BritanniQ - Issue 30
The following opens the latest issue of BritanniQ, Bournbrook’s weekly newsletter in which A D M Collingwood curates essays, podcasts, books and quietly patriotic beauty, and sends the best directly to your inbox.
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The latest issue, Issue 29, covers the new deal on Northern Ireland, the misguided attempts to make good of Brexit, the inability to stop crime, a report on sexual abuse in Pakistanti communities world wide, the Nord Stream whodunnit and Ukraine.
RISHI’S FISHY DEAL
Had he done it? Had Rishi Sunak, the assiduous, quietly smooth technocrat, succeeded in extracting a deal from the EU on the Northern Ireland Protocol where the previous three prime ministers had failed? When the ‘Windsor Framework’ was announced, hopes were high. There was talk of newfound EU pragmatism and flexibility, red and green lanes, and a return of the democratic mandate – the ‘Stormont Brake’ – that was central to the Good Friday Agreement. Nevertheless, BritanniQ was suspicious. The EU has never been flexible when it comes to agreements with third countries: it is a terms setter, and not under any circumstances a terms taker (one reason the EU has never achieved a free trade deal with the US is that Washington doesn’t accept terms, either). Any negotiations tend to be based on how the EU can help ‘word’, ‘package’ or ‘sell’ the final deal to a people whose government had been forced to accept the EU’s terms.
And Lo! When the text of the Framework was published, Steven Barrett, a barrister, swiftly dismissed it as exactly that. It was “no ‘deal’ at all… with no legal effect that is possible to enforce”, he wrote. Instead, he contended, it was “a wish list of vague commitments”, “patronising”, “humiliating” and “the opposite of sovereignty or independence from EU law”. The Stormont Brake, he claimed, was “a complete fantasy”. He concluded that the entire agreement has been written “to ensure that the whole of the UK follows EU law… it looks very much like they turned up to our government with a pre-written deal and told us to like it or lump it – and then sold it to the public at all costs”. Ultimately, Mr Barrett argues that the deal is “dynamic aligment [the process by which the UK would not only have to align with current EU regulations, but future regulations as and when the EU makes them] given a fresh coat of paint”. If the agreement passes, he contends, no government will be able to change it. “The UK itself is now under the EU’s control.”
While former Chief Brexit Negotiator Lord Frost is a little less scathing – as one would expect him to be given his involvement in the Protocol itself – he argues that “no other country would put up with this”. True.
