Is there about to be a breakthrough in the Brexit talks?
1/ It seems unlikely that the EU are about to make an "offer" on the question of consent, as reported this morning (@BrunoBrussels's piece on a unilateral "double majority" revocation of the withdrawal treaty by Stormont)
2/ This is not to say there isn't room for manoeuvre on the consent issue: senior figures say that finding a mechanism should be doable, possibly through the North-South and East-West structures of the Good Friday Agreement
3/ The main concern is that there is no point in taking a veto on entry into a new backstop arrangement away from the DUP and then handing it to Sinn Fein on exiting the backstop
4/ And it barely needs repeating, but there is still no NI Assembly or Executive functioning
5/ But the major hurdle is that both sides are so far apart on customs. In other words, there's no point in burning negotiating capital on finding a consent compromise if you don't know what the consent applies to...
6/ Is it just to consent to NI staying in the single market for goods + agrifood, or is it also for NI staying in the EU customs union?
7/ The reality is that since the British text was tabled there has been no negotiation on it, instead it's been about EU officials bombarding the PM's chief negotiator @DavidGHFrost with questions about how it wd work, how it wd meet the objectives of no hard border etc
8/ So, with no clarity on customs, there has been no detailed discussion, certainly at technical and TF50 level, on consent (there may have been political to-ing and fro-ing on it between Dublin and London, however)
9/ However, the EU remains wary of the consent proposals as tabled by the UK, as they effectively kill the legal certainty that the backstop provides. Instead, the view is that they give one side a veto and create a destablising cliff edge every four years
10/ At the same time, the EU does not want to be seen to be telling the UK how it should manage democratic legitimacy in NI. The line from Brussels has always been that it's for the UK to decide on a role for Stormont, and that is in fact enshrined in the existing WA (Article 15)
