The last ditch
Another Monday another story on the Northern Ireland Protocol.
HMRC are apparently delighted to discover that their new data collection system for goods crossing the Irish Sea works brilliantly and shows that 85% of goods never leave Northern Ireland.
They see this as evidence that there need be no checks at the border between NI and the rest of the UK. I am not sure the EC will see it that way but then they are hinting that any checks can be carried out on board ship, during the crossing.
So the border becomes invisible, or as opaque as possible.
What difference will this make?
Well for the DUP and their increasingly barmy supporters on the extreme edges of the Brexit debate, it will change nothing.
They want the NIP to die, they have no alternative because they don’t need one; a border between NI and the Republic is none of their concern, not their problem.
But the EU is now dragging its feet not just over Horizon, which the UK desperately needs to join, but on mutual recognition of qualifications, data transfers and equivalence.
On all four issues the UK needs the EU to be nice, the EU thinks messing with the NIP is not nice.
The UK will therefore, if it has any sense, buckle, patch up a compromise on the NIP, withdraw the bill to tear it up and abandon the DUP.
The DUP have once again decided to fight to the last man in a ditch, unfortunately for them it is a ditch that no one else cares about.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media
Well, the people who vote for the DUP DO care. And in the last election, the DUP lost their pre-eminent position because so many votes from the extreme end of Loyalism went to the more zealous TUV.