You don’t have to be in Australia where I am just now to be confused about what lessons to draw for Northern Ireland from Johnson’s Withdrawal Bill, worse for NI than the terms May “won” yet on the edge of Commons majority approval.
(Incidentally every single one of my incidental contacts here in Oz and NZ when they hear my accent and accept I’m not American have volunteered to me, usually unprompted, to insist we have all gone mad. A sort of hangover perhaps of looking to the UK as the founder of their own constitutional systems. This is from a diverse range of Uber drivers, fellow tourists from Germany, Sri Lanka, Geordies, a Scouser family and that lady on the Woolworths checkout in the Blue Mountains. Yes, the News here covers Brexit, slightly uncomprehendingly as it doesn’t suit their style of, not so much newsbites as news nibbles). I’m afraid with all my profound knowledge and rare insights (only kidding!) I was unable to enlighten them. Much. You know when a kid asks you a basic question and you suddenly find you haven’t a clear answer?
So… Is Northern Ireland going to have the best of both worlds or not?
Will customs checks on the GB border as we must learn to call it apply to just about everything in and out? If so it seems likely to put up the cost of just about everything, the costs of our imports from and our exports to GB regardless of origin or eventual destination and much of what we pay in the shops.
Answer please Danny the Fink of the Times.
I have some sympathy with that fellow what’s he called, Smith who took a hammering from God save us, that paragon of virtue and confected moral outrage Paisley. At least Smith the secretary of state has a decent sensibility and some grasp of our issues unlike the two previous muppets.
(You can tell I’ve picked up the style of Sydney to speak bloody plainly).
All the pent up bile against the “unlovely” DUP has been spilling out now, even from usually fair minded commentators. This is at least partly to hide their guilt in letting them down. At least Theresa May was prepared to drag GB into a customs arrangement in a futile attempt to blunt the impact of the backstop. Johnson the Brexiteer’s messiah after the forerunner was decapitated had little choice if the deadlock was ever to end.
It should be admitted that the DUP did not invent Brexit nor did they ask to hold the balance of power after the 2017 election. What alternative did they really have? Some unintended consequences have actually been benign, like the end of abortion as a crime.
It will soon be time to lay off them, regardless of how much of their power remains, which is also far from clear.
The best they could do is to switch Brexit sides and tilt liberal, but pigs don’t actually fly or even wear lipstick.
What they could do at least is to identify belatedly with the wealth creators they have ignored up to now in their public pronouncements and follow their lead. That could be the way to respect.
I take the view that something like the present outcome was always to be Northern Ireland’s fate but with far less friction in the Irish Sea than now transpires in reality. Leaving it unmitigated without developing new tech and introducing sweeping tax concessions would be the real betrayal. Let the experts who demolished every version of May’s deal switch their learned attention to how in to create the best of both worlds in reality. Are you listening Katy?
But let the DUP stop pretending they are masters of the subject. End the unctuousness to ministers and the cringe- making posturing that pretends they are equal terms with the massed ranks of deal supporting MPs. Abandon the DUP’s self- generated right to rant. It’s so nineteenth century Learn a little humility in adversity. It would be seemly. And read a new book or two.
Seriously, I follow these things closely even from afar. They DUP getting on everybody’s wick when they should be generating some sympathy. Were they actually to fall, don’t let them drag us down with them
Former BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political and Parliamentary Programmes, BBC Westminster; former London Editor Belfast Telegraph. Hon Senior Research Fellow, The Constitution Unit, Univ Coll. London
Discover more from Slugger O'Toole
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
