“Deeply Concerning”

at

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Last night.

Further to British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss’ plans to legislate to override parts of the Brexit withdrawal treaty the UK struck with the EU…

“The Good Friday Accords are the bedrock of peace in Northern Ireland and a beacon of hope for the entire world. Ensuring there remains no physical border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland is absolutely necessary for upholding this landmark agreement, which has transformed Northern Ireland.

“It is deeply concerning that the United Kingdom is now seeking to unilaterally discard the Northern Ireland Protocol. Negotiated agreements like the Protocol preserve the important progress and stability forged by the Good Friday Accords, which continue to enjoy strong bipartisan and bicameral support in the United States Congress.

“As I have stated in my conversations with the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and Members of the House of Commons, if the United Kingdom chooses to undermine the Good Friday Accords, the Congress cannot and will not support a bilateral free trade agreement with the United Kingdom.

“Respectful of the will of the British people and of Brexit, I urge constructive, collaborative and good-faith negotiations to implement an agreement that upholds peace. The children of Northern Ireland, who have never known the bloody conflict and do not want to go back, deserve a future free of the violence where all may reach their fulfillment,”

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Congress.

Pelosi Statement Reaffirming Support of the Northern Ireland Protocol (Nancy Pelosi)

Britain’s moves to unilaterally discard NI Protocol ‘deeply concerning’ – Pelosi

Getty

Meanwhile…

Sponsored Link

33 thoughts on ““Deeply Concerning”

  1. TenPin Terry

    Old ginsoak only comes out at night.
    She’s got more creases in her face than TenPin’s four poster after a night of vigorous how’s-your-father.
    Wahaay!™

    1. jonjoker

      There are times when it’s not about who the person is – it’s about the job they hold and the influence they wield.
      She’s singing off the same hymn-sheet as Biden, that should be enough to tell you what the deal is.

      You can insult her all you like – just as people insulted Thatcher* – but it will be water off a duck’s back just the same.

      * I think Thatcher was a ¿*?Ç; but I recognise that she kept her enemies at arms length and more.

  2. Ian - oG

    An awful shame the former guy isn’t in place, he would have absolutely stood firm with Ireland on this matter, wouldn’t he?

    Wouldn’t he?

    Would he?????

    Maybe if we had him over for another red carpet event and told him how great he was?

    I am not a fan of Pelosi, especially recently with her support of Cueller but right now she’s a bulwark against the tories BS. I’ll take it.

      1. Ian - oG

        Indeed and tough as old boots, you don’t be in politics that long without being one seriously dangerous, sneaky, nasty fecker.

        I’d say she’d also punch the head off Johnson, the fat little toad got the crap knocked out of him by Carrie a while back. At the time I thought he was just carrying on the Johnson Family tradition of smacking your missus around ™ (Also some credible allegations of sexual harassment and assault) but it’s quite clear Carrie has plans of her own and as soon as Bumbler is out of office he will probably find himself divorced fairly quick.

    1. SOQ

      I agree- I am not a fan of the US administration but they have it made it quite clear from day one as to where they stood on the Irish question.

      It is the British government who signed off on this deal and it is the British government who will be reneging on an international treaty- the timing of which could not be worse while they are trying to hammer out new deals.

      1. TenPin Terry

        You need to acquaint yourself with Article 13 Sub-section 8 of the Protocol Queenie and spend less time on your bizarre Putin love-bombing.
        YOU.ARE.NOT.HIS.TYPE.

        1. SOQ

          And maybe you should spend less time pretending to be a goading sectarian caricature?

          Article 13 Sub-section 8 of what protocol?

        2. stephen moran

          Ah Article 13.8 from Nick Tyrone this morning
          1. Article 13.8 of the NI Protocol and how it relates to the Brexit scam
          As much as I loathe Brexit and all it has brought to this country, I have to admit that the Brexiters are pretty clever, at least the ones orchestrating everything. One of the weak spots amongst Remainer thinking is this idea that all Brexiters are stupid and were only following their desire to take Britain out of the largest single market in the world out of profound ignorance. Yes, they are taking some stupid people along for the ride, as happens all the time in politics, from all sides – but they know what they are doing here, believe me.
          Take the recent citing of Article 13.8 of the Northern Ireland Protocol by Tory ministers as an example. This is the latest in a gambit which involves taking bits of treaties and using them as a sort of shield for Brexit. Don’t worry about how bad Brexit seems thus far, folks, we have discovered this new, magical article within a treaty that will act as a get out of jail free card! What, you thought we signed Britain up to something unmentionably awful? No, no, no! Don’t worry, we are on top of the detail and guess what, it all works out in our favour!
          For a while, the shield of choice was Article 24 of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). We were told by several leading Tories that this would be our way out of any of the downsides a hard Brexit would deliver. As Rees-Mogg said in 2018:
          “If you are in a negotiation for a free trade agreement, you can maintain your existing standards for ten years under WTO rules. So we have ten years from the point at which we leave the European Union to negotiate a free trade agreement with the EU which would mean we can carry on with our zero tariffs.”
          This, as it turns out, was total rubbish. But Article 24 of GATT is long, written in old-fashioned legalise and tricky even for people who are into this stuff to fully interpret without reading many times over. Thus it became a rallying cry for Brexiters, 99.99% of whom had never attempted to read any part of it even once. What the GATT 24 exercise demonstrated was that even when what you said would happen doesn’t materialise, the vast majority of watching Brexiters don’t even care. Just dangle another article from an international treaty in front of them and they will forget all about how the last one didn’t work the way you said it did.
          As a for instance, we have had Article 16 of the NI Protocol name checked by Conservative MPs for ages now. They have intimated to us that this could be used to suspend the Protocol for any length of time, for any reason whatsoever, unilaterally. Unfortunately, this didn’t turn our to be correct either, so they have started to slightly back away from that one. Again, they’ve already figured out there are loads of articles in any treaty to choose from, so long as you just want to pluck one out of the document and bullshit about it to buy you some time/cred with those who are eager to cling onto to the vision of the sunlit uplands.
          These days, the article du jour is 13.8 of the NI Protocol. I know I put it in last week’s article as well, but it’s worth revisiting what the actual text from this bit of the Protocol says:
          “Any subsequent agreement between the Union and the United Kingdom shall indicate the parts of this Protocol which it supersedes. Once a subsequent agreement between the Union and the United Kingdom becomes applicable after the entry into force of the Withdrawal Agreement, this Protocol shall then, from the date of application of such subsequent agreement and in accordance with the provisions of that agreement setting out the effect of that agreement on this Protocol, not apply or shall cease to apply, as the case may be, in whole or in part.”
          To boil this down, if the UK and EU can agree between themselves that something better than the NI Protocol could exist to solve the issues raised by Brexit, then that agreement will supersede the Protocol. It’s like when you sign an employment contract and there is a clause in it saying, “If the employer and the employee should come a new arrangement, this contract becomes null and void”. So, staying with this analogy, it would be like if your employer offered you a new job, which would mean you needed a whole new contract, so the clause in the original contract was just to head off such an issue should it arise. Again staying with this analogy, it would be unlikely however that your employer would offer you a better job in the organisation if you constantly came into work quoting bits of your contract incorrectly, likened your employer to various authoritarian regimes and then threatened not to do any more work at all while saying you should still receive your pay, again incorrectly citing your employment contract on this front.
          As I say, this stuff works. The reason is does is because it achieves these three things at once:
          1. It makes it look like the Tories know what they are doing with Brexit to those either not clued in or not fussed about the detail, when in fact they don’t have any real idea what they are doing
          2. It makes them sound like they are completely on the minutiae of all the treaties they have signed, when really they are just cherry picking mostly random bits from them and then explaining it all incorrectly
          3. Brexiters at large then have something to distract them from the cruel reality of Brexit. It is a false flag exercise to give the impression that there is a magical clause out there which will transform Brexit into something genuinely good from where we are now, which is so bad even Brexiters think it’s bad (otherwise, why are we trying to renegotiate the basics of the deal?)
          The question I have is: how long will this trick work? When will enough people go, “Hold on, you have this habit of quoting articles from various treaties that you will use somehow to make Brexit work and yet this never actually achieves any positive results? Are you having us all on?” What the timeframe is on this, I do not know. But the Tories have to hope it’s not before the next general election.

          1. Mad

            Everyone can see you have the brains of a rocking horse Fat Tan
            You are out of your depth here mate, give it a rest

    1. johnny

      ….hopefully,like most investors she has shorted the bottom out the UK which is headed for stagflation.

  3. stephen moran

    What the Tories don’t seem to realize is that whilst they may have garnered some kudos for mucking in on Ukraine that they will get a life changing kick in the bollocks if they try and mess with the GFA and the integrity of the single market. Even poxy Orban understands that.

      1. TenPin Terry

        Yup.
        Muslims.
        And especially Muslim women.
        He hates them all.
        He let the veil slip there …

        Hehx3™

        1. stephen moran

          nothing like a bit of personal abuse when your arguments get clean bowled – how very mature

          1. TenPin Terry

            You could solve your problems by simply answering the question about insults.
            Why do you think Muslims are ragheads Mr Burns ?

    1. scottser

      it would seem that not only are the tans wanting to renege on the protocol terms itself, but they want to ignore the dispute mechanisms built into article 16 that make the protocol work.
      and to think they had a perfectly good backstop that they fecked away.
      tans – never not at it.

          1. TenPin Terry

            Oh dear.
            Replying to yourself with the wrong username.
            It always catches them out eventually.

      1. stephen moran

        that backstop was a bit of a cod i.e. it was going to be a permanent front stop as these “alternative solutions” were always and still are unicorn petting zoo stuff. The Tory ultras have moved from fantasies of GATT Article 24 and WTO terms to Article 16 and now onto Article 13.8 – you can’t ride two horses at the same time – for an excellent weekly summary read Chris Grey (who also wrote an excellent book on Brexit).
        https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/05/britain-is-being-choked-by-knotweed-of.html

Comments are closed.

Sponsored Link
Broadsheet.ie