Northern Ireland remains within the Customs Union but has to be renewed by the DUP (effectively) every 4 years (which they obviously won't). This is effectively a time-limited Backstop without using the word "Backstop".
Checks at the border. Checks away from the border. It makes no difference.
Everyone else seems to realise that this is an emotive issue and anything that breaks the spirit of the GFA is unacceptable, even if it doesn't break the letter of the law.
Everyone else seems to realise that this is an emotive issue and anything that breaks the spirit of the GFA is unacceptable, even if it doesn't break the letter of the law.
The number of border crossings all freight will be moved through to be to limited to... I can't remember what the number was but I want to say 4? There's over 200 border crossings - what will happen to them??
No details on the technology that is to be used to track and control freight cruising the border. They say it exists but give no details, no actual examples of their actual use anywhere in the world... They may as well have said they were going to use magic.
And the system that will control them - where is that coming from? IT projects of this scale take *years* (or over a decade for government projects). Trying tech that doesn't exist to a system that needs to be developed from scratch within 4 years? Fantasy.
I've only read the executive summary, but that was enough to know that Johnson's deal was basically like an early draft of the UK's initial proposal, but where all the pragmatic compromises had been replaced by Brexiters hand-waving nonsense fixes to problems that can't be solved
I was just a guy reading an summary. I don't have a large team of experienced experts reading through the actual legal text of the proposed deal, but I have no doubt that within 3-4 hours (max!) they would have come to the conclusion that it was total gibberish intended to fail.
