The House of Lords NI Brexit committee thinks that Northern Ireland might become a permanent casualty of Brexit, if a compromise cannot be found. It calls for the EU to be flexible and sensitive about the political implications of the NIP. It also criticises the UK for a “lack of clarity, transparency and readiness” but it seems to me is misses the main point.
The problem is that the EU no longer trusts the UK Government, which has delayed implementing the terms of the protocol unilaterally, lied consistently about what the protocol means and how it will work and seems intent on using the protocol as a means of creating a permanent sense of grievance and conflict with the EU.
The obvious answer as the Lords point out is a deal on food and veterinary standards which the EU would agree to overnight and would remove 80% of all checks. With a little imagination and investment the remaining 20% could be virtually invisible, Unionists, Northern Ireland, Dublin and the EU would be happy.
The UK Government won’t even talk about it. It is willing to sacrifice NI for a “purer” Brexit. That is the real problem.
https://jonty.substack.com/
The solution is obvious, and that is to _make_ NI a permanent casualty of Brexit, and stop the charade of delusion that NI is anything but a glorified colony.
I don't understand the London media's sudden sentimentality over this place apart, which costs the British taxpayer twice as much as it pays back (mostly to pay for year-round displays of bigotry and imperialist triumphalism). There is and always has been separate education, legal system, health, media - even the road naming conventions are different.
Britain has had to deal with terrible privatised rail that NI MPs voted for, while ensuring NI retained a state-subsidised monopoly transport service here. NI MPs voted for English students to have their tuition fees increased, but not NI students. There are plenty of examples of our "Precious Union" having differing standards east and west of the Irish Sea, to the point that even before Brexit "excludes Northern Ireland" was a common addendum to insurance ads and other common services.
If the London media actually informed Britain what the unionists here get up to as rote
* manipulatively blockading abortion, gay rights, free expression;
* shoulder depth corruption -- eg DUP ad in the Metro, RHI scandal that surely has increased the UK's carbon emissions
* burning illegal 25m tall bonfires with stolen pallets (during a timber shortage), noxious rubber tires and various symbols of Irishness (including the sovereign flag and images of the Taoiseach), right next to houses)
the population would want rid of them yesterday. They are an utter shame to the nation in the 21st century, and only the unwritten code of silent compliance from the London media prevents this reckoning.
These headlines you are seeing of fired up protests are largely orchestrated by proscribed terrorist organisations (which the PSNI has gone on record to suggest are retaliation for busting their drugs operations), and are in no way reflective of the wider population, including EU-supporting unionists. NI voted 56% remain.
These cowards routinely attack small children in their quest to prove their loyalty to Her Majesty (see Holy Cross in 2001, Drumcree in 1997, when three brothers were burned to death as part of a province-wide petrol bomb campaign on residential housing), culminating this week in an orchestrated campaign to shut down an integrated pre school, because it had the temerity to offer Irish language to four year olds. The school was being administered by Linda Ervine MBE, a committed unionist, who has just been honoured for her dedication to the Irish language.
Instead of appeasing these savages and indulging their whinging, the London media should be shaming them with every blot of ink in the printers. Remember Theresa May had secured a deal that would have sorted all this out, but it was scuppered by Arlene Foster after she had a private meetings at the behest of the UDA (who days earlier had shot a man in a supermarket car park during business hours - no arrests, naturally). https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2017/06/01/news/arlene-foster-criticised-after-meeting-uda-leader-days-after-loyalist-murder-1041833/