Monday 5 July 2021

Whodunnit?

 

During the press conference following his meeting with the German Chancellor, Boris Johnson ridiculed the Northern Ireland Protocol with the words, “Imagine if bratwurst could not be moved from Dortmund to Dusseldorf because of the jurisdiction of an international court – you’d think it was absolutely extraordinary”. It’s a fair point, and I’m sure that Angela Merkel would indeed find it a truly extraordinary state of affairs. But then she would also probably find it extraordinary that anyone would even suggest such a ban on moving bratwurst from Dortmund to Brussels, or Copenhagen, or any other city within the European Single Market. Even more extraordinary and incomprehensible to her would be any suggestion that a German Chancellor would voluntarily negotiate and then sign a legally-binding international treaty agreeing to restrictions on moving bratwurst between Dortmund and Dusseldorf. But then, according to Boris Johnson, it’s something that “no British Prime Minister could ever agree to” either. I wonder which one it was who did just that?

2 comments:

dafis said...

Taking the piss out of the Germans, a proxy for everything that Little Englanders dislike about EU, is a well established trait of said people. Now that the English football team claimed a rare win over that Kraut team last week just reinforces the default reflex. That may work very well in a bar when having a robust bout of jingoism with one's chums while sinking a few beers but it fails by miles to convey anything in the more precise world of international relations and particularly trade.

The London gang of goons failed to use the post June '16 period to plan constructively for the post Brexit period relying on other mythical "attributes" to see them through. Now they reap the storm, or a series of crop failures, as the harvest of goodies they anticipated rots into soggy ground. Absolute imbeciles !

CapM said...

“Imagine if bangers could not be moved from Dudley to Derry because of an international agreement a UK Prime Minister willingly signed up to in order to get re-elected – you’d think it was absolutely extraordinary”.

- you don't have to imagine