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Overnight I have looked carefully at what has been agreed by the Prime Minister with the European Union in relation to the backstop. 1/
Having studied the documents, I would be surprised if they are sufficient to enable the Attorney General to change the central plank of his December legal advice. 2/
In that advice, the Attorney General said that under international law the backstop “would endure indefinitely until a superseding agreement takes its place in whole or in part.” 3/
Under Article 178 of the Withdrawal Agreement, if either side is found to have acted in breach of the good faith/best endeavours obligation, the strongest remedy is “temporary suspension” of parts of the Agreement to force the other side back to the negotiating table. 4/
However, the Withdrawal Agreement does not include a mechanism for unilateral exit from – or termination of – the backstop (or any other part of the Agreement) even where bad faith is made out. 5/
Turning the content of the 14 January letter from Donald Tusk and Jean Claude Juncker into a joint interpretative declaration does not change that. Nor in my view does anything else agreed last night. 6/
My statement in full 7/ 
