Irish Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney tells #Marr: “The backstop… isn’t going to change.” https://t.co/LUddstfYmj #Brexit pic.twitter.com/dNusfBOAY3
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) January 27, 2019
“I resent the fact that it’s all being thrown on Ireland… Brexit is a British decision,” says chair of the Irish Parliament’s Brexit committee @nealerichmond. “We must maintain the peace on our island” #r4today https://t.co/P2tK74OSbU
— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) January 28, 2019
One of the more objectionable and shameful themes in our squabble about #Brexit is the idea, peddled on @BBCr4today and elsewhere, that it is somehow up to the Irish to sort it out for us.
— Simon Fraser (@SimonFraser00) January 28, 2019
Meanwhile…
Brexit: No change to backstop, Ireland insists (BBC)
The Backstop was not considered a big deal by the Sasamachs when it was first agreed to because they fully believed they could just ignore it. They thought it was just a bunch of meaningless mumbo jumbo to allow them get to the next phase of the talks. Basically, they expected to be able to lie to the EU27 negotiators and do what they wanted anyway.
[The teaboy] said he believed at the time that the December 2017 declaration was a “convenient fiction” and “a form of words to be endured” to allow talks progress, and that he never thought it should be implemented. – https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/boris-johnson-thought-backstop-was-a-convenient-fiction-1.3754098
No negotiation we say. No concessions. And so it has fallen to us.
Plucky Ireland will force the English hand to a no deal exit. They’ll thank us warmly for that.
How shameful.
Pretty sure it was the Brits who voted for this collosal mess. We didn’t ‘force’ the Brits into anything.
They’re the ones who wet the bed. Not our fault they don’t like the smell…
All this plus they have the option of accepting the deal they negotiated and then moving on to negotiate a trade deal which removes the need for a backstop. That was the intent when the backstop was added in 2017.
It’s easier to blame someone else for their mess though.
No negotiation with a party who are about to violate unilaterally an international peace treaty that brought decades of bloody violence to an end and to which they are signatories? Damn right.
So long as Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom, the Good Friday Agreement implicitly makes the UK’s continuing membership of the EU one of the UK’s international obligations to Ireland. This was pointed out repeatedly in advance of the referendum and dismissed out of hand by Brexit supporters. Nevertheless, the UK decided to hold a referendum which was in part on whether to continue to honour one of its key diplomatic obligations to its nearest neighbour. I see no point in negotiating an agreement with a party that has just decided to sh*t all over the last major agreement you negotiated.
Pollie, is that you?
https://twitter.com/colettebrowne/status/1085878212331220993?s=20
There was a vote, democracy et al? Scotland, Wales, the top bit of Ireland voted remain. Lest ye forget (sorry, some form of Scottish, Rabbie Burns, I fancy?)
https://www.broadsheet.ie/?s=fexit
London voted remain by a 99% majority. Middle England- vetoed! Mrs. May was Pro-Remain, she inherited the PMship from a chinless type – Cameron, who succumbed to Farage.
It does make one wonder – should I vote? My vote was cast into the ocean along with all the other “Remain” votes.
(I just remembered, “Hurry Ye Back” – Scottish road signs, in Scotland.)
Wales voted to leave, despite them being net-beneficiaries of the EU.