Pity the Danes
I once went to a wedding where the speech by the father of the bride was so bad and so quiet that no one knew it was over until the poor man sat down. For some reason Lord Frost’s speech yesterday reminded me of that happy day and made me feel sorry for our Danish cousins.
They had to sit through quite a few speechs by Lord Frost when he was our man in Copenhagen. Maybe in Danish he is more like Martin Luther King than he is in English. That seems doubtful because when in Copenhagen he had to stick to a strict script approved by the Foreign Office and HM’s government.
At least yesterday he had something interesting and powerful to say. Apparently:
Remainers betrayed the government and forced it to sign the Northern Ireland Protocol.
It is a disaster, isn’t working and must go.
There must be no barriers between parts of the UK.
The EU must solve this.
The ECJ can have no part in the protocol
If not we are tearing up the NIP.
I think the audience was naive and ignorant enough to believe this stuff is true and achievable. Certainly the PM thinks he can bully, cajole and blag his way out of this mess and blame Brussels, as he ruins the deal he negotiated less than a year ago.
The problem is it is utter tosh, the UK agreed to the ECJ’s role, to the barriers and to all the rest. No one is going to agree to tear all that up. Even if Lord Frost had made a rousing, inspirational speech that brought a tear soaked crowd to its feet in righteous fury and patriotic indignation; Brussels would have shrugged.
But you can see the self delusion of the party in Lord Frost’s comments that "The long bad dream of our EU membership is over……..The British Renaissance has begun."
It was a long way from “I have a dream…” and this renaissance is less Michelangelo and more Mickey Mouse.
Others can see that, the UK can’t.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.