Brexit blues take over again as confusion reigns

Confused? Join the club which I believe includes the principals, the British and Irish governments and the EU.  The idea of “non-papers”  from the UK government expresses the confusion perfectly. Do they mean what they say or not?  Are they the last word in the last ditch or feints in a game ?

We last left off on an upward note when Foster met Varadkar. The direction of travel seemed to be towards NI as a special economic zone between GB and EU/ Ireland. The engine was Johnson’s all-Ireland agri-zone. Problem is, the train hasn’t taken off. The station announcements sound more like cancellation or at least indefinite delay. Almost immediately Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay taunted Ireland with its vulnerability on Brexit and urged that the difficult backstop issues be deferred  to the transition period for the next stage of negotiations.

If Johnson was the soft cop, Barclay was playing hard cop, turning the issue on its head as if the other side was the supplicant. Hardly persuasive, more like desperation at Dublin’s refusal to blink over the backstop   But it’s the EU who will  grant or refuse a transition period  If Barclay was trying  to signal  No Deal, he couldn’t have done better.

Tony Connelly’s narrative of recent  events is wholly credible, drawing the essential distinction between mood music and substance.. . .

A counterpoint to the optimism came from Spain, where on Thursday the Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay appeared to threaten Ireland with medicine shortages and Spain with devastation to its fruit and vegetable exports, as well as its tourism and fisheries industries.

In a no-deal scenario, he told his audience: “For example if I take Ireland, two thirds of Irish medicines come through Great Britain, 40% of its exports go through Dover. Its supermarkets are supplied from distribution centres in the Midlands.”

A senior EU official said: “The Barclay speech was designed to be provocative, divisive and misleading.”

Downing Street wants the backstop to be “disaggregated”. In other words, bits of it would be salvaged, such as an all-Ireland agri-food zone, while all the other elements such as the treatment of industrial goods, customs, VAT and other provisions designed to support the all-island economy and north-south cooperation would be ditched.

Northern Ireland would therefore remain fully part of the UK’s customs territory and would remain aligned with UK rules governing the regulation of industrial goods, state aid, fiscal rules and so on.

The border that would arise as a result would then be “managed” through alternative arrangements or “maximum facilitations” (MaxFac), such as technology, trusted trader schemes, exemptions from customs declarations for SMEs, the use of transit procedures and so on.

These, according to the British view, would be worked out during the transition period. If a MaxFac solution was not ready by the end of the transition, which under the current Withdrawal Agreement expires in just 14 months, then the EU would have to trust the UK to bring forward unspecified contingency measures.

For the all-Ireland agri-food zone, Northern Ireland would remain aligned to the EU’s so-called Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) rulebook, but London also wants a Stormont Lock so that the Northern Ireland Assembly would have to give its approval.

Needless to say, Dublin and Brussels regard this approach as politically and legally well short of what is required.

Is there anything quite so daft as supposing that the EU would pin their faith on the  non-functioning Assembly as a deal-making instrument?

That the local parties would make up their loving quarrel over an Irish Language Act or whatever  just to sort out terms for Brexit?

That the DUP would be  willing stand up for their  pro-life principles  in Stormont and Sinn Fein to forego the credit and allow Westminster to legislate on abortion?

That if by some miracle they do resume in less than a month, that they would ever agree on later variations  to the special zone?

The one chink of hope is that the non-papers don’t have the status to be formally  rejected . They don’t rule out the train setting off. But the destination is as far away as ever.

Later..

Leading personifications of the British-Irish relationship meeting in Dundalk sounded warnings against No Deal. Say it quietly, but senior civil servants often have more in common with each other than with their own political leaders..

Stark warnings about the consequences of a no-deal Brexit have been outlined at a conference in Dundalk, featuring the three most senior civil servants in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Britain.

Martin Fraser, Secretary General to the Government; David Sterling, Head of Northern Ireland’s Civil Service and Mark Sedwill, Cabinet Secretary in London, were guest speakers at the conference organised by the Centre for Cross Border Studies

Sterling said  We are already at the limits of what civil servants can and cannot do, which is why our conclusion is that the range of challenges and the magnitude of the decisions that will be needed to mitigate the most severe impacts could not, and should not, be taken by civil servants. We need our ministers back, and we need them back quickly.

 35% of milk from Northern Ireland is sent over the border for processing and 44% of sheep are exported to the Republic for slaughter. He warned of significant disruption to supplies, including foods, medicines and chemicals, leading to higher prices and also referred to the potential for civil unrest and public protests and disruption to normal life in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Mr Fraser told the conference of what had been achieved in terms of North-South and British-Irish co-operation in recent years. He said North-South relationships have turned into friendships and “I think that’s what is going to get us through the problems we are in at the moment. There is no doubt the next few weeks are going to be crucial”.

Sir Mark Sedwill, the UK Cabinet Secretary the UK does recognise the consequences of the Brexit decision for the “economic and social connections across these islands” as well as “our responsibility in the UK to ensure that the underlying relationships and integration of our economies and societies is maintained”.

(Sir Mark) Sedwill said this is a critical moment in the history of Ireland and the UK, but he was confident “we will navigate a way through it because it is so strongly in our interests that we do so”.

He added that “we are doing so on the basis or relationships and trust and a common approach that simply didn’t exist a generation ago in the same way.”