1/ Backstop explainer because it's not at all weird that the reasons why the backstop is important are still widely misunderstood less than two months before we exit the EU.
2/ Okay. The EU have - rightly in my opinion - made the preservation of peace in Ireland a vital part of their negotiating position. Back in 2017, the UK agreed with this aim, and agreed the border between NI and RoI must be kept open.
3/ The Good Friday Agreement enshrines the open border, and the UK, RoI & EU all have a part in preserving it. For one party to walk away from that treaty, rather than seek to replace it with something better, would be quite the move.
4/ Other countries would take notice, and it would affect that country's standing, the perception of their trustworthiness.
5/ By defending the GFA, the EU is doing what the EU project fundamentally sets out to do, protect member countries from being bullied, operate collectively for the collective good, and preserve peace. Again, it wouldn't be a good look for the UK to not also defend that peace.
6/ The border between NI and RoI can currently remain open because the countries either side are both members of the Single Market and in the EU Customs Union.
7/ It's not simply a matter of having the same rules now, and committing to aligning them in the future, but also having a means of redress if something goes wrong. But the UK wants to leave all that, because Global Britain.
8/ So the UK has lots of ideas on how it can preserve the open border while leaving the EU, and with it the CU and SM. None of these ideas have been demonstrated in practice - none of them have been tried before - and some rely on technology that hasn't even been invented yet.
9/ The EU is being polite about this. They are saying to the UK: by all means work on your ideas, we'll discuss them when you're ready to demonstrate them, but just in case - just in case - you can't get them to work, we need a fallback position, a safety net.
10/ Because the most important thing is that the open border, and with it the Good Friday Agreement, is preserved. Therefore, say the EU, we must have a fallback plan we know will definitely work. The backstop.
11/ And, say the EU, it's no good if either of us can just decide to walk away from the backstop, we have to decide together whether any new plan is good enough to take over from it.
12/ The backstop would only come into effect after transition - the period after Brexit where the UK runs in alignment with the EU while it prepares new treaties with everybody, EU included - and only if no other alternative has been found and agreed.
13/ The UK agreed with all this in 2017. The UK also said that - because we'd have nearly two years transition before fully leaving the EU rules - there was plenty of time to get their new proposals into effect. The backstop would never be needed, they said.
14/ New technology would make the backstop unnecessary for it would ever be needed, said the UK. So they agreed to it, not ever bothering to consider whether it might tie them in.
15/ The ink wasn't even dry on that before members of the UK govt and Brexit negotiating team started saying they felt no need to honour the agreement they had just made. They were starting to worry about what they'd agreed.
16/ At times the UK has asked the EU to make the backstop not legally binding, on the basis that their super-duper alternative plans will definitely be ready, so no need for a safety net.
17/ But when it comes to those alternative plans, the UK keeps coming up short.
18/ The UK keeps asking the EU to agree to an alternative plan. Every time, the EU responds: Fine. What is that plan? And the UK has nothing concrete to suggest. The EU keeps having to remind the UK that it can't agree to what the UK wants until the UK can say what it wants.
19/ And in the meantime, the EU says, the backstop has to stay. Until you can replace it with something real, we can't take it on trust. Because we can't be certain there will be something in place in time.
20/ How does all this look to the EU? Firstly, saying you had your fingers crossed when you made a commitment to something is not a good look when you are trying to get the other party to trust you for new commitments.
21/ Secondly, it must be exasperating to keep having to repeat the same things over and over: we can't replace the backstop until we have something with which to replace it.
22/ And it's reinforcing why the backstop is needed. The UK was confident it had wonderful technical solutions to the border, that would make the backstop irrelevant, all ready to go. It hasn't. It has made no progress, and it's obvious.
23/ You can see why the Brady amendment is completely pointless. Parliament have just sent the PM back to do the same thing yet again: ask the EU to agree to an alternative UK proposal they can't actually describe or demonstrate. The EU can't agree to a plan that doesn't exist.
24/ The only thing the UK has left is brinksmanship. If the UK leaves the EU without a deal in March, the border closes. The UK and EU will both be obliged to have border infrastructure.
25/ The EU take that obligation seriously, even if there are some noises in the UK that we may decide not to "take back control of our borders" after all, and instead just leave it open.
26/ So in stringing things out here, the UK is effectively sending the message: give us an open border with no backstop after transition, or the border closes this March, and hard.
27/ This is, if I may observe, a terrible threat to make, even implicitly. It would demonstrate the UK is prepared to torch a peace treaty just to score a political point right at the time we need to be remaking all those global deals we're leaving.
28/ Why would the EU comply with that demand? They know there's a time limit on the transition, and if there's no backstop at the end of it the likelihood is we will be in the same hard border scenario as now. All they will have done is kick the can down the road a bit.
29/ The EU will also know that if it gives the UK as a third country preferential treatment over the border it will have every other non-EU country knocking on the door demanding the same freedoms, either directly or via the WTO.
30/ Yes, the WTO. The Brexiters who agitate for just operating on WTO rules overlook that those WTO rules will not be our friend in any of this. Those rules constrain the relationships we can form. We won't like the limitations they place on us. At all.
31/ As an aside: it was astounding to see a UK MP, in Parliament, suggest the other day that we simply ignore WTO rules, because any disputes would take 18 months to catch up with us. Again, how can anybody trust a country that would cheerfully flout the rules like this?
32/ Finally, for the EU to open up its border to us via Ireland in a no-treaty situation, would be to surrender control of its trade, regulations, security and safety to the UK. Why would anybody agree to that? How could we expect them to?
33/ Preservation of the GFA is and with it the open border not a detail point, it can't be swept aside without far-reaching consequences.
34/ This is not a case - as I've seen claimed on Twitter - of terrorists being allowed to dictate what the UK can do with its global policies. It's about the UK standing by the commitments it has made, and being seen to do so.
35/ It's about a hard-won peace, built not on finger-pointing and blame between two sides, but an environment where the people who live, work and love on both sides of the border can now define themselves how they choose.
36/ The border has faded to near-invisibility as a result of the GFA and both countries' membership of the EU Single Market and customs union. Carve that scar back into the landscape and you carve it back into the people too.
37/ Why would any progressive, open nation do that to its closest neighbours, let alone its own citizens?
End thread.
End thread.
Addendum/ And as if by magic...
reuters.com/article/us-bri…
reuters.com/article/us-bri…
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