THE EU TRAP PUTS JOHNSON IN DIFFICULTY. But in the end just wait …
Last week saw ups and downs for Boris Johnson on the complex issue of Brexit. We have gone from two partial victories, with the imposition of the definitive deadline for talks on October 15 and the conclusion of the first post-EU international agreement with Japan, a model for the following ones with the US and other nations, to a very delicate situation that it risks splitting the Conservative Party.
Then Boris Johnson also showed his weak sides, like so many other British politicians who have gone down in history. For example of Churchill we remember the victories, but as Lord of the Admiralty in the first world war and as prime minister in the second he also has the task of blatant errors, such as the enterprise of the Dardanelles, or the landing in Norway. Johnson himself made two sensational mistakes, the first linked to Brexit, where he fell into a trap created, voluntarily or not, by Barnier and ate bait, hook, line and sinkers.
It must be remembered that the general agreement for the exit of the United Kingdom included “The Irish backstop”, a special clause for Northern Ireland which would have allowed not to create a border between the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Without going into details, the United Kingdom accepted that Northern Ireland, for a certain period subjected to local acceptance, should see European trade rules applied. This would have made the area a free territory commercially and not required physical barriers, while London, by controlling the flows between Ireland and the rest of the Kingdom, could check that this clause was not used as a picklock to bypass British customs.
Here is the trap: in the talks between the parties Barnier subtly filtered the idea that this rule could be used by Brussels to exclude British goods from Northern Ireland in case of no agreement: in fact the EU would have the supervision of the quality of agricultural imports in many sectors, from eggs to fish to meat, which should be in line with European standards, for which Barnier has directly or indirectly threatened not to grant the authorization, closing Ulster out of the UK.
Now Johnson has taken the bait and instead of seeing Barnier's bluff, and possibly reacting to such a move AFTER, with the support of public opinion, he wanted to act FIRST, with a bill called the "Internal market bill" (or Intermarket) which would like to prevent this, but which objectively violates the Irish backstop because it eliminates the possibility of Brussels to apply its own rules: if English companies, as this law says, can freely act on the whole territory of the Kingdom and not they have identical standards to European ones, we have that European standards are disapplied.
Here is the trap that clicks: at the presentation of this bill, Brussels intervenes asking for its immediate withdrawal because it violates the agreement for the Irish Backstop, under penalty of interruption of negotiations for Johnson's bad faith. The last remainers and pro-Europeans among the conservatives have rebelled demanding the blocking of the law, led by Theresa May, and being around thirty they can stop the process. Why was Boris Johnson wrong? Because he acted in excess of the threats: if he had kept the drawing in a drawer and had used it only in the event of the spurious exclusion of British companies from Northern Ireland, he would have passed for a hero. Instead he runs the risk of passing for a ruffian bungler. However, unlike may, he is in a position of strength because the UK is now out of the EU and he just has to wait for the deadline of December 31 to eventually get an exit according to the WTO rules.
In reality, the main mistake was another: the management of Covid-19. the government alternated softness and excessive rigidity and the latest ban on meetings of more than six people was very badly received by the British.
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The article THE EU TRAP PUTS JOHNSON IN DIFFICULTY. But in the end just wait… it comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-trappola-della-ue-mette-in-difficolta-johnson-pero-alla-fine-basta-aspettare/ on Sat, 12 Sep 2020 16:51:24 +0000.