On the one hand there’s Michael Gove, the perpetrator of the sneakiest act in modern British politics, swanning around the Antrim Show assuring Brexit voting DUP supporters that all will be well in their Little England nirvana with his new subsidy regime.
On the other hand there’s Liam Fox, a man, who by common consensus should never have been in a British Cabinet again, flying to America to make a deal which will destroy the north’s beef and poultry industry.
Nothing better illustrates the chaos at the heart of British government where the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing. If Fox has his way in say, five years time beef from Latin America and chicken from the US will flatten producers here. Do the DUP know that? Would they care if they did as long as they can get out of the EU and smooch with some of the most unsavoury politicians in the UK? Are their voters really so dense they never question any of that? In this case it’s chickens voting for Christmas.
If you want to see the power of the locomotive coming down the line read Michel Barnier’s evidence to the House of Lords EU committee. It was published on July 20. It’s a real eye opener if you’re operating only on the basis of information in the xenophobic British tabloids or from the cowed BBC.
The committee went to Brussels to meet Barnier on July 11. He was accompanied by his deputy Sabine Weyand the former deputy director-general of trade for the EU Commission and two other experts. He laid out his plans and his aims and deadlines. First he wants a political agreement by October 2018 because it will have to be ratified by the end of May 2019 when Britain exits and that means any agreement has to be signed off by both the British and EU parliaments.
So far he has presented nine papers to the British. So far they have presented nothing. He said, ‘in the last three months [since May triggered Brexit] nothing has happened.’ He has no idea what the British want. He has listened to what David Davis has said and read what others say but there is no government position on anything.
What is of great interest is what he had to say about Ireland. He and Davis have set up a number of working groups on EU citizens, Britain’s divorce bill and Ireland. Sabine Weyand and Britain’s senior official Olly Robbins are engaged in ‘a high level political dialogue on Ireland’. Barnier assigns it top priority. Now here’s a fascinating nugget. He told the committee: ‘In the case of Ireland which is a unique case I have to make sure it is supported by 26 other countries, 26 because Ireland has a particular dialogue with us.’ He added: ‘For me the Irish question is unique and the solutions for Ireland will be unique.’ Would that imply a sort of special status?
For Barnier his deputy is to negotiate a political agreement and then ‘we will find technical solutions, not technical solutions first.’ The Common Travel Area is first on the agenda because he says, ‘no document describes what it is or how it works.’
So far, as on everything else the British have not produced any document or proposal on the political agreement necessary. Barnier ended his remarks on Ireland with an intriguing comment. He said, ‘we need the cooperation of the British authorities [for a political agreement] as co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement. That is an indication I’m giving you – a hint if you like.’
His remarks are very encouraging in one sense but running through his evidence to the committee is regret that he has nothing to work on. With the chaos and divisions at Westminster it’s like playing handball against a haystack. The concern for nationalists reading his observations is that he doesn’t realise this British government has no interest in working the Good Friday Agreement and certainly not the north-south dimension which Barnier believes is key to trade on the island after Brexit.
As for a political agreement post Brexit based on the GFA, pigs might fly. Puts the Antrim Show in perspective.
