Pooterng about..
Just last week the Foreign Secretary said that if the DUP stopped border checks at Northern Ireland’s ports then she would not order the decision reversed.
The statement gave the DUP carte blanche to try to destroy the Northern Ireland Protocol and Edwin Poots has gone ahead and ordered his Civil Servants to stop the checks.
We will have to wait to see whether the Civil Service will obey, Poots says he has legal advice that he is in the right. It had better be cast iron advice because Ireland, the EU and the USA are not going to appreciate the tearing up of an international treaty by one small political party. Nor will they respect the UK government for saying “nothing to do with me mate”, when the government negotiated, agreed, signed and passed into law the treaty concerned.
This could be a pathetic bit of Pootish posturing or the start of a bitter and prolonged trade dispute with the EU, which the UK will lose on day one.
But the idea that the UK government would stand back and allow either to happen is deeply worrying.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
The Minister for foreign affairs is effectively instructing a regional overseer to break the law - but the civil servants aren't obliging. This is tinpot stuff - the UK is repeatedly meeting the criteria of a failed state.