Brexit: A Breather For Boris? Or a Trap for a Showman?

It depends on your point of view. The kindly gesture from  Merkel backed up by Macron that Boris had 30 days to come up with a workable and legal alternative to the backstop seemed to some as a chink of light and a sign that at last the wall of refusal so skillfully built by EU solidarity, is beginning to crack. The shrewder view is that by reiterating their refusal to remove the backstop under any circumstances, unless replaced by something as good or better, and by giving Boris thirty days to come up with a plan which has eluded the UK for nigh on a thousand days, they dished out a challenge they knew he could not meet. But they transferred ownership of the problem to him. From now on it is Boris’s fault if he cannot find an alternative that works.

And let this be understood. The backstop is treated by the Brexiteers as if it is some sort of procedural issue connected to customs arrangements for which technology is the answer. This is not what is about, so technology has nothing to do with it. Under the Good Friday Agreement Ireland became for all practical purposes of trade, domicile, movement of people and goods, one country.

Yes, the North was member of the UK, looking for governance to London.  The Republic, containing all but the six counties of Ulster, was fully independent of the UK and governed from Dublin. But all three were members of the EU. The purpose of the backstop is to retain the one country matrix, essential not only to prosperity in Ireland but peace also. Any kind of border which is actual and not symbolic is a no no.

It might be possible to go down a different route.  Sign an agreement with the EU to set up a free trade deal, details of which to be finalized over an indefinite transition period, allowing the invoking the often misquoted GAT 24 concession. This allows parties subject to an agreement already signed (the Withdrawal Agreement with an addition of the intention to sign a new trade agreement) to continue existing arrangements for up to 10 years. That would make a backstop unnecessary for a decade. If we walked away at the end without agreeing a future trade deal, Ireland would unite anyway, so there would be nothing to discuss.

I can’t see Boris buying that. But if by not signing into a backstop equivalent means he will have to give up his key to 10 Downing Street before Christmas, maybe he just might. Quicker than his very best friends would hope.