is deserting the Conservatives, leaving them short of funds to fight the EU elections, who'd have thought that having a "fuck business" attitude would piss business off?