Thread by @AndrewPRLevi

We don’t know who the “senior ally” of @BorisJohnson quoted by @Telegraph is. We can guess. @DavidGHFrost well knows that if the Northern Ireland Protocol is “dead in the water”, so is the “oven-ready” Brexit. Either that or the Good Friday Agreement. /1.

telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/…

So, which is it, folks? The “senior ally” complains that the NIP breaks the GFA. That means Boris’ Brexit does. Recall: we’re talking about a legally binding international agreement. And we know @BorisJohnson @DavidGHFrost & the Cabinet would never break international law. /2.

Obviously that also means they would never countenance a border across Ireland. We all know the upshot of all that is the UK has to accept the need to return to the EU’s customs union & single market. Or substantially identical arrangements. /3.

The continuing farce of pretending otherwise has long since been putting livelihoods & lives at risk. And shredding the UK’s international reputation. “Alternative arrangements” & other zombie unicorns like “mutual recognition” are, how can one put this ... rubbish. /4.

They always were nonsensical fantasies. @DavidGHFrost has known that throughout. He knows it now. So, let’s cut to the chase. Set the legal sophistry & hallucinogens aside. And respect reality. /5.

Playing fast & loose with the GFA is not only deeply irresponsible. It’s a mug’s game. Even when Donald Trump was still in the White House. Let alone now, with President Biden. /6.

You can pretend putting a customs & regulatory border across Ireland is GFA-compatible. An irresistible force is going to make clear to you, that’s not on. /7.

You can contort your fertile imagination to persuade yourself, & pretend to others, that a deal which places a border between NI & GB doesn’t technically change NI’s status, as defined in the GFA. And therefore doesn’t require prior majority consent by NI’s population. /8.

You can go on to ignore the cognitive dissonance as you nonetheless recognise consent is, after all, required. But you create the convenient fiction that consent years after the event is just fine. You can do all that. But reality will catch up with you. /9.

You can insult the intelligence of every expert, everyone with even a passing knowledge of the issues, & declare a technological, administrative & legal mirage will solve the insoluble. At the frontier across Ireland. Between GB & NI. Both. The Moon. It’ll still be a lie. /10

What you know is this. In your heart. Your head. Any Brexit’s dumb. Boris’ Brexit is a Humpty Dumpty Brexit. It contains at least six impossible things. Before, during or after breakfast. And it relies on words meaning what Boris decides they mean. Not what they really mean. /11.

It’s completely unsustainable. To use a different cultural reference, it’s a Norwegian Blue Brexit. And it isn’t “just resting”. It was deceased before the 2019 general election. But No. 10 shopkeeper Boris, having sold it, keeps up the performance that it’s alive. /12.

Blaming @DavidGHFrost is entirely beside the point. OK, he’s in the Cabinet. He has to take the punishment which can go with that. And many will say, deservedly so. He always knew & knows all of the above, after all. /13.

This is @BorisJohnson’s Brexit. It’s unworkable. It’s dangerous. And it’s failing fast. There’s a long list of guilty men & women. They need to be dealt with. But first, the Prime Minister has to recognise there’s no way out of the corner into which he’s backed himself. /14.

He can’t have his Brexit. He can have a different one. A customs union & single market one. An utterly pointless one, to be sure. The culmination of @David_Cameron’s carelessly catastrophic European odyssey. A Brexit which will almost certainly detonate his political career. /15.

But a Brexit which would have the merit, as some of us would see it, at least, of not detonating the country. /16.

Sure, Brexit isn’t really about the EU. It’s a much more profound revolution than that. But it is, whether Brexiters like it or not, necessarily about Ireland. It always has been. /17.

And however many elections they win in the UK, there’s no way out which both meets their radical objectives & the political & legal realities presented by Ireland. /18.

There’s too much at stake for others. Powerful others. Who aren’t going to help @BorisJohnson.

That isn’t to say UK Brexit opponents should lazily rely on the Irish dimension to solve their problem. That’s the kind of approach which loses referendums... /19.

But it is to recognise reality.

@DavidGHFrost knows it. @BorisJohnson’s trapped in it.

Time to get out the EU rule book again & start mugging up on the acquis communautaire. /20. End