,
10 tweets,
4 min read
Read on Twitter
A smart commentator with a thoughtful analysis, but I disagree on one point and I think that is important (thread)
My thoughts commence with this tweet of @Sime0nStylites
@Sime0nStylites The tragedy of the backstop to me seems to be this: BOTH sides agree on the goal. Both want the same thing. The problem then becomes how do we get there?
@Sime0nStylites The backstop can be criticised, we can complain, we can yell and shout. But one thing is utterly not in dispute: it works. It preserves North South cooperation. It prevents a border.
@Sime0nStylites So what was our approach? While we continued to agree on the goal, we put in hard red lines in a rhetoric that quite frankly set us up for failure.
@Sime0nStylites Different rules for NI were not merely hard to accept or problematic. They were annexation. How do you move back from that rhetoric?
@Sime0nStylites In fact - even the existing differences in NI did not comply with that rhetoric. Devolution doesn’t. A goalpost was struck in that was unreachable with words that made it impossible to get anywhere.
@Sime0nStylites And while the technical teams of the EU and (ironically) the UK looked into how a solution could be found, politics declared everything workable unacceptable and said “go build a plane, but don’t use wings or engines”.
@Sime0nStylites And while alternative arrangements over time can solve some of the issues, after carefully building systems, that wasn’t good enough. Trust quickly eroded. Making any solution elusive, while the goal is still there.
@Sime0nStylites And so politics enters the neverland of denial: Nobody wants a border. The backstop is slavery. Hooray for alternative arrangements that HMRC says don’t work and we don’t dare discuss with NI industry.
