By responding to the myth that there was an Irish border problem Theresa May has destroyed Brexit. A clause in the agreement about the North South Irish border makes the UK subordinate to EU rule – even if there is no deal.
Never mind “No deal better than a bad deal” May could have achieved the impossible feat of making Brexit even more disastrous than staying in. The Prime Minister has surrendered the No Deal threat.
THE IRISH BORDER MYTH
Even more moronic is the well established fact (made clear in the House of Commons Brexit Select Committee hearings, where Labour’s Hilary Benn chairs and Remainers dominate) that:
“We do not believe, and this has been our consistent advice to ministers, we do not believe we require any infrastructure at the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland under any circumstances.”
And who said that? – the Chief Executive of HMRC Jon Thompson on the 28th November. He described the border trade as being within “a very local economy” to which the normal EU border arrangements could not be applied.
To the question “whatever happens, you’re confident there won’t be any requirement for an infrastructure between Ireland and Northern Ireland?” Mr Thompson answered “Yes”
And yet another expert witness John Bourne, the Policy Director for Animal Plant & Health at DEFRA, in answer to the Committee Chairman’s “how exactly can you achieve no border and no infrastructure? Is there a problem from our point of view?” he replied: “No”
Therefore an artificial problem was manufactured by the Dublin Government and the EU – indeed a Dublin journalist has written that they collaborated on the “crisis”. Dublin wanted to exploit a problem for political gains over Northern Ireland and the EU wanted to exploit a problem to gain bargaining power in the Brexit negotiations.
Theresa May fell neatly into the trap – with the help of course of the Brexit Select Committee and its manipulation and censorship of the evidence it had heard.
THE SELECT COMMITTEE LIED ABOUT THE EVIDENCE
The Remainer-dominated and Labour Chaired Select Committee on Exiting the EU, having heard the above clear evidence of there being no North South border crisis, regardless of the trade outcome of the Brexit negotiations, then drew the exact opposite conclusion:
“We do not currently see how it will be possible to reconcile there being no border with the Government’s policy of leaving the Single Market and the Customs Union.”
HEADS THE EU WINS TAILS THE UK LOSES
In a last minute deal negotiated overnight between Theresa May, Dublin and the Democratic Unionist Party the latter indicated support having achieved 6 changes to the agreement. Their prime interest was to secure “no red line down the Irish Sea” and that the whole of the UK including Northern Ireland was leaving “ the single market and the customs unions” and would be treated the same (my emphasis)
But one of the Clauses is a killer for the whole of Brexit. Clause 49 will probably live in infamy – for it could kill the whole of Brexit and the freedom of the UK once having “left” the EU.
“In the absence of agreed solutions, 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.”
This gives the European Union a real threat to impose its Single Market AND Customs rules on a part of the UK and because the DUP insists on being seen as the “whole of the UK” it therefore threatens to bind the UK as well.
The whole point of leaving the EU is (as even Mrs May has repeatedly said) to leave the Single Market and the Customs Union and be free to conclude deals with other countries, stop mass migration and the rule of the European Court. But this clause could bind us “now or in the future” to that rule, thus binding us into the EU. And this would apply even if there were “no deal”
So instead of NO DEAL being a threat the EU if they do not negotiate a good trade deal NO DEAL will mean in Ireland – and probably by typical European Court power projection – in the UK as well:
“full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union”
when all the time the NO DEAL option had been a threat to the EU – not the UK!!
CONTINUED RULE BY THE ECJ
One of the chief characteristics of a democratically sovereign country is rule by its own laws – and the freedom to secure international treaties and agreements on a free case by case basis. The European Union has never allowed that. If you are in the EU you can’t govern yourself, your laws can be overturned by the EU and the EU continually makes new laws applicable in the UK.
But in this Theresa May agreement with the EU – for which she has nothing in return other than the right to start talking about future trade and economic relations – there is provision for continued EU legal rule in the matter of EU citizens and EU criminals in the UK.
The EU Court will continue to have influence over how “their citizens” are treated in the UK up to 2029 ! Imagine if the USA or Russia demanded the privileged right to influence British law as regards their citizens in the UK!
CARRY ON EU CRIMINALS!
EU laws will continue to apply with regards to the treatment of criminals for any crimes committed prior to the date of the UK’s withdrawal, but the EU has accepted (very big of them) that any crimes or security issues arising afterwards will be subject to national law, which will make it easier for the UK to deport serious EU criminals – BUT ONLY AFTER Brexit. So EU criminals have a golden opportunity between now and the date of withdrawal to commit crimes without any danger of being sent home.
Notice how on the one hand the EU demands continued application of their law to EU citizens in Britain but will not accept application of British law to EU criminals in Britain.
As Martin Howe QC sums up this appalling Government agreement with the EU:
Our government on our behalf is reportedly offering to pay the EU around €40 billion of money that we don’t legally owe, to submit to our courts being overruled by a wholly foreign court after we have left the EU, and to make commitments to keep our regulation in agriculture and possibly other fields “aligned” with the EU in order to resolve the Irish border issue. This is all so that we can reach the nirvana of having not a trade deal, but talks about a trade deal.
Hammond has given the EU a strong incentive not to make a deal (by saying we will pay regardless) and May has given away the threat of no deal by saying if there is no deal we will align with EU regulations for the sake of a mythical problem in Ireland.
I am sure we have now all lost count of the reasons why Theresa May and Philip Hammond should resign forthwith. But they might well survive because the British don’t like to change major Ministers in time of war!
