The point is - as I suspect @Dominic2306 well knows - that large parts of the NIP are opaque in the sense that the casual/lazy reader won’t work out what is going on. But they are *not* opaque in the key sense i.e. that there is any legal doubt about what they mean.
https://twitter.com/Dominic2306/status/1418574244812922880
A classic example is Article 10, on State aid. 
Unless you bother to look up Annex 5 (which is the panoply of EU State aid law) and check what the threshold for “affect trade” is in EU law (so low you won’t trip over it) you won’t realise that it continues to apply EU State law to many U.K. measures (eg on tax).
Ditto the customs provisions (requirements for checks/tariff provisions) - on which no one can better Stephen Weatherill’s article “The Protocol on Ireland/ Northern Ireland: What it says is not what it does.” eulawanalysis.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-pr…
The key point here is that any Minister (or SPAD) who didn’t understand what the NIP meant - or thought it was “opaque” or “self-contradictory” - either failed to read it with any care or failed to heed the expert legal advice that they were - beyond doubt - given.
I think this is Cummings for “no, it wasn’t opaque.” (an answer, after some obfuscation, to this question).
https://twitter.com/dominic2306/status/1419298043338403845
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
