I’m not from the UK, so I would like to know if this article from the BBC says what I think it says.
The gist is that Boris Johnson would like to amend the terms under which the UK exits the EU and would like to give powers to the government to violate international law should they prove inconvenient to the planning.
Is this correct? It struck me as unlikely that a major power would suggest it may want to openly flaunt its dedication to international law and treaties, so I wanted a GQ answer on that. It seems too bizarre to be true.
Boris is a bit of a brazen fuck … it’s not unusual for countries to violate international law, but usually they at least give themselves the figleaf of saying that what they’re doing is perfectly fine.
This looks like it’s driven by the Insoluble Ireland Problem … Brexit means you have to have a customs border between the UK and continental Europe. The Irish bit of it has to go either between Northern Ireland and the U.K., between NI and the Irish Republic, or between the Republic and the rest of Europe. Each of these possibilities is monumentally unacceptable to someone, but they had to pick one of #1 or #2 in order to get a withdrawal agreement in the first place - they basically went with #1. But the people that option 1 pisses off are Ulster Unionists, and the Tories need their votes in parliament, so…the born to rule mentality comes out. If it happens to be inconvenient to them to do what they said, they’ll just not do it.
Oh, and well done Boris for coincidentally fucking things up for Scotland at the same time (probably due to insufficient care factor rather than deliberate decision - do the Tories expect any votes from up there ever again now that Ruth Davidson’s not Scottish Conservative leader any more?)
OK, now I’ve got a political question about the US response to this.
Quote from the middle article:
Pelosi said: “Whatever form it takes, Brexit cannot be allowed to imperil the Good Friday agreement, including the stability brought by the invisible and frictionless border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland.
“The UK must respect the Northern Ireland protocol as signed with the EU to ensure the free flow of goods across the border.
“If the UK violates that international treaty and Brexit undermines the Good Friday accord, there will be absolutely no chance of a US-UK trade agreement passing the Congress.”
OK, good for her for understanding the importance of the Good Friday agreement - but would this really be a barrier to a US/UK trade agreement? Is this just a case of general respect for the rule of law, or is there some other reason why the UK reneging on its agreements with Europe would be a problem for America?
The US is a guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement.
There are not many things that Democrats and Republicans agree on, but in December last year Congress voted unanimously that they will not support any trade deal between the US and the UK if the Good Friday Agreement is not protected.
This bill is a reiteration that Congress will not support any trade deal between the US and the UK if it is detrimental to the landmark peace treaty– in July, a 54-strong organisation within Congress called Friends of Ireland confirmed that they would block any transatlantic trade deal if Brexit resulted in a hard border in Ireland.
Huh. I never even knew that was a thing. What does being a guarantor, for an external party like the US, actually involve? Does the US government have official power/responsibility under international law for making sure the terms continue to be kept appropriately? Or is it more nebulous than that?
From what I can tell by googling, there isn’t any formal guarantor of the treaty other than the UK and Ireland, and the US isn’t even in any of the agreements. The US obviously has a strong interest in the matter, but as far as I can tell declaring the US to be a guarantor is just an overdramatic declaration by elected officials, not any actual status under the terms of the treaty or in international law.
This makes some sense. Ireland, whether or not it technically meets the criteria to be called a corporate tax haven, has been seen as having a more friendly tax environment for several multinational corporations (like Apple or Google or Facebook, etc).
Whether or not being a ‘guarantor’ has any legal meaning, the US does have a vested practical interest in anything that could affect Irish trade. It’s just more evidence that it would be difficult, if not outright impossible, to replace current multinational agreements with several bilateral agreements - even in agreements that seemingly do not involve the US (or any nation with significant international trading), the US will naturally be affected by the outcome.
It is also of great interest to the large Irish diaspora in the US, which historically tends to oscillate between indifference and ardent political activism regarding American posture towards Irish issues.
Well, why should the US be eager to enter into an agreement with the UK after it reneges on it’s agreement with the EU? Why should we (or anyone else) trust the UK non to renege on any agreement we enter into with it?
It is too bizarre to be true but it is, nevertheless, true. The UK concedes that what it proposes to do is a violation of public international law.
This is the thing. The Tories don’t need the Unionists’ votes in Parliament. The Tories on their own have a majority of 80 seats over all other parties combined. They don’t need anybody’s support.
There’s only two possible explanations for why Johnson would trash his country and its reputation in this way. Once is that he’s under pressure from the right-wing loon wing of his own party and needs to placate them. The other is that it’s a giant 10-storey fuck-you to the EU in the hope that it will make the EU break off trade deal talks which Johnson (a) wants to end but (b) wants to have colour for pretending that he didn’t end.
On edit: it’s worth noting that the government’s own explanation for why they signed and ratified the treaty that they are now seeking to violate is that, when they signed it and fought a general election seeking a mandate to implement it, they failed to realise how it would operate. In other words, their excuse for putting the UK in a position in which (they say) it now has to break the law is that they themselves are incompetent.