How Britain’s hapless government was
UK caught on back foot as Brussels exploits wording in report over backstop for Northern Ireland
IT WAS, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson were assured by Downing Street, a “meaningless” assurance that was needed to get a vital agreement with Brussels over the line.
But the relevant clause in the “joint report” deal agreed last year has proved to be anything but meaningless for the European Union, 10 months after it was originally used to help unlock the second phase of Brexit negotiations.
The controversy has centred on paragraph 49 of the document, which stated that “in the absence of agreed solutions”, to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, where the EU feared a 300-mile back door for goods into the bloc, “the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement”. An alignment of rules was intended to obviate the need for checks on the Irish border, as goods flowing from the north to the south would already comply with EU requirements.
An earlier version of the clause, stating that Northern Ireland alone would remain in full alignment with EU rules, had been replaced at the insistence of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), after it learned about it at the eleventh hour.
Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, made clear she would not accept Northern Ireland being tied more closely to the EU than the rest of the UK. On the day that the deal was reached, government ACCORDING to its official line, the so-called “People’s Vote” campaign is neither for nor against Brexit – it merely wants the electorate to “have a say” on the final deal.
But looking among the many thousands of placards, banners, and T-shirt slogans between Park Lane and Parliament Square in London yesterday, it was curiously impossible to spot a single pro-Brexit message.
The slogans ranged from the mainly conventional and often amateurish – “Stay Sane and Remain”, “We are the People Too” – to various, predictable anti-Tory insults. But there were also the odd jarring or downright offensive notes, including one poster joking about the Government’s recent sources told newspapers that the arrangement would not mean that Britain would remain in the single market and customs union.
Two days later The Sunday Telegraph revealed that Downing Street aides went further in private discussions with Mr Gove, the Environment Secretary, and Mr Johnson, the then foreign secretary, during the run-up to the agreement being reached.
“The constant way the alignment phrase was described is that this doesn’t mean anything in EU law and therefore is not binding,” a source said. Downing Street said it did not “recognise this account of conversations.” appointment of a suicide minister, with: “Don’t top yourself, demand a people’s vote”, in a blatant breach of all advice on the subject. The campaign was forced to distance itself from the unfortunate sign.
Many were draped in EU flags, in more than a few cases with berets on their heads. Perhaps not the best look when top Remainers are said to be keen to use a little more red, white and blue and a little less blue and gold for fear of alienating the elusive wavering Leave voters.
The turnout was clearly vast: most likely several hundred thousand people from all over the country, with London predictably over-represented. There were many young people, in many cases parents with their children, but also far more older voters Paragraph 50 of the same document recognised that there would be “no new regulatory barriers” between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK without agreement by the Northern Ireland executive and assembly.
With hindsight, a statement by Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s Taoiseach, may have signalled that the document was not all it seemed. He referred to a “backstop arrangement in which Northern Ireland and perhaps all of the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment...”
David Davis, the Brexit secretary at the time, later publicly stated that the agreement was more of a “statement of intent” than a legally binding measure. than some might have expected. We will unfortunately never know for sure exactly how many turned up as the police no longer publish official verifications of the size of protests.
The 700,000 or so claimed by the campaign staff – they say they tallied every man, woman, child, D-lister and dog who lined up along the central London route – will have to remain just that: an optimistic estimate which makes a scientific comparison with previous marches such as the anti-war demonstration of 750,000 (the police estimate) impossible.
Yet anybody hoping to spot some of the pro-EU camp’s most high-profile supporters on the streets of London yesterday would have been But EU leaders said the comment was “unhelpful and undermines trust”.
Two months later, on Feb 28, the commission published a draft agreement for the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. This document set out new wording for the “backstop”, under which Northern Ireland would enter into a “common regulatory area” with the EU and be considered part of the EU’s “customs territory.”
“No UK prime minister could ever agree to this,” Theresa May said. Yet Mr Barnier claimed the text simply amounted to the December report transposed into legal text. In June, with the Prime Minister clear that neither disappointed: the prospect of chanting “stop Brexit” for hours on a cold October afternoon seemed mysteriously off-putting for some celebrities.
Hugh Grant, who has called for Britain to abandon Brexit and “climb sheepishly back into bed”, announced on Twitter that he was in France yesterday, though he promised to show his allegiance and “march by myself alone around [my] French village”. Also conspicuously absent was J Jeremy Corbyn, who faced criticism for his no-show from Catherine Russell, the Holby City actress.
Sir Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat leader, described Brexit as a “tragedy” in his address to the furious marchers.