It is becoming abundantly clear that officialdom across Europe foresees a sea border around Ireland as the solution to Brexit. Two weeks ago, a letter from Belgian customs officers explained how this would work for goods entering northern and southern ports. Now a memo from the European Commission, passed to the Irish government and seen by RTE, has proposed an all-Ireland agrifood trade zone through common regulations - another de facto sea border. It is also becoming abundantly clear, to judge by unionist huffing and puffing, that the DUP does not realise the point of a sea border is to keep Northern Ireland in the UK and out of the EU. The Belgian officials were specific that their plan covered a hard Brexit - Northern Ireland leaving the single market and customs union along with Britain - as otherwise it would scarcely be necessary. The DUP needs to find the words to reconcile itself to this, as it does with the term ‘special status’. The special status a sea border would preserve is the union.
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On Tuesday a strange story appeared on a reputable news website, claiming Sinn Féin had single-handedly persuaded the European Parliament to offer Northern Ireland a “special deal” on staying in the single market and customs union. The parliament completely ignored Sinn Féin during its last motion on Brexit and Ireland. Stranger still, this new motion reportedly persuaded dissident republicans to call off an operation against loyalists over the Cantrell Close intimidation, because they did not want to jeopardise its promise of an imminent united Ireland. The next day, when the European Parliament voted on the motion, Sinn Féin announced it had called for Northern Ireland to stay in the single market and customs union - only to withdraw the claim 55 minutes later, as the motion said nothing of the sort. It has all left the distinct impression that somebody has been out in the sun too long.
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During the European Parliament debate, chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt suggested the Good Friday Agreement should be attached as an annex to any eventual Brexit deal, to ensure it is preserved in all its parts.
Verhofstadt said this should be done because he was “shocked” by visiting a peace line in Belfast last month, with its evidence of our “frozen conflict.” Of course, no part of the agreement is affected by Brexit, as the UK Supreme Court has ruled, while unfreezing the conflict was supposedly the job of 20 years of EU funding. Perhaps that will be in another annex.
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Last week, the chief constable said his new Paramilitary Crime Taskforce would fearlessly pursue those who are “community workers and people of positive influence by day” but “involved in criminality by night”.
This week, the chief constable confirmed the east Belfast UVF were behind threats in Cantrell Close, just after an east Belfast community group had UVF flags taken down in the mixed housing development “as a gesture of goodwill.” This all happened at lunchtime, so no criminality occurred. Amid such painstaking treatment of the symptoms, plus grand calls to end the disease of sectarianism, a common cause of intimidation should not go overlooked. There is a long history in Northern Ireland of people being put out of social housing to vacate it for preferred tenants of paramilitaries-by-night - relatives, friends, foot-soldiers, or sublets for various purposes.
Could some daylight be thrown on that?
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Tory environment secretary Michael Gove has embarrassed himself at his party’s conference by claiming the UK cannot sell pigs’ ears to China, where they are a delicacy, because EU rules require them to be pierced for identity tags. This was promptly revealed to be nonsense, turning Gove’s sound-bite of “making a silk purse from a sow’s ear” into headlines about “making a pig’s ear” of Brexit. Gove’s misunderstanding began after speaking to farmers in Northern Ireland, where he was sold a pig in a poke.
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Tony Blair’s former chief of staff Jonathan Powell has told an audience in Belfast his “memory” of the 2006 St Andrew’s negotiations is that an Irish language act was agreed as far as the British government was concerned, whatever way the DUP chooses to “interpret what happened.” Why rely on memory when the agreement is a matter of public record? The British government did agree to an act - but also agreed to devolve the relevant powers to Stormont, where the DUP had not agreed to an act. SDLP assembly member Claire Hanna has a better description of this - selling Sinn Féin “magic beans.” The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war found Powell requested critical alterations to intelligence reports to claim Saddam Hussein was planning unprovoked use of weapons of mass destruction. Is sexing up one dodgy dossier not enough?
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A Co Down man has been told he faces custody after admitting “posing as a barrister”. There are people in the legal community who will tell you, only half in jest, that every barrister is posing as a barrister. All the more reason why anyone doing so unofficially must be punished.
newton@irishnews.com
