In the desperate attempts by Brexiteers to
personalize the failure to come to an agreement over the UK’s departure from
the EU, the Taoiseach is increasingly being demonised
by politicians and pro-Brexit media alike.
It is, of course, easier to attack an individual than to get to grips
with the underlying problem, but attempting to bully someone into bowing down
before the might of the UK is no way to solve the issue.
People seem to have lost sight of the fact
that the so-called ‘backstop’ isn’t really a ‘thing’ at all; it’s merely an
agreement that, unless and until a way can be found to maintain frictionless
trade across a border between two different regulatory regimes, the UK will ensure
that its regulations will remain aligned to those of the EU. The PM argues that the issue should be
resolved during the trade negotiations – but that is, effectively, where it was
always going to be resolved. The ‘backstop’
is merely a statement of intent that whatever trade agreement is reached will
honour the commitment to maintaining an open border.
So far, so amicable. The problem, though, is that the Brexiteers
have never had the slightest intention of negotiating any agreement which meets
that precondition, not because they don’t want to but because there simply is
no form of possible agreement which meets both their demands for regulatory
divergence and the requirement for a completely open border. They have no real objection to continued
regulatory alignment during all – or at least part – of the period during which
trade negotiations take place (although they’ll huff and puff about that) but
maintaining it after the end of those negotiations is an absolute no-no for
them. In that sense, their fear that the
agreed precondition will bind the UK in perpetuity is entirely justified and
their desire to remove the precondition completely reasonable from their
perspective. It’s important to note,
though, that the problem doesn’t stem from the mutual (EU and UK) desire for an
open border (let alone from Irish intransigence) but from the determination on
one side (the UK) to end regulatory alignment between the UK and the EU. They talk about wanting an open border, but
they know (they’re not stupid enough not to) that it is their desire to abolish
and revise current regulations which makes some form of border control
inevitable.
For all their talk about wanting ‘free
trade’, they know very well that free trade with regulatory divergence will
always be less ‘free’ than free trade in a single market, and that their
starting point is that, for the first time in human history, they are seeking
to negotiate a free trade agreement which is more restrictive than the one
which currently operates. That is not a
wholly unreasonable position to take; it’s certainly not unreasonable to
believe that having total freedom to make all our own rules and regulations is worth
the cost of imposing restrictions on trade and introducing border
controls. (I'd disagree, but I accept that the balance between the two is ultimately a matter of opinion.) Their problem is that people
might not have voted for that, so in order to persuade people to vote for Brexit,
they claimed that there was no such trade-off and that the UK could indeed both
have its cake and eat it. And they were
believed. As PM, Johnson is now trying
to say that the mess we are in is all the fault of the evil Europeans. But it really is not – it’s the fault of
those who told a lie in an attempt to sway votes never expecting that they
would have to deliver, and who now prefer to double down on the lie rather than admit
the truth. The problem for the rest of
us is that they might just be believed again.
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