We now know that the government is relying on the supposed doctrine of necessity to breach the Northern Ireland Protocol. It cannot do so because under international law it cannot have contributed to the necessity creating the breach, which in this case it very clearly has, not least by not using the Article 16 option within the Protocol to try to resolve the issue in the first instance.
But that, of course, is not what this is all about. That is much more easily stated, as I did in a tweet this morning:
It is not necessary to save Johnson.
It is not necessary to cover up his lies.
It is definitely not necessary to breach the Good Friday Agreement.
It is not necessary to aggravate so many people to ensure Liz Truss has a chance of winning the far-right Tory vote in a Tory leadership election.
It is not necessary to do any of this.
But the Tories define necessity as what suits them. And when 30% or so of the UK electorate share that worldview then we have a problem.
And this is the problem to be solved.
Well, that and getting rid of Brexit altogether.
But Labour won't say that, and as a result they compound the problem.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
‘Nprtyjer Ireland Protocol’? Please check.
Otherwise I agree with you.
Conor Burns was under so much pressure from Evan Davis last night on PM – who ripped into him BTW about the protocol – that Burns made sure that Davis knew he was a ‘gay Catholic’.
I mean, talk about being on the ropes – it was a last ditch defence or appeal for leniency but no matter what Davis said, Burns jut kept robotically repeating the Tories position as his media training dictates.
Davis was just talking to a brick wall. Nothing new there then.
As typos go, that one was good
An iPad is not always best
At least typos in English usually result in gibberish and are easily recognised as such. In one embarrassing incident the handwriting input on my phone mistook my written “姑” which means “aunt” for “妓” which means “prostitute”.
🙂
Well, all I can say is, I’m glad my typos are not in Mandarin then …….
The necessity part of this is trying to get the Northern Ireland Assembly up and running again. The 2nd party have put changes to the protocol as a condition of them getting involved in the Assembly. You’ll have heard of the DUP I presume.
So the UK government attempts to change the protocol to the DUP satisfaction but does it the slow way through Parliament and it eventually fails. So no Northern Ireland assembly then, and the long term issue of the North’s future gets punted down the road another few years to the next assembly election where we hope the Alliance come second.
It’s more Machiavellian than anything else. Imv, of course.
Had I produced the Johnson ‘goverment’s’ definition of the doctrine of “necessity” in one of my undergraduate Public Internetional Law essays, it would have attracted a very large red pen scored through it.
As Nye Bevan said of an earlier Tory PM,
“The Prime Minister may be sincere in what he is saying.” Cries of protest.
“No! No! He maybe… in which case he is too stupid to be Prime Minister.”
The problem isn’t the NIP, it is the DUP. And they won’t return to the table just because Johnson does some performance politics, their real sulk is at no longer being the largest party in Northern Ireland.
(As far as I can see, it wouldn’t need much ingenuity to fix the NIP, but it would need a collaborative approach by both sides).