Opinion

Brian Feeney: An extension to the Brexit transition period is the only sensible way forward

Brian Feeney

Brian Feeney

Historian and political commentator Brian Feeney has been a columnist with The Irish News for three decades. He is a former SDLP councillor in Belfast and co-author of the award-winning book Lost Lives

Brussels and the UK are negotiating a fresh Brexit trade agreement via video-telephone conferencing due to coronavirus restrictions
Brussels and the UK are negotiating a fresh Brexit trade agreement via video-telephone conferencing due to coronavirus restrictions Brussels and the UK are negotiating a fresh Brexit trade agreement via video-telephone conferencing due to coronavirus restrictions

The British government publishing its draft treaty on its proposals for future relations with the EU after transition.

The EU already has most of it, but as the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier said on Friday, the “positions remain very far apart”. The British have refused to allow Barnier to share the details with any EU state, another cause for delay since all 27 have to agree any final deal.

Included in the proposals are how to operate the Irish protocol, basically that’s to say how to collect duties and different VAT rates on goods entering the north from Britain. The British record on this aspect is not good. You won’t read much about it in the English newspapers or electronic media, but Britain is in a long-running dispute with the EU since 2018 for failure to collect €2.7 billion (yes billion) on Chinese footwear and textiles between 2011 and 2017. That failure is one of the reasons the EU wants inspectors on the ground here.

As you read here last week, businesses in the north – the worst affected by Brexit in these islands – are getting very edgy about the inevitable paperwork (which Boris Johnson earlier told them to bin) and unknown extra costs of all this. One thing is certain and that is, regardless of British proposals, the impasse will not be resolved by the final round of talks due to begin on Monday week. That means systems cannot be in place ready to operate on January 1. There’s only one sensible conclusion: an extension of the transition period is necessary.

As a result, the leaders of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and northern MPs Colum Eastwood and Stephen Farry, along with many others, have written to Michel Barnier to apprise him of the widespread opposition to the current stance of the ultra-Brexiteers like Michael Gove leading the negotiation. Other senior figures in business in Britain and political analysts and politicians in the Republic, most obviously Simon Coveney, are now growing convinced that there will be no deal because of the doctrinaire position in Whitehall, not because that’s what Johnson plans, but rather because Johnson has no plan.

Ignoring the experience of the previous three years before the Withdrawal Agreement last autumn Brexiteers believe the EU will cave in. In fact the ultra-Brexiteers, including our current know nothing proconsul, who are in Cabinet not because of their ability or experience, but simply their subservience, actually believe Johnson’s walk up the garden path last October was a victory instead of the obvious retreat it really was.

In many respects the Irish protocol, of overwhelming importance to people here, is a sideshow in the negotiations. What really exercises the British ideologues is the flawed notion of being a “sovereign equal” with the EU and the daft idea that this status entitles them to every aspect of any deal the EU has with any other country like Japan or Canada. So, for example, since Japan is a sovereign state they believe the UK should have exactly the same terms as Japan regardless of any difference in geography, economics or finance.

Hence when the EU insists that there has to be a level playing field in working conditions, say rest times for lorry drivers, or in adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights, the British refuse. They want to be able to deviate where it suits them thereby giving themselves a comparative trading advantage over EU member states because they repeat they are a sovereign state and can make their own rules. As Barnier says, the UK negotiators are in effect rewriting the Political Declaration Johnson agreed last autumn.

One of the most worrying aspects of the British approach, as Barnier said on Friday, is their refusal also to accept means of ensuring democratic consent from their own parliament, the EU parliament and for the Irish protocol, the majority of the Stormont assembly.