NIPped in the bud

This from Simon Usherwood on Twitter, as to why, even after nearly six years, the Brexiteers in and out of Government don't understand what they signed up to, nor apparently want to:

"Per @pmdfoster's piece, plan looks like either withholding results of a NI Assembly vote, or avoiding one happening. This hangs on the need for at least a majority of MLAs to support continuing application of Arts.5-10 of the NIP .

However, if you read the rest of Art.18, you will see that UK is committed to allowing a vote to take place, and that this vote doesn't need an Executive to exist, so sitting MLAs.

Crucially Art.18(4) says it's only when UK tells EU that a vote has happened and no majority was reached that disapplication occurs

I.e. it has to be an active decision by MLAs, not a passive we-didn't-get-round-to-voting-in-time non-decision

As such, if wording of planned legislation is that London can either stop or ignore MLA vote, then that's a breach of NIP and of international law

It's at least as bad as the Internal Market Bill, and worse in that it sounds like it also impinges on the right of MLAs to exercise their powers, so it also raises the question of GFA consent provisions too

Even if the planned bill only aims to give London the option to ignore a consent vote, rather than requiring them to, that would still be just as much of a problem, given the commitment of Art.18(1) to allow NI a decisive voice [which UK itself pushed to include]

Tl;dr it's almost as if someone wrote Art.18 to stop this kind of thing"

Thi follows on from JRM saying that the NIP was only supposed to be temporary, and the UK wanted to change it. But like all agreements, it took all sides to agree, and any change would need that too, not the UK act on its own. But these are mere details from him and the ERG of course.

Breaking the NIP, which is an international treaty, will have long term negative effects on the trustworthyness of the UK and negotiations with any other country.

Its not a good look.

But on top of that, it would bethe UK Government ignoring the will of the NI electorate and those it would have elected.

Not big, not clever.