the withdrawal agreement. Ireland/NI Protocol

It’s strictly dancing up to the Brexit deadline. Meanwhile “the border in the Irish Sea” takes shape in Northern Ireland

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Archbishops’ letter image. FT  The  off- on- off again  dance around the final stages of Brexit negotiations is taking place against  a mounting clamour of confusion and anger over the crazy politics  including the real implications of the threatened No Deal, about which the UK government postures so insouciantly. UK in a Changing Europe think tank says their modelling with the LSE of the impact of a no-deal Brexit suggests the total cost to the UK economy over the longer …

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Notes of optimism from London about the Brexit talks are treated cautiously in Brussels and Dublin. Whatever happens, Northern Ireland won’t be ready

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Briefing on the Brexit negotiations is growing more intense.  From the British side, hopes of a breakthrough are reported by the political editor of the Spectator James Forsyth.  Inevitably  this translates into a British claim that the EU are at last bending on their hitherto implacable insistence on  full  UK compliance with the Withdrawal Agreement including the Protocol, and the withdrawal  of the offending parts of the Internal Market Bill. The EU side are briefing differently but not quite incompatibly; …

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Why can’t the Johnson government see that pure parliamentary sovereignty is incompatible with the survival of the UK?

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Fintan O’Toole has written another of his entertaining essays trying to get to the bottom of why the UK and the English in particular are behaving like lemmings throwing themselves over a cliff over Brexit.   In the Irish Times today he comes with up “England as Ireland.” The big problem with English nationalism is that it is naïve. Because it has been buried for centuries under two layers of disguise – the United Kingdom and the British Empire – it …

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This is the very moment to speak out against the old Wolfe Tone trope, that Britain is the source of all Irish ills

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Demo in Place de la Républic, Paris   As is  only to be expected, Chris Donnelly in the Irish News plays the full anti imperialist card against the UK, without regard to variations of interpretation.  He uses a French quotation approvingly as if the  French were purely the  idealists of the Rights of Man and that the revolution  had no downside such as the ruinous attempt to conquer all Europe and the French Empire never existed. All major states were born …

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Shock tactics won’t help, but they needn’t kill all hopes of reaching a final Brexit deal

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I don’t doubt that UK ministers want a free trade deal and more  with the EU. But rather than agree a comprehensive deal on what they regard as the EU terms, they are insisting on defining the terms of resumed British sovereignty first and proposing to bounce their unilateral decisions off the EU case by case as issues arise.  The procedure for this is the EU/UK joint committee created by the Withdrawal Agreement which is meeting today. There is also …

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