EU to offer “UK-wide customs treaty” and the backstop clause has changed

  The Sun and the Mail claim another “breakthrough” – but is it too good to be true? THERESA May got a Brexit boost today – as it emerged the EU will cave into her demands on the Irish backstop. But today RTE reported that the EU has accepted Mrs May’s plans could be workable as long as both sides sign a separate treaty to enshrine it into law. The compromise brings Britain and the EU a step closer to signing a …

Read more…

Time to stop making a fetish of the backstop and find a new formula via the GFA

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

Theresa May is shaping up for a fight. I rub my eyes, but for the first time yes, she even looks like a winner

Anonymous briefings from Brexiteer backbenchers claiming Theresa May is “entering the killing zone” and “ drinking in the last chance saloon” have backfired as the prime minister goes on the offensive in the Sun  in advance of a Commons statement on Monday afternoon.  Breaking the normal protocol of informing  MPs first, her Sun piece is a departure from her normal defensive stonewalling and a sign of new determination  to seize the initiative. Reports that she’s facing a cabinet revolt sound …

Read more…

The odds are narrowly on May surviving the week and staggering through to a withdrawal deal before Christmas

By a long way, more of the public demonstrated for a second  referendum yesterday than were threatening the prime minister in lurid language with nemesis on Wednesday. Just now though, it’s the MPs uttering the threats ( at least to journalists), who matter more. One prominent Brexiteer is making a distinctive gesture. In a further headache for May, the former Brexit minister Steve Baker yesterday tabled a series of amendments to the Northern Ireland Bill, which is due in the …

Read more…

Future Ireland / Nation-States Are Yesterday’s Politics – Let’s Review Our Terms and Conditions 

Global trends indicate that we are graduating from ideological party politics to voting based on personal priorities such as financial security. Trump’s America is the prime example. But, like their hurricanes, everything from the US eventually crosses the water and laps our shores. Unstoppable cultural homogeneity adds to this. With lightning speed our young people adopt the same fashion, music and patois globally. The extent to which this is manipulated by media giants, arms of government and lizard overlords is …

Read more…

Would “more time” bring us closer to chaos or breaking the backstop deadlock?

Will “more time” do it for Theresa May and the rest of us? The option of a longer transition is intended to provide more reassurance that special measures would not be needed to avoid a hard  border — even if the UK and the EU fail to implement a new trade deal by the end of 2020.   Because the EU is mildly encouraging,  the chorus of opposition  in Westminster is all the louder. Remainers are as dead against as Leavers  …

Read more…

Only now are both sides realising that the backstop can’t be blagged away

In single interviews it’s entirely appropriate for the presenter to play the devil’s advocate role. But in a long and pressing interview this morning on Radio 4’s Today programme  with Irish foreign minister  Simon Coveney, John Humphrys showed I believe a basic lack of understanding of the EU/Irish position of the backstop which partly explains why it’s  such a conundrum. I’m pretty sure it was more ignorance than tactic. All Humphrys  could do to fill the time was to keep …

Read more…

The case for the Union is far broader than the DUP’s. But is it compatible with a good deal?

Nobody can doubt that Brexit has challenged the stability of the Union, not only in Scotland and Northern Ireland but in England too. In a lecture in London last night he entitled “The Nightmare of History, Brexit, Ireland and the English Revolution,” Fintan O’Toole warmed to his theme, familiar to Irish Times readers, of pouring scathing contempt over the Brexit case, which he dismissed as post imperial “imaginings.” If he’s right and  Brexit is creating a revolution at least in …

Read more…

It’s neither breakthrough nor breakdown

I think we may safely say the point of crisis has arrived at last. It may last for some time. After the false optimism of Saturday, the backstop, the entire Brexit negotiation, the future of the government and the stability of the Union are all in play, as Theresa May “ branded the draft deal a non-starter”. The FT sums up the general gloomy view of the correspondents on Sunday night.. Brexit talks reached a dramatic stand-off in Brussels on …

Read more…

May at bay and kamikaze tactics from Foster, with three days to go to the EU summit

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

Fresh concessions to DUP reported as negotiations near climax

Plans to make the backstop redundant and more time to devise a permanent substitute  to help keep the DUP on side, are among the ideas being touted, as the Brexit negotiations on EU withdrawal reach a climax. The FT reports on ” the tunnel phase”     when no new  proposals  will be published by either side  until the deal is done – or not  Before the weekend is out, negotiators want to agree a complete draft treaty, defining the terms …

Read more…

Can we manage the challenge to our identities created by Brexit?

There’s no doubt Brexit is creating fresh and unsought tensions over how to manage as well as express national identities. Two pieces today are vivid examples of the problems created by Brexit on these islands. Newton Emerson develops a theme raised here several times, but has  yet to reach  the top of the political agenda. How do Northern residents born and bred assert their continuing rights as EU and Irish citizens? Sinn Fein naturally want voting rights for Northerners in …

Read more…

IS DUP threat to abandon pact trick or treat?

Newnight’s Nick Watt broke the story just after the regular  morning lobby briefing in Downing St Just minutes before this story broke, a Downing Street source was asked whether the PM felt she could rely on DUP votes. “The confidence and supply arrangement we have with the DUP is a matter of record,” he said. “Is that a yes?” “It’s an answer? Yes The story.. Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party is planning to vote against the Budget if Theresa May …

Read more…

The backstop with a good deal for GB can give Northern Ireland the best of both worlds

While Arlene is stuck in the grove of her blood red hard line, the local business community has found their own voice independent of politicians and have talked  to Peter Foster, Europe editor of the Daily Telegraph   700 miles away in Belfast, where the business community is trying to prepare the best it can for Brexit, despite all the uncertainty, the tone was markedly less apocalyptic ( than Arlene’s, stuck in a grove of red lines) . Declan Billington, …

Read more…

C’mon Arlene – Be a stateswoman. Let’s all jump together

As the Brexit negotiations approach some sort of climax it’s unwise to take any public statement entirely at face value.  Indeed any statement may have the opposite significance to the words usually mean. Thus when Juncker imitates the Dancing Queen and  tells the world: “The rapprochement potential between both sides has increased in recent days, the Dancing Queen  interprets the optimism as pressure on her to give more concessions on the backstop. So she threatens to refuse to sign a …

Read more…

DUP threaten to break the Confidence and Supply Agreement

On Friday, on Twitter, DUP East Antrim MP Sammy Wilson referred to a News Letter article concerning the ongoing state of brexit negotiations and said the following : If [Theresa May] is rolling back on her pledge that there will be no barriers between NI and GB, then the Prime Minister should be under no illusions; we will vote against her deal and it will go nowhere. This prompted me to check the Confidence and Supply Agreement, the text of …

Read more…

Future Ireland / Economic Inequality: An emerging challenge for a New Ireland

In October last year, I attended a keynote speech delivered by President of Ireland Michael D Higgins to a packed auditorium at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. The speech was anchored around Michael Davitt’s 1896 visit to New Zealand, a visit where Davitt was impressed by the then Crown Colony’s progressive policies on land, tax, pensions and the economy. Subsequently, the founder of the Irish National Land League brought a number of these innovative ideas back to Ireland, to …

Read more…

The UK and Ireland are closing in on a border solution

The FT hopefully leads:  “Ireland backs Theresa May’s plan for all-UK customs union with the UK”. The story is jointly by-lined by their political editor at Conservative party conference in Birmingham and their Ireland correspondent. She will offer to meet the EU half way on the vexed issue of the Irish backstop, agreeing to Brussels’ demands that Northern Ireland stay part of the single market regulatory area of the bloc. But, in return, she wants the EU to concede to …

Read more…

Don’t let Arlene cause panic. The GFA isn’t dead, only sleeping and will acquire new life

When Arlene Foster said the GFA wasn’t  “sacrosanct” was she deliberately provoking a fit of the jitters? What did she mean? The Irish Times had no doubts:        The apparent attempt by Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Arlene Foster to undermine the Belfast Agreement in pursuit of a hardline strategy on Brexit is ill-considered and dangerous. It would appear that the DUP is actively pursuing a policy designed to ensure the restoration of the hardest possible border on the island regardless of the consequences for living …

Read more…

May’s team claim to find flexibility in DUP demand for legal guarantees for no checks ever in the Irish Sea

This is a running story .. Latest at 22.53 The FT leads with  DUP puts May on notice over Brexit backstop Arlene Foster tweeted defiantly: Meeting with Prime Minister just ended. NO border in the Irish Sea will ever be acceptable to unionists throughout the UK . . . regulatory or otherwise. Government sources claim there must be just enough wriggle room created by new time limits. But are they deceiving themselves  once again? From the FT story For some months, Mrs May’s team …

Read more…