so none of this "unforeseen consequences" BS is true - pretty much as soon as the ink was dry, they intended to fuck around:
Not only are all these claims bogus, they are also irrelevant. Even if it were true that the government agreed the NIP unwillingly, because of the nature of the 2017-19 parliament, it remains the case that it signed up to it as part of an international treaty. Would Brexiters accept it if the EU were now to say that it had agreed only because of its internal politics and wanted to be let off its commitments now? Equally, even if it were true that the consequences are unexpected, the principle of pacta sunt servanda means that the UK (like the EU) is bound by the agreements it makes.
But, of course, neither of these things is true. The NIP happened because Johnson wanted to proclaim he had ‘done the deal’ and ‘got rid of the hated backstop’ so that Britain could have no further delays to reaching, ahem, ‘freedom day’ from the EU. On this basis he won the 2019 election and rammed the legislation through parliament, with almost no discussion, prior to signing the deal. Yet within literally weeks of doing so he and Frost were discovered to be
working on plans to circumvent the provisions of the NIP (£), long before any implementation had even occurred and therefore before any ‘unexpected’ consequences could have arisen.
None of this would be guessed from this week’s government proposals. Without even a hint of contrition for his prior decisions – he, after all, negotiated the NIP - Frost now shamelessly recycles various versions of ideas that were repeatedly discussed and rejected prior to the 2019 agreement. These include a revival of the ‘honesty box’ idea in place of customs checks, a Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary (SPS) ‘dual regulatory’ system, and the removal of the ECJ’s role in governance. These suggestions are not explained in any great detail, but in many ways they quite closely resemble
the proposals made in October 2019, and rejected by the EU, before Johnson’s ‘walk in the park’ with Leo Varadkar.
In other words,
as per my recent blog post, the government continues to go around the same Mobius Strip of trying to square contradictory demands. It would be embarrassing were Frost capable of embarrassment, so he leaves that to the rest of us. The irreducible core, explicitly stated in the new document (
Link to tweet/photo/1" target="_blank">paragraph 4) is that the government, like all the
Brexiter ideologues (£), does not in fact accept the need for the NIP at all. It comes close to an open admission of what is abundantly obvious: Johnson signed up to the NIP in bad faith.
https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-frost-johnson-approach-has-already.htmlBonus link to the Daily Mail having the truly moronic "Brexiter MP
Graham Brady writing about how willingness to wear masks shows “how far a proud nation has allowed itself to fall” is a reminder that windy rhetoric and bogus patriotism are amongst the common threads linking lockdown scepticism and Brexity outrage" (an article that, if written on Twitter or Facebook, might get him suspended for lying about Covid).
= new reply since forum marked as read