From January 31 Britain will require pre-notification of all imports from the EU and export health certificates issued by vets for live animals and some foods. On April 30 physical checks on goods will commence. The procedures have been delayed five times since Brexit in January 2021 because British customs weren’t ready, nor were the customs sheds for Border Control Posts (BCP).
You’ll notice the requirements are not stipulated for the UK, only GB. They don’t apply to the north you see, since we’re in the EU single market.
The news of the implementation of these new checks will not produce spasms of delight in the divided DUP for several reasons. It would have been highly desirable if an executive could have been up and running before these measures came into operation for they don’t make a Stormont return easier.
What a mess he’s led his party into. He panicked at the 13% in the fateful opinion poll in February 2021. He undermined, then defenestrated Arlene Foster, took to the streets, and mortgaged his leadership to the clangourous empty vessels on the unionist fringes. Now he is their prisoner, the inevitable outcome, as always, of encouraging the wildest unionist voices
Think about it. Britain will be checking goods of various kinds at all ports like Dover, Felixstowe, Portsmouth, Weymouth and so on, and up the Irish Sea at places like Swansea, Holyhead, Heysham, Liverpool and ahm… Cairnryan. Yep. Shock, horror. Otherwise there’s nothing to stop Irish exporters from driving through Larne, thereby dispensing with certificates and notifications.
This simple fact has been obvious since 2021. If you look back you’ll find arguments between the UK and Scottish governments about the location of BCPs and the £30 million cost. Edinburgh had already earmarked a couple of sites. Go on – look up ‘Cairnryan Border Control Post: factsheet’.
Naturally it all held fire during the sturm und drang of anti-protocol agitation here and Liz Truss’s crazy attempts to overturn the protocol in 2022. When all that failed and the British had to sign up to the EU’s streamlined protocol last March, the Cairnryan loophole yawned open again.
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A House of Lords committee agreed that it would be pointless having BCPs at Liverpool, Holyhead etc. if goods from the Republic including live animals and food for processing could just sail through Scotland. The Lords committee also heard evidence that companies from the south and elsewhere in the EU had already obtained premises in the north from which they could take advantage of free movement into Britain from here. Indeed, as you read in John Breslin’s report in this paper on Monday, scores of bogus companies have also been registered here and it’s not because of our sun-drenched climate. In short, trade between here and Britain is going to become even more complicated.
There are going to have to be checks in Scotland even though the Scots, being anti-Brexit, don’t want them. How are they going to do it? Maybe have orange and green lanes instead of green and red ones? How will they tell a lorry registered in the north carrying goods from the Republic, or Spain for that matter?
No doubt all these complexities can be considered at the next DUP officer board meeting. Maybe they could have a BCP at Larne to stop stuff from the Republic going to Scotland? Then again no, for that would mean an Irish Sea border, but then there is one already. Sooo difficult.
No, the new import regulations make matters even more fraught for dithering Donaldson. What a mess he’s led his party into, a mess that has contributed to widening the split in the party that opened in spring 2021. That split was largely his fault because he panicked at the 13% in the fateful opinion poll in February that year. He undermined, then defenestrated Arlene Foster, took to the streets, and later mortgaged his leadership to the clangourous empty vessels on the unionist fringes. Now he is their prisoner, the inevitable outcome, as always, of encouraging the wildest unionist voices.
After spending two years valorising their rantings, Donaldson can hardly turn round now and face them down since his speeches sounded as if he agreed with them. As a result, the officer board is split 7-5 against returning to Stormont and we know who’s for and who’s against. What we also have learned in the fallout from last Friday’s failed meeting is that Donaldson has at least one traitor in the camp who will not stop at damaging both Donaldson’s plans or the DUP’s future prospects.
In those circumstances it’s difficult to see where Donaldson goes from here given he’s in a minority in his own high command, with someone ready to stab him in the back. Even in the unlikely event of his persuading two others, a split of 5-7 in the other direction isn’t a basis for proceeding to the party executive because there’d be skin and hair flying, just like the night in the Crowne Plaza in May 2021, when the DUP publicly fell apart.
Michelle O’Neill sounded prescient when she said last Wednesday “may be the final sitting of this assembly”.