Taking Brexit by Force Majeure

Sir David Frost's latest idea for absolving him, Johnson and the UK from abiding by the NIP is to claim Force Majeure.

Force Majeure is mistakenly called "Mother Nature" in some contracts, but as DAG put it is his blog of yesterday "What makes a legal agreement complicated – and what can make a written contract go on for hundreds of pages of clauses and schedules – are the provisions dealing with what will happen if one party does not do [x] or the other party does not do [y].

This is because most written contracts are not there for when things go well: they are there for when things go badly.

The more provisions that are in a contract, the more allocations of risk and protections for the parties if there are problems."

In short, the UK Government plans to claim that the effects of Brexit on NI trade from Britain was unforseeable.

Only, it was.

By just about anyone who understood what the UK Government signed up to, even I wrote at the time that the WA and NIP broke the UK internal market. Although JOhnson and Vvarious Minister denied this, some into this year, even as infrastructure was being built at NI ports.

Again put simply, if the UK left the EU SM and CU, there has to be a border, you just have to decide where. No way out of this, the UK left the EU, not the other way round, this is a UK caused problem that should have been identified and mitigated for, planned to overcome.

It has been a gross failure in leadership and Government.

But there is always someone else to blame for your own failings.