EU

Westminster asserts its power over the executive and Whitehall

| Readers 2083

To all those who think Westminster is irrelevant, last night’s development could prove significant, if not actually decisive… Boom!! Government defeated… Brexit is in the hands of our Parliament, not Executive whim. pic.twitter.com/z4JqQJABig — Mike Galsworthy (@mikegalsworthy) December 13, 2017 It certainly won’t bring the government down, but it WILL give the DUP and other Brexiteers some serious headaches in landing a deal that must meet parliamentary approval, and it’s a reminder that Parliament still actually matters. NI’s only fully …

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Time to look past this ‘dodgy’ Brexit to the material reality of how politics actually works

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One of the remarkable things about Friday’s conclusion to the Phase 1 talks is just how happy everyone seems to have been. Either some or all parties are going to be disappointed as we go forward, or we are on for the blandest version of what Guido used to call a non-Brexit. What actually  happened is that the Real British position was finally brought to the surface, after months of wild propagandising in favour of a ‘hard Brexit’, which in retrospect looks …

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‘Specific solutions’ & ‘distinct arrangements’: more of the same for post-Brexit NI?

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In the space of a few carefully-worded paragraphs, the Joint Report issued by the UK and EU on Friday has managed to utterly transform the prospects for Northern Ireland after Brexit.   The UK-EU Joint Report The UK has offered surety for maintaining an open Irish border, promising to maintain wide-ranging alignment with EU rules covering every aspect of the 1998 Agreement, north/south and east/west. Moreover, it has asserted that Northern Ireland will ultimately have the right to decide for …

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We are so used to seeing Northern Ireland politics as a zero-sum game that it’s hard to acknowledge a political deal which might benefit everyone.

| Readers 4350

Jon Tonge is a Professor of Politics at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of The Democratic Unionist Party: From Protest to Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. We are so used to seeing Northern Ireland politics as a zero-sum game that it’s hard to acknowledge a political deal which might benefit everyone. That might partially explain why the endorsement of Friday’s Phase 1 Brexit agreement. Amid the ambiguity and verbiage what was tentatively and sensibly proposed was a …

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Unionist assurances come with a sacrifice of certainty…

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Amidst all the hype, some reality from Irish Times veteran, Paddy Smith… The Northern Ireland provisions of the agreement signed on Friday morning between the European Commission and the UK sacrifice a degree of certainty about how the frictionless Border will be sustained for reassurances to the unionist community that they will not be treated apart from the rest of the UK. Unless, that is, the UK achieves its objective in the trade talks of securing a free trade agreement …

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Polling Matters: What do the DUP want?

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Myself and Kieran Pedley chunking through the various polls and issues around the DUP and Brexit. What we didn’t anticipate was the very swift conclusion of Phase 1 talks. I’ve outlined three things they want: a frictionless border; best possible trade deal with Europe (a key aid to the first); and the U.K. (including NI) to be free to strike its own trade deals particularly with the developing world outwith the EU. This last is why the argument over terms …

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“The fact that all of the other parties in the Dáil rallied around to wave the green flag on Tuesday demonstrates not that the Government got it right but that it successfully pandered to populist sentiment”

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In the Irish Times, Stephen Collins on the risks involved in the Irish Government’s public positioning over the ongoing Brexit negotiations.  From the Irish Times article The British government and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) are the ones primarily responsible for Monday’s debacle, but the Irish Government didn’t exactly cover itself in glory. The way Tánaiste Simon Coveney jumped the gun with a premature radio interview on Monday morning and the subsequent mood music suggesting that the Irish side had …

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Brexit and the British Empire

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A spectre is haunting Europe. No, not that one. An uglier, messier one by far; the spectre of Empire. And if Europe is the haunted house in this metaphor, the UK is the creaking stairway where the spectre appears, Northern Ireland where you fancy you can hear it whisper in your ear. Brexit has shone a light on a lot of long hidden corners of the British psyche, none so alarming as the anti-Irish sentiment that has appeared since Taoiseach …

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May suggestion that Phase One can roll into Phase Two is not compliant with A50…

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Interesting development, coming in on the heel of the news that the British PM failed to share with the DUP, turns out that no only has Mrs May not told Mrs Foster what she was planning, she also has yet to discuss the matter of what sort of Brexit she wants with the Cabinet. That suggests she’s going to have major problems hammering this together. More concerning from an Irish point of view, she seems to think that “nothing is …

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“I never could, and still cannot all these months later, get any clarity on how exactly we proposed to take back control”

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The MP for North Down, Lady Hermon (the only pro-Remain voice within the Commons chamber from Northern Ireland) delivered a passionate speech today about the Good Friday Agreement and the process of leaving the European Union. There has been some focus on the encounter with Nigel Dodds but some other noteworthy exchanges are here; Let me say ever so loudly and strongly to senior members of the Conservative party that I do not want to hear them or see them …

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“ambiguity… appears to have led Dublin and Brussels to interpret it as a maximalist position, while the DUP believed or were led to believe that it would or could be minimalist.”

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The parlous state of the Brexit negotiations has been generating more than the usual level of idle speculation, and arrant nonsense. [Including on Slugger? – Ed] No names, no pack drill… But there are some intelligent points being made, in some places, which are worth keeping in mind – if you are actually thinking about these things. Like other, usually reliable, observers, The News Letter’s Sam McBride, whilst initially a little puzzled by Monday’s developments, offered a coherent scenario yesterday. …

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Brexit is the definition of a national issue, but we must listen to what Unionists are telling us

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Stephen Donnelly in an interview on RTE yesterday at lunchtime, who said that whilst he is happy with the draft deal on the table over the border – Brexit, he says, is the very definition of a national issue – but we must listen to what Unionists are saying about Dublin’s tone. He points out that gaps were opening up because of a lack of back-channel contacts between the government in Dublin and the DUP’s own backroom teams: no one on …

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How brexit is destroying NI’s centre ground – and could take the Union with it

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The brexit negotations are not going well. During the course of the past few weeks, we’ve seen a sharp deterioration of Anglo-Irish relations as the Irish government found themselves with no choice other than to call out the UK government’s lack of preparation or proposals on how it would approach the sensitive matter of the Irish border in the context of the UK’s departure from the EU. Today, we’ve seen the DUP intervene to scupper an agreement that had been …

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#Brexit: the DUP and the Risks of Not Passing Go

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The DUP torpedoed today’s sensible UK-EU compromise deal on the border because, according to an Arlene Foster tweet, the party could not accept any deal which separates Northern Ireland politically from the rest of the UK. This will come as a great surprise to campaigners for marriage equality, liberalisation of the abortion laws, and comprehensive education. There is no great Unionist point of principle against the terms of what was on the table in Brussels earlier today, except on the …

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Berlin and the ghosts of history…

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  The other weekend, along with Angela Merkel, I was in Berlin.   Not together of course; she was there to work on forming a new government, I in pursuit of pleasure.  Berlin is a great city both for business and pleasure with its unique culture and complex history; magnetic and absorbing it just keeps pulling me back. We stayed near Potsdamer Strasse in the old Siemens building; the company’s HQ before it was destroyed by Allied bombs in the 1940s.  …

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The DUP are barking up the wrong tree

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The DUP’s kneejerk reaction to the Times story that the Brexit sherpas are working on a plan to “avoid divergence” of regulations and standards on our island proves how insecure they feel the Union really is. According to the ancient rule of our politics that the insecure pay more attention to their opponents than their candid friends, they’ll receive perverse validation from Sinn Fein ‘s parallel rejection and their old jibe, “We always knew the Brits would betray ye. Whadida …

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Relationships: The Bridge between Principles & Practicalities

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“We are committed to partnership, equality and mutual respect as the basis of relationships within Northern Ireland, between North and South and between these islands” – Belfast / Good Friday Agreement 1998 Last month, I had the immense honour of speaking at the international youth conference One Young World: 1500 young leaders from 196 countries meeting in Bogota, Colombia to explore how we collectively resolve some of the greatest global challenges. Despite the many complexities we continue to face in …

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Is this the magic bullet to sort the problems of Brexit and the border?

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  New version:  The Times is reporting that agreement is close on “regulatory convergence” on the island of Ireland even if there is a divergence between the UK and the rest of the EU after Brexit. The agreement would involve the devolution of a package of measures to the Assembly to help maintain common standards and regulations for agribusiness and electricity, gas and water which are substantially integrated on the island. Pressure to restore the Executive would therefore increase. A …

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