Quote Sal Paradise="Sal Paradise"These agreements get broken all the time - the EU simply refused to implement some WTO rules/obligations in respect of Airbus, Cameron didn't give prisoners the vote despite it being an obligation from membership of the EU. The Iraq war - how Blair can talk about breaking treaties defies belief. These treaties aren't like laws in the way we implement them - who is going to sue us? Nobody worse than China - has that impacted their ability to trade?
If you genuinely believe the EU has negotiated in good faith that great but why would they threaten to ban food imports for the UK into NI if that were the case. That situation was never expected when the deal was signed as there was an understanding of good faith to achieve a deal. You like many of the remainers think the fault all lays with Boris and that opinion is fair enough - I think 6 of one and half a dozen of the other. The EU is demanding things of the UK that is doesn't from other non-EU states around food standard - why?
As for Trump - it will be interesting to see if he can win again - if he does then a deal will be done regardless of what plastic Nancy says.'"
Okay, let's say we only care about the consequences of law-breaking, rather than it being, in of itself, a bad thing. The EU is powerful and the WTO is pretty toothless. UK prisoners are not many people's top political priority, but eventually the UK did comply with the 2005 ruling, under May. The Irag war was a fiasco in a lot of ways, but we had the US on our side, and like the EU they're powerful.
There might be legal action against us, but that isn't even one of the main problems.
Unless we back down spectacularly, with full bells and whistles contrition, how can the EU trust we won't renege on what we might want to negotiate next? Pelosi isn't freelancing - the Irish-American lobby will kill off any deal with the US, whoever wins the Presidential election, if this goes ahead. No great loss, given how one-sided it was going to be, to be fair.
The UK, as a point of principle, won't commit to anything the EU asks for - including maintaining food standards or even committing to different ones. The border down the Irish sea, which we effin' chose from the only three realistic options available, is among the least of the issues for our agriculture sector if we can't export food to the rest of the EU single market. Even if they made some sort of exception for NI - which I'd hope/expect they would on humanitarian grounds.
The ERG are running Boris now, it seems, probably more than their arch-enemy Classic Dom. Those dudes have been locking themselves in rooms together to reinforce each others lunacy for a lot of years, and it is clearly potent.
Here's a quote from Dom from last year, from his blog:
[iThose of you in the narcissist-delusional subset of the ERG who have spent the last three years scrambling for the 810 Today slot while spouting gibberish about trade and the law across SW1 — i.e exactly the contemptible behaviour that led to your enforced marginalisation during the referendum and your attempt to destroy Vote Leave — you are also in the pirate category. You were useful idiots for Remain during the campaign and with every piece of bull**** from Bill Cash et al you have helped only Remain for three years. Remember how you WELCOMED the backstop as a ‘triumph’ in December 2017 when it was obvious to everybody who knew what was going on — NOT the Cabinet obviously — that this effectively ended the ‘negotiations’? Remember how Bernard Jenkin wrote on ConHome that he didn’t have to ‘ruin his weekend’ reading the document to know it was another success for the natural party of government — bringing to mind very clearly how during the referendum so many of you guys were too busy shooting or skiing or chasing girls to do any actual work. You should be treated like a metastasising tumour and excised from the UK body politic.[/i