How quickly the ‘oven ready’ deal went sour
THE news that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary are threatening to tear up the Northern Ireland protocol echoed comments made by Liz Truss’s predecessor, “Lord” Frost, who demanded that the EU rewrite the withdrawal agreement – the treaty that Boris Johnson hailed in November 2019 as “a fantastic deal for all in the UK”.
It would appear that the breaching of international treaties is a manifestation of the new universe of Global Britain, at the very time that western solidarity should be paramount.
It was Frost who negotiated the “oven ready” deal which conferred special status on Northern Ireland in order to appease the Democratic Unionist party – while imposing a “hard” Brexit on the rest of the UK.
In order to “get Brexit done”, Johnson appeared on live TV insisting there would be “no border and no one would have to fill in any forms.”
Arlene Foster and the DUP actually believed him and even rejoiced that Northern Ireland had the best of both worlds.
Voters in the province tried to warn the DUP by voting 56% to 44% to stay in the EU. They recognised that the only way to avoid a border within the UK was to agree to a “soft” Brexit.
The DUP used their power in the hung parliament to rule it out, allowing themselves to become puppets in the game of keeping the Conservative party in power.
The fragile peace in Northern Ireland is held together by one of those very documents that Truss, Johnson and Frost now hold in such contempt – the Belfast Agreement of 1998 – an agreement largely brokered by the US, the same US that Truss now counsels to mind its own business.
There are dispute resolution mechanisms within the withdrawal agreement which, with the application of intelligence and good will, can resolve any issues.
The government is choosing to ignore them, fostering the prospect of a trade war with our biggest trading partner, risking a disruption of the union and alienating the US.
If there are any Conservatives left in the Conservative party they should make themselves heard, because this is where the Brexit project has led them.
With depressing predictability we have returned to the sovereign remedy for curing our ills – blame the EU.
In the name of “freedom from the EU”, these zealots are embarked upon a course of undermining national and international law and trashing Britain’s reputation in the world.
Frank Rice