Tuesday 20 November 2018

Damn Uppity Proddies

It's no joke.


With much graft and heft, Team May has been slowly trying to get the good ship BINO to port. Despite all the leaks and a frankly underpowered engine, it has been heading for home.


As Nick Drew wrote yesterday, May has a battle plan, a really crap one, but a plan nonetheless. Corbyn's team are now trying to pretend he is pro-EU, a remarkably stupid proposal even by their own low standards. The ERG Tories are split because they must choose between loyalty and rebellion and that is not an easy decision for backbench Tories to make.


However, we have the DUP. The DUP are more of May's kind of enemy. Determined, Pig-headed and perhaps even a bit ignorant. The remain media will point out they don't speak for Norn' Ireland, but they do care. They have never sort to. They speak for themselves and their model is the SNP in Scotland.


What the DUP currently want is the same treatment for NI as the rest of the UK, something Southern Ireland and the EU long ago identified as the insoluble puzzle of Brexit - to their advantage.


Now, rational people might think the DUP would understand a bit of this and decide that, given they want Brexit, a bit of compromise would be a price worth pay.


COMPROMISE however, as we long know, is not something the DUP are given over too - just ask the gays!


Cutting off your nose to spite your face is a heroic action in their slightly warped world, standing firm against everybody is also to be respected - right or wrong does not come into it.


Thus perhaps it will come to pass that Team May is felled not by her own backbenchers but by the DUP -ending the confidence and supply arrangement could cause a General Election which I do think would see Labour as the largest party and the end of even BINO brexit.



18 comments:

Beancounter said...

I'm getting rather tired of the DUP. Northern Ireland seems to soak up subsidies in return for sectarianism, smuggling and semtex. High time we unloaded it on Dublin.

DJK said...

The DUP have a point.

The status of NI is governed by the 1801 acts of union. The sixth article states: "...in all treaties made by his Majesty his heirs and successors, with any foreign power, his Majesty’s subjects of Ireland shall have the same privileges and be on the same footing as his Majesty’s subjects of Great Britain." The sixth article also abolishes all customs duties between Great Britain and (Northern) Ireland.

Mays deal makes NI's relations with the EU differ from those of Great Britain and also reintroduces customs duties in the Irish Sea. As such, it goes against the acts of union and represents a change to the status of NI and hence is against the Good Friday Agreement, which requires consent for any change.

Jan said...

For the first time ever I'm on the side of the DUP. It's simple really; if they are part of the UK then there should be the same rules and regulations as for the rest of us. I can't see any other way except a clear dividing line between the ROI and NI and I don't see any problem with that. The ROI as part of the EU is a separate country.

CityUnslicker said...

But both, the DUP also do not accept a hard border with the South. So their position is undeliverable as they wont stand for BINO or Hard Brexit and nor do they want to remain.

As ever, they have decided that somehow it is not their problem to solve, only to get angry about.

Tony Harrison said...

"The ERG Tories are split because they must choose between loyalty and rebellion.."
Disagree: like all Tory MPs they have a choice between loyalty to their Party/leader, and loyalty to their country. Too few MPs choose the latter. Most of them are career politicos, most of them apparently wouldn't hack it outside Westminster, so they make a shamefully obvious choice to stick with the prestige job, the manifold opportunities for arse-licking (in both directions), the impressively historic building, the subsidised booze, and so on. Cynical - moi? I don't think so. Happy to see decimation tomorrow, with 10% of them picked at random and shot summarily on the terrace, with the Thames handily adjacent for disposal.

Sebastian Weetabix said...

The whole “hard border” is confected bullshit. We should walk away on WTO terms. If Brussels wants a border with watchtowers and barriers, let them build it & man it. I think we all know how that will turn out. It is a problem they invented so we should let them enjoy it.

Elby the Beserk said...

@beancounter

I though £1 billion was cheap to ensure Corbyn didn't get in.

CityUnslicker said...

SW - the WTO insist on fair border checks too, so it does not make the NI problem go away. Of course the EU have exaggerated this, very effectively, for their own purposes. But it does need to be dealt with legally and saying we won't put a hard border in is not a real answer.

One bit of the confection the Government let's the remainers get away with is what a hard border is.....it is Not checking people or even stopping all vehicles...it is more or less invisible. There would be no passport checks as we dont' require them for UK/Eire anyway.
But Leavers have left this point alone, instead of pointing our that a hard border is really very little change day to day anyway that we could live with. No doubt the DUP have been difficult here as well....

Elby the Beserk said...

Am I right in thinking that there has only been a hard border at the height of the troubles? Seems to me that the EU is the problem, not us, NI or the Irish (despite the best efforts of their idiot PM). If the EU demands a hard border, then hell, they can operate it.

Shorter OED

"Leave : To depart from, quit, relinquish"

Binary, in current parlance. Either we are in, or out. There is no halfway stage.

Good reading below


http://commentcentral.co.uk/the-european-project-is-intellectually-corrupt/

Here, Martin Howe QC explains why the backstop is a legal shambles which could end up with us in a "You may never leave" situtation (surely May's intent)

and here, the mighty Scruton on why the nation state is what works for one and all.

https://www.roger-scruton.com/articles/276-the-need-for-nations

+

Elby the Beserk said...

Not to mention this.

https://theconversation.com/brexit-creates-a-human-rights-crisis-for-ireland-75220

Sebastian Weetabix said...

@CU: you make my point for me. Non EU trade coming though GB ports is 98% uninspected. There are intelligence led checks, often nowhere near the port. In NI there is already a border. Different currencies, VAT rates and so on. All handled electronically. I repeat, it is a confected problem.

dearieme said...

No surrrrendurrrr. Nor need there be. If the Fenians want a Trump-like wall left them build it. Otherwise I'd think so little trade would cross that border that the problem is confected.

CityUnslicker said...

SW - the DUP are here guilty of joining the confecting, that is the issue. It is working the Government is going to lose the 3rd reading of the finance bill and with it we have Corbyn in No 10.

The DUP are really, really stupid as Corbyn will happily have an NI referendum that will realise their worst nightmares.

Sebastian Weetabix said...

No, the DUP are correctly enraged that the 585 page document enshrines a separate regulatory regime for NI in perpetuity.

Anonymous said...

The former "hard border" was really a security border. It was there, manned by soldiers and police, because the Irish Republic was little more than a sanctuary for Irish Republican terrorists, who would cross over from time to time in order to carry out their campaign of bombing and murder.

During that period, there were also customs checks carried out further inland. Those could easily be re-instated without a return to a security border.

And the latter could also be re-instated, if Irish Republican terrorists resumed their activities.

Anonymous said...

"However, we have the DUP. The DUP are more of May's kind of enemy. Determined, Pig-headed and perhaps even a bit ignorant."

If it's ignorance and pure bovine stupidity you want. Look no further than the Tory party.

It's commonplace that being such strangers to principle, they couldn't recognise it in a party, if the DUP got up and bit the Tory party in the arse.

MyBlueInTheFaceName said...

@Beancounter 11:32 - no thanks.
Ireland (currently) doesnt have the capacity to absorb NI on any level.
The health service? Free schooling? TV licence? Miles to Km? MoT tests?
None of it is compatible.

On top of that the republic is the 3rd most indebted country per capita in the world!

The prod/brit axis fares no better.
If the DUP got sense they could have the best of both worlds, but as was always said of them 'they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity'.
Thats where they're headed again.

The problem is even if they 'got woke' and realised the chance available, the Scots would be up in uproar because they'd lose out on UK bound inward investment streams to a dual state NI. Scotland would then legitimately demand leaving the UK and remaining in the EU.

England simply cannot remain because UKIP would be a shoo-in at the next election to teach the London mob a lesson in Democracy. Both Labour and Tory are vulnerable here and I notice the newest leader has loaded his own revolver and uncorked his whiskey by hiring Johnny Englander, or whatever his name is.
Farage couldnt have scripted a bigger 'gimme'.

Of course none of this would have happened if - as I have been pointing out for many years on this site - house prices (thus living costs) had not been gerrymandered higher by Carney and the BoE.

So the solution.....

There are 2 -

1. England leaves the UK
2. Ireland leaves the EU

Have a guess which one is more likely?

Charlie said...

PM Farage is almost worth a punt. My opinion of UKIP couldn't get much lower but it's easy to see where ignoring 17m people could lead.

POTUS Trump was 150/1 a year before it happened.

Brexit was 7/1 on the night of the vote IIRC.