Actually, @afneil is also a bit off piste here.
The quote in the tweet is fair (though Liz Truss is right to point out that Art 1.4 Protocol expressly says it’s intended to be temporary, it’s also right to observe no fixed end date is set).
But he then goes on to muddle up “transition period” (the period of EU membership for all purposes bar a U.K. say - which has a fixed end date and is certainly temporary) with the backstop. That’s confusing but you can sort of see what he’s trying to say.
But finally he says that arbitration is “thrown to” the ECJ which is the “ultimate arbiter” - but that isn’t right. The ECJ’s role is limited to questions of the meaning of EU law: which will be a limited subset of issues that arise.
The arbitration panel is the ultimate arbiter of whether parties are in breach of the WA.
See my piece here. prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/eu-wi…
