Brexit – Page 35 – Slugger O'Toole

Sadiq Khan saves growing row over police resources from becoming a farce

Brian Walker on June 5, 2017, 5:26 pm

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The row over Theresa May’s police cuts is going Gothic since Trump entered the fray to criticise London Mayor Sadiq Khan and then typically to repeat his attack even though May tactfully corrected him. The London Evening Standard (editor George Osborne, the former chancellor sacked by May) details the developing story. It turns out Corbyn was prompted to call for May’s resignation by an ITV correspondent’s question. He in turn had taken up the resignation call from Steve Hilton, David …

Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland should have a say in the Brexit negotiations- Labour

Brian Walker on June 3, 2017, 12:07 am

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Keir Starmer the former English director of public prosecutions who is Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary has written an “ exclusive “ for the New European paper headlined, “We’ll give Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales their say on Brexit’ says Keir Starmer. It sounded great when I heard about it but it took me took me a couple of reads to find what turned out to be an anticlimax. ..we will have the confidence to bring Parliament into the Brexit process, …

Why is Colum Eastwood pulling his punches on a border poll?

Brian Walker on May 31, 2017, 9:54 am

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There is no point in denying the appeal of a united Ireland within the EU, even if the threat of a hard border turns out to be exaggerated for its malign effects on trade, integrated agriculture and ease of movement and Theresa May’s team returns from Brussels in triumph. It transcends narrow nationalism and reflects the Remain verdict in the EU referendum which put nationalism on the winning side, courtesy of quite a few on the unionist side. For the …

Brokenshire’s line on a border poll won’t do. Straight after next week’s election, it will be incumbent to spell out terms and conditions for holding a unity referendum. And Dublin cannot be left out

Brian Walker on May 30, 2017, 4:22 pm

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In their manifesto, the SDLP have now joined Sinn Fein in calling for a unity referendum, albeit on slightly different terms. Both are linking it to Brexit. If the combined nationalist share of the vote next week reaches 40+% which is highly manageable, can a unity referendum or border poll, reasonably be denied? If not, what is reasonable? By one reckoning a 50% threshold would seem unreasonably high for our divided community. By another, a referendum should wait until nationalists have …

Brexit tremors

Daithi McKay on May 29, 2017, 1:23 pm

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The sportswear manufacturer O’Neills has told Radio Foyle this morning that planned investment at its Strabane site has been put on hold until it gets Brexit clarity. It comes the week after the local Derry and Strabane district council passed a motion calling for the North to be granted Special Status. Meanwhile in Lisburn Coca Cola HBC has said its “mapping out” the potential impact of Brexit on its business. It currently distributes 95% of Coca Cola products sold throughout Ireland. This …

It’s easier to get rid of a hard border

Brian Walker on May 19, 2017, 10:57 am

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Vincent Boland has written a major piece for the FT magazine (£) entitled “Dividing Line: Brexit and the threat to the Irish Border“. The article is all more absorbing for being written for the casually interested globalised audience that is the FT’s typical readership. Boland doesn’t deal in economic statistics or confusing politics but on the intense, often harrowing experience that remains the living legacy of the Troubles on both sides of the physical border. And here he identifies the …

Conservative manifesto very warm on the Union, cool and correct to the Republic, no mention of special status in ” a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement”

Brian Walker on May 18, 2017, 6:27 pm

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TORY LAUNCH: Here I concentrate on those matters of specific interest to Northern Ireland. Remember that while manifestos tend to be mainly broad brush, they convey a sense of direction. The rhetoric of this one is modern British Unionist, as would be expected with the Union under threat but it avoids Rule Britannia jingoism.

“Cars being stopped and searched is not going to happen”

Pete Baker on May 18, 2017, 4:40 pm

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Whilst the BBC quote, at length, the concerns about a post-Brexit border of “a former customs officer in Donegal” whom they interviewed on Radio Foyle, the Irish Revenue Commissioner’s lead official on the topic has been speaking at a conference on Brexit in Dublin organised by the British Irish Chamber of Commerce. From the Irish Times report The operation of a post-Brexit customs regime can be automated and simplified and does not need customs points with Northern Ireland, the Revenue Commissioner’s …

Could an all island special status (on the periphery of Europe) be adjudicated by the ECJ?

Soapbox on May 17, 2017, 9:37 am

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A few decades ago a young Northern Ireland student arrived at Cambridge to start an undergraduate course. As is the case with such institutions, there were events to help the newcomers get to know each other. At one such encounter, a girl on hearing him talk exclaimed: “ Oh, you have an accent”. He replied smartly: “Yes, just like you”. She immediately reassured him in a cut glass English voice that while she had no problem with the way he …

Brexit: Little Northern Ireland can only brace itself, whilst the grown-ups decide

Mick Fealty on May 16, 2017, 6:20 pm

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I was asked earlier by a French journalist if I thought Brexit was playing in the upcoming election. Not much I said, or at least in the overt campaigning, which is largely about who wins and who loses. I expect it is playing well enough on the doorsteps for the DUP (who alone of all the NI parties went with it). SF’s agitprop approach of scaring the bejesus out of their base will work for them too. Though they weren’t very …

The UK rejects the EU timetable for negotiations. A border solution will have to wait

Brian Walker on May 15, 2017, 12:37 pm

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A pat on the back is due for Slugger for anticipating this reaction to the EU negotiating guidelines. The FT (£) has picked up Brexit Secretary David Davis’s interview on ITV’s Peston show yesterday “How on earth do you resolve the issue of the border with Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland unless you know what our general borders policy is, what the customs agreement is, what our trade agreement is?” he told ITV’s Robert Peston. “It’s wholly …

“So let nobody speak of a progressive or anti-Brexit pact either…”

Pete Baker on May 14, 2017, 6:38 pm

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In Saturday’s Irish News, Newton Emerson with some impertinent points about electoral pacts in the forthcoming General Election on June 8. From the Irish News Sinn Féin has ordered the SDLP to stand down, although sadly not to dump arms, in North Belfast and Fermanagh and South Tyrone. Let nobody call this a nationalist pact, as that would involve reciprocation and Sinn Féin has not offered to stand down anywhere. Sinn Féin’s stance is doubly impressive when it risks handing …

Theresa May’s flying visit will not halt the strange ebbing of British authority in Northern Ireland

Brian Walker on May 13, 2017, 8:12 pm

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Brian WalkerFormer 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

Tony Blair assures EU that May is sincere about a frictionless border; sees need for small amendment to the GFA

Brian Walker on May 12, 2017, 2:09 pm

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Am I on my own in becoming weary of yet another of the great and good speaking in general terms about the future of the Border? Tony Blair, addressing a European People’s Party gathering in Co Wicklow was at pains to declare his confidence in Theresa May’s sincerity over wanting a “ frictionless “border, even though by rejecting continuing membership of the single market and free movement she has made it the problem without a solution so far. “I …

Special status for the North is a possibility from Barnier’s speech. Would the UK agree?

Brian Walker on May 11, 2017, 1:58 pm

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EU negotiator Michel Barnier and the Irish government seem to be inching their way towards special status – sorry – arrangements, for the North. The EU is there for you, Ireland and so is a close partnership with the UK based on a fair free trade agreement – but ( only!) after sufficient progress on EU citizens’ rights and the financial settlement. So declared Michel Barnier in a speech to the Oireachtas that seemed designed to calm the worst Irish …

The soft Theresa is no more forthcoming than the hard Theresa

Brian Walker on May 10, 2017, 1:27 pm

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So there is a hard Theresa and a soft Theresa. The hard Theresa has been subject to some searching assessment today. First, Janan Ganesh in the FT (£), on her claim that Brussels bureaucrats were interfering in the British general election by leaking a derogatory account of her dinner with EU Commission president Junker. To leak the gist of a private dinner is normal political sport. A near-verbatim account, couched in a snide tone, is a breach of trust that …

Europe’s chief negotiator to make the trip to Northern Ireland that our own Prime Minister is currently too busy for

Soapbox on May 9, 2017, 5:50 pm

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Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, has said that during a trip to Ireland later this week he will visit the border areas that are soon to become the divide between the UK and the EU. Meanwhile, Theresa May in the run-up to the election that she has made all about Brexit has reversed her earlier promise to visit the place that will likely be most affected by the split with Europe. In this time of uncertainty for Northern …

Are the DUP sounding “generous and smart” or have they just lost their mojo?

Brian Walker on May 9, 2017, 1:15 pm

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Mick has just credited Arlene Foster and the DUP with making moves toward nationalists which Sinn Fein is struggling to answer. I see very little that the DUP have done yet that needs an answer. It is not news that the DUP don’t want a hard border or that there is a case for some sort of Irish Language Act, totemic as it is, particularly when your own contemptuous rejection whipped up demand for it. How to answer SF effectively …

Michelle O’Neill asks for clear run for Sinn Fein in North Belfast & FST

David McCann on May 8, 2017, 5:29 pm

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The Sinn Fein Leader in the North, Michelle O’Neill has made a proposal towards the SDLP that is almost certain to be rejected. I am calling therefore on the SDLP to give a clear run to John Finucane and Michelle Gildernew as the only credible anti-Brexit, pro equality and pro-rights candidates in North Belfast and Fermanagh South Tyrone.” O’Neill is asking for the SDLP to stand aside in North Belfast and Fermanagh/South Tyrone. In both the SDLP have little chance …

For Brexit, British and Irish citizens’ rights are not yet guaranteed. Interchangeable rights for all should be the aim

Brian Walker on May 8, 2017, 1:57 pm

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The issue of reciprocal citizenship rights after Brexit is turning out to be more complicated than at first thought. It extends well beyond confirming the status quo to embrace work and pension rights for new immigrants from the EU as well as the 3 million existing residents. Even when an EU citizen’s rights in the UK are backed up by taking out British citizenship, everything is not quite the same as before – as in the case of the dual …