Brexit Impact on Northern Ireland

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121695964#Comment_121695964

Not sure you know what 'back channel' meeting are. They are not publicised phone calls between PM's.

I think Leo, and Simon were gotten to by somebody as they were much more vociferous during Brexit which as we know produced a good outcome for us.

It remains to be seen what is in this deal and if it is 'good'.

And I stand over that contention that 'secret deals' with one party are wrong and a recipe for potential damaging disaster.

Long way to go on this one yet.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121695856#Comment_121695856

Donaldson is channeling his inner Trimble who was in turn channeling Paisley.

Remains to be seen if he pulls it off.

Funny that Bryson rubs Donaldson's nose in with Trimble's words, but it was Trimble who endorsed Bryson's hated GFA. The GFA he thought was in the bin at one stage and was glory tweeting about it.

downcow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121694896#Comment_121694896

Sorry it was on Nolan. I’ll get exact text.

downcow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121696846#Comment_121696846

I assume you feel the same about the secret meetings between blair a the shinners?

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121696903#Comment_121696903

I listened to that too this AM and heard nobody say it.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121696918#Comment_121696918

Remember me telling you who to take your anger out on re: Comfort Letters downcow? The same outfit who agreed this deal in secret.

downcow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121696923#Comment_121696923

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001vs84

around 55mins

Prof John tong stated that the WM said that ‘the eu could intervene and check whatever goods they wanted’. He says, it’s a ‘big win’ for Jeffry if he is right in his claim that this is no longer the case.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121697005#Comment_121697005

That's all about speculation.

pureza

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121697005#Comment_121697005

No agreement was made with the DUP this time without the unofficial nod from the EU I'd imagine

I have yet to hear other parties bar the TUV (Flat earthers who ponder why there should be a UI when Portugal isn't united with Spain and are of the school of thought that there's a different rock structure under the 6 counties than the 26) complain

So we're all good I'd say

downcow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121697048#Comment_121697048

If you look back I never claimed it was anything other than speculation. Indeed I said I didn’t believe.

let’s hope I’m wrong though.

downcow

This isn’t speculation. Released 30/1/24 (today) by eu:

”Following in-depth technical discussions with the UK, the Commission is now putting forward a proposal to the Council. If the Council approves the proposal, the EU and the UK are expected to formally agree on the solution at the next meeting of the Joint Committee of the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement.”

of course some will try to claim that it is some incredible coincidence and would have happened anyway. - I don’t know the detail but it looks like more good news, way beyond my expectations

AdrianG08

Unionists trying to manufacture some kind of win out of it all, you have to love it.

It's all about lording it really.

tomhammer..

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121697585#Comment_121697585

You mean lording it over the nationalists?

AdrianG08

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121697905#Comment_121697905

Yep

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121697402#Comment_121697402

I agree; not a coincidence.

But, also, not a change to the WF/the Protocol — this willbe a decision of the joint committee, exercising powers it has had all along (and will continue to have - i.e, this decision could itself be changed in the future).

On edit: Commentary I have read suggests that the main impact of this change will be to give NI businesses/consumers easier access to products imported into the UK from the rest the world (i.e. not from EU), in particular products imported under the UK's trade deals with other third countries. So New Zealand lamb imported into the UK under the UK/NZ trade deal can be more easily brought into the NI market. This may please NI consumers and retailers of lamb (but not, I imagine, NI lamb producers).

Slightly Kwackers

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/116006633#Comment_116006633

Considering that Brexit was attributed to be voted for by either the very rich or the very stupid, isn't Brexit itself pretty general.

Regardless of the intention, I fail to see how Brexit can seem anything but offensive to the reputation of anyone but those either with offshore accounts or some other means of getting an edge on the working population.

3.3 billion for the DUP's performance is hardly a very sane, normal approach is it?

When those that supplied the cash have record numbers of food banks and are in a panic if they spend a weeks stay in a hotel room for asylum seekers, then isn't the cost of eleven million asylum seekers housed and supplied with their £8 pocket money for a week a fact that despite being quite true, might be considered to be highly insulting when related as "news"?

In fact if you look at that major mouthpiece supporting Brexit in the UK, Tim Martin, at no time when spouting the difficulties of trading in Britain as an EU member state, did he seem to consider it necessary to point out how his businesses here in the South of Ireland managed to do so well under the thumb of his hated EU.

Brexit is a case where for most people, support for the fiasco is as detrimental to their reputation as would be sitting on the branch of a tree while sawing it off.

If One didn't find Brexit funny and as a result detrimental to the abilities of those who are not extremely rich supporting it, it would have to be taken seriously.

There lies the path to madness.

Even in The Mail in the UK. that poor quality substitute for cheap toilet paper, I notice that few now sing the praises of Brexit. Apart from a few reporters still pushing the Brexit pint bottles of wine rubbish, the vast majority of very vociferous supporters that were amongst the readership have gone to ground faster than garden slugs on a sunny day.

downcow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121697585#Comment_121697585

We were told, on here and elsewhere, that not one dot of the Windsor Franework would be changed and negotiations were over.

I am very confident now that some text has been changed.

the responses are predictable on here, but hey

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121698712#Comment_121698712

Unless you're actually able to point to the text that has been changed, your confidence seems . . . misplaced.

Bear in mind that the text is embodied in a treaty, negotiated and signed by the UK and the EU, and ratified by their respective parliaments. The process for amending the Treaty is the same as the process for making it in the first place - negotiation, signature, ratification. Have you any reason to think that that process has happened? If not, whence comes your confidence that the text has been changed?

circadian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121695569#Comment_121695569

The DUP are cooked. The last Assembly Elections they only topped the poll in 2 constituencies and are bleeding out to Alliance. This 2 year hold up in government has people out on strike and many in the PUL community are very well aware that the DUPs unwillingness to form a government is playing a large part in making things hard on them. Unionism pushed for Brexit and now Brexit is collapsing any Unionist cohesion.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121698755#Comment_121698755

The EU is us,

It is a pretty big claim that the Irish government has agreed to rewriting the WF and has told nobody in the Dáil.

@downcow requires back-up. We have been here before with the naïve in Unionism buying into bluff and spin if not downright lies from their own government or the leadership of the DUP.

Slightly Kwackers

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121698712#Comment_121698712

Well, I'm a simple soul so "no border in Ireland" and "no border down the Irish Sea" seems to be stretching the abilities of the DUP, the Tories and even the Dublin government as far as a solution goes

Maybe a compromise would be possible, a customs border in the Irish Sea on odd numbered dates and in Ireland on even dates :-)

Methinks that quite a few expectations will not live up to the practicalities of a solution dreamed up by what is without doubt the most incompetent UK government that has ever been installed in the UK in my lifetime.

FrancieBrady

Having been totally used by Jeffrey and the DUP and shafted by them, Jamie is reduced to trying to troll them on X. A look between your fingers moment. Hard to feel sorry for him, he was well warned that this would happen.

https://twitter.com/JamieBrysonCPNI/status/1752657047374397694

tomhammer..

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121699347#Comment_121699347

What's that about ?

explain

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121699444#Comment_121699444

He is trying to say that the DUP are taking orders from SF now.

He is reduced to carping from the sidelines and he doesn't like it.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121699444#Comment_121699444

Presumably Bryson revealing that when all's said and done thee's a hardcore of Unionism whose main, overriding fear, is no longer being in charge. The whole Brexit fundamentalism a convenient sideshow to the resting anxiety that Sinn Fein are about to be First Minister and the biggest party in NI.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121699467#Comment_121699467

Which, for Bryson and his ilk, was never supposed to happen.

Choochtown

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121697585#Comment_121697585

I don't know if the pun was intended but nothing is surer from this cesspit of a Tory government than the fact that there will soon be a "Lord Donaldson" (or whatever title the bigoted soon to be ex-leader of the DUP deems to give himself)

Frank Bullitt

The paper has been released, I can hear them talking about it on the radio now.

downcow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121698755#Comment_121698755

I am not claiming anything. I am reporting comments. I said I was confident text have been changed which is different from saying it has been changed.

That said, Jeffrey has now stated categorically on BBC the text in the framework has changed and that Europe was involved in those changes. Time will tell. I am quite sure it will be done in a way that saves face for all those who said their would be no renegotiation and not a for would change

downcow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121698871#Comment_121698871

I only heard a small part of his 1 hour interview, just completed, but I was very impressed - and in no fan.

downcow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121699347#Comment_121699347

For once we agree!

retalivity

From the guardians liveblog:

The PM’s official spokesperson said:

This is our negotiation between the UK and the DUP, this is not about altering the fundamentals of the Windsor framework.

We do believe the changes we are implementing are significant and the DUP have made similar comments.

Pressed on the “significant” changes, he said that they were to the “operation of the framework”.

So window dressing for the DUP, basically.

circadian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121699811#Comment_121699811

What interview?

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121699864#Comment_121699864

Fairly clear.

But it was beforehand that there was no renegotiation.

Spinners were out trying to suggest it though.

MBSnr

This take from Paul Cunningham Political Correspondent for RTÉ.

pixelburp

To truly understand what this means, we're going to have to wait for the first bump in the road - when the EU changes its rules but the DUP does not like how the law will apply to NI.

Which is precisely the worry I've had about this whole set-up, cos I can almost guarantee it's gonna happen the first time the EU changes the rules & the DUP's nose gets put of joint 'cos of ... I dunno, cow passports, bending sausages or somesuch.

Brief_Lives

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121700204#Comment_121700204

excellent... a clear explanation

FrancieBrady

Sammy first out of the unhappy traps.

https://twitter.com/adampayne26/status/1752691443745882400

pixelburp

"Brexit betraying"

As always it's worth taking a moment to reflect that there is a not-inconsiderable cohort within the UK who think the problem is not that Brexit was a terrible idea to begin with - but that the Tories are doing it wrong, and could yet work. It's 4 steps removed from Sunk Cost and into some cultish delusion from which there's no hope.

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121700531#Comment_121700531

"the sunlit uplands" as James O'Brien often refers to this mythical land where the one true Brexit has occurred.

FrancieBrady

Anyone else get a very lack lustre vibe off Sammy's protestations here? Seems almost deflated at times. A beaten docket?

https://twitter.com/DaveJSHT/status/1752693696112509366

LuckyLloyd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121700282#Comment_121700282

I would take a different view. In November, only 72% of DUP voters were in support of their continued refusal to enter Stormont. It seems unlikely that you'll ever have more than 25% of NI voters in favour of the Statelet being in a non functioning state over some technical aspect of EU law. If and when that occurs, in essence so what? Ireland and the EU will do what they have done the past two years. Keep talking, keep offering different words or working groups but stick insistently and inevitably to the principle of the thing.

Sure, there will be times where the DUP are propping up a minority Conservative government and have leverage, but they simply don't represent enough people in NI to ever "win" on the fundamental point - the customs border is in the Irish Sea and regulatory / standards alignment between Ireland and NI is a requirement. Most people in Northern Ireland want this; and enough of a minority of those who don't want it can't be bothered with public services and institutions in the North being impeded as a point of principle to oppose it.

Sure, it's classic EU - they found another fudge of sorts, but the outcome is broadly the outcome we identified in late 2016.

LuckyLloyd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121700668#Comment_121700668

Donaldson has sold them out, in essence. I think he did the right thing given that Sunak could call an election as early as the summer. But make no mistake, this is not what Sammy and Jamie Bryson have been hoping for the past few years.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121700681#Comment_121700681

Oh I know that. Sammy and Jamie ultimately want their veto back and the Taigs put back where they where after partition.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121698712#Comment_121698712

You've almost a decade and a half of the Tories lies, gimmicks and excuses and still you believe... and eight years education in trade deals... surely, surely by now you'd be able to do just a little independent thinking?

The UK is a member of the WTO and without having an acceptable border between NI and the UK mainland neither the UK nor the EU can operate as required under WTO terms. And if you think for a minute that Tories or the EU are going to risk even a single trade agreement for the same if the DUP, then you are going to be very disappointed.

It is far more likely that the DUP were told you either get back into Stormont and government or you'll have Irish civil servants doing it for you. An now the boys have to get up and dance.

circadian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121700668#Comment_121700668

The penny has almost dropped for him. If the Tories were to answer his final question honestly, then Sammy and Unionism would be faced with the reality that the rest of us see.

LuckyLloyd

The DUP have taken this as far as they can. There could be a new election as soon as the early summer, which is likely to result in a massive Labour majority. This was their last chance to try and leverage anything off a more sympathetic government, even though Sunak and the bulk of his party have moved on. They have gotten some words changed, some implementation changes, and a pile of cash for public servant pay rises that they can take to the doorsteps when the general election comes.

However, they have not gotten what they wanted or anything near it. And a blueprint for waiting them out next time they throw their toys out of the pram has been established.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121699801#Comment_121699801

My point stands; if you're confident that the text has been changed and it hasn't in fact been changed then your confidence is misplaced.

And your citation of Donaldson's claim reinforces my view that your confidence is misplaced. If Donaldson has said that the text has changed, he is certainly wrong. The text is set out in the Withdrawal Agreement - specifically, in the Protocol on Northern Ireland, starting on page 92 of the Withdrwal Agreement. It hasn't been changed - you can check it for yourself online, but you hardly need to; if a change had been agreed and had been ratified by the two Parliaments, it would have received widespread media coverage, and we'd all be aware of it.

Your "confidence" looks like wishful thinking — you've no reason for thinking that the text of the Protocol has been amended and plenty of reason to think that it hasn't, but you're "confident" that it has because you'd like that to be the case.

What has happened is that the Joint Committee has agreed a change to the operation of the Protocol. That's not a change to the Protocol; it's something for which the Protocol itself provides. Nor is is unprecedented — it has happened more than once already. Doing this is part of the reason why the Joint Committee exists.

But I'll give you this; if anybody ever told you that the Joint Committee would never change the operation of the Protocol in any way and you doubted or disbelieved them — they were wrong and you were right.

FrancieBrady

Seems a fairly accurate take on the 'achievement'.

https://twitter.com/BelfastAe22/status/1752694739839619567

TBH after reading more of the detail I will be amazed if the DUP can sell this. It is largely just spin and fudge.

beggars_bush

Brexiteers to derail this whole 'deal' that's not really a deal