If the incredible Brexit soap opera continues to feed the chronicle (and not only mine), it is because the infinite complexity of its realization reveals the vast enterprise of charlatanism carried out by Boris Johnson. The one who had promised freedom and prosperity to his people rid of the EU has on the contrary weighed them down with an infernal and costly administrative technocracy, and deprived of simple access to his neighbour, which is none other than the first single market global. To get out of the quagmire into which he has embarked his country, the British Prime Minister’s latest find is to violate international law. After leading the Brexiteers to victory in the June 2016 referendum and then signing the UK-EU withdrawal agreement himself in October 2019, he is now threatening to unilaterally cancel the party that does not suits him more: Irish protocol.
Maddening “Bzzz”
No one has ever been thrilled with this protocol. Neither did the Europeans, who only conceded it to allow the British to satisfy their teenage crisis. The Northern Irish are loath to see their bacon and chicken go stale at the customs that now separates them from Britain. But to protect the now divorced UK and Irish home markets, a border was needed. And in order not to harm the peace that was difficult to obtain by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, after thirty years of a deadly civil war, the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland should not be reestablished. A puzzle. The British-European technocracy has therefore given birth to a convoluted legal-administrative trick allowing the establishment of customs controls between Great Britain and the European Union without re-establishing a physical border between the two Irelands: Ireland is maintained of the North in the customs union and the single European market, and controls are moved “into the sea”, between Ireland and Great Britain.
Irish protocol has become Boris Johnson’s mosquito because it is his ideological disavowal. He’s that infuriating “bzzz” that reminds the Brexit man of his initial trickery. It is thanks to the protocol, according to the highly respected National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR), that Northern Ireland – de facto “Brexit-free” – has a better performing economy than the rest of the UK. It is only condemned by the extremists of the DUP, the main unionist party (pro-British and anti-EU), who have decided to block the executive of Northern Ireland as long as the protocol has not been abandoned. It is defended by the majority of Northern Irish citizens, who have just voted on May 5 in a majority for parties in favor of the protocol, and who had voted 55.8% against Brexit.
BoJo knew he would send everything flying
Boris Johnson therefore accuses the Irish protocol, assimilated for him to the Europeans, of “undermining the foundations” of the Good Friday agreement. A shame: the man who jeopardizes the peace agreement made possible by Europe blames Europe for coming to his aid. “Who wants to drown his dog accuses him of rabies”, said Molière. The problem is that in 2019 the dog drowner validated the agreement and its protocol himself. He used it to get himself elected Prime Minister in stride. He knew that the protocol was a non-negotiable condition for the EU. He signed it by lying to his constituents, promising them that there would never be a border in the sea, then that there would never be any paperwork to fill out. He signed it, even bragging about a “great” deal, all to his glory. He signed it knowing full well that when the time came he would throw it all away. We are there.
If he takes action, he will start a trade war with the EU and harass his American ally, whose Irish-born President Joe Biden has said he will condemn any questioning of the agreement. of peace. It will reinforce the isolation of the island of Ireland from Great Britain and the rapprochement of the two parts of the island, favored by the historic victory, in the local elections, of the Irish nationalist and pro-European party, Sinn Fein. Reunification is not for tomorrow, no more than Scottish independence, but Brexit has made this break-up of the United Kingdom possible: the opposite of rediscovered national glory and Global Britain promised by its chief architect.
* Marion Van Renterghem, winner of the Albert-Londres Prize, author of a biography of Angela Merkel and an autobiographical essay on Europe entitled “Mon Europe, je t’aime moi non plus” (Stock, 2019).