The British government has been ridiculed for publishing technical notes on a no-deal Brexit that contain no contingency for Northern Ireland, with businesses told to ask the Irish government for advice on cross-border trade.
Manufacturing NI describes this as “madness” but there is some method to it. No-deal planning is part of the Brexit negotiating game and is meant to cause alarm in certain quarters. Officially, the Tories are hoping to frighten Brussels into a deal, although their own hardliners are more realistic targets.
But the Irish border issue is too alarming and too central to how any overall deal would work to risk playing games with worst-case scenarios.
London would be producing a plan it never intends to use, yet which would be used against it.
Referring queries to Dublin instead is about inferring the EU is in the same boat.
As the technical notes say: “The Irish government has indicated it would need to discuss arrangements in the event of ‘no deal’ with the European Commission and EU Member States. The UK stands ready in this scenario to engage constructively”.
At least the British have not lost their sense of sarcasm.
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It could take less time to unite Ireland than to unite the SDLP and Fianna Fáil. Interminable discussions between the parties have settled on a full merger, with Fianna Fáil subsuming the SDLP, according to an Irish Times report. Even before this media coverage gave the SDLP the jitters, a September deadline to pin down the details was set to be missed. The Irish Times claimed any merger will be a “phased process”, with a joint platform rather than a single party contesting next year’s council elections.
Those are the same elections Fianna Fáil announced as a target four years ago, which was in turn five years after it first registered as a party in Northern Ireland. It is 11 years since the SDLP set up a working group on the project and 15 years since the idea was initially proposed.
Launching as a two-party platform looks like a UCUNF phase. Whatever the destination, travelling this slowly invites UCUNF’s fate.
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Legal questions are being asked about the arrest of loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson, after chief constable George Hamilton tweeted it was “good work by Paramilitary Crime Task Force in partnership with Security Industry Authority in tackling criminality of East Belfast UVF.”
There is no mention of paramilitarism or the UVF in related paperwork - only the licensing of door staff from a security firm, which would not normally be considered a serious crime.
Of course, investigations can be wide-ranging. The question that is not being asked is why the actual leadership of the East Belfast UVF, hardly unknown to the police, never seem to pass the threshold for arrest despite being very clearly linked to exceptionally serious crimes.
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The cattiest headline of the week award goes to the News Letter, which reported an attack on Sinn Féin’s west Belfast headquarters beneath the words: “Arson attack won’t stop Sinn Féin representing electorate, says abstentionist MP”.
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The Education Authority has let it be known it considered cutting all school crossing patrols to help plug a £58m budget hole, before judging the idea “unpalatable” and referring the decision up to the Department of Education.
This is a classic bureaucratic pressure tactic - creating a headline-grabbing but nonsensical ‘cuts’ scare story to squeeze more money from above.
The Education Authority spends over £1.5 billion a year, 80 per cent on wages. The 500 lollipop patrols in Northern Irelands cost an estimated £1 million a year - just 0.06 per cent of the budget and 1.7 per cent of the hole. Obviously, better efficiencies are available. The Education Authority was set up to reduce administrative duplication between the department and the former education boards. Instead, it has delivered triplication - preserving most of the boards’ management while assuming most of the department’s remit. The only way to distract from such an obvious savings target is to raise the spectre of shoving children into the road.
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By most calculations, Northern Ireland has now surpassed Belgium’s record of 538 days without a peacetime elected government. However, as the Guinness Book of Records has confirmed, Stormont is only a regional government so this widely-made comparison is invalid. If fact, it is precisely wrong: Belgium has effectively four Stormonts that kept the country going in the absence of national government. Does that sounds better or worse than what we are enduring?
newton@irishnews.com
