Brexit: much ado about nothing

By Richard North - February 27, 2023

At the moment, I can’t quite work out who is conning who (or is it whom?). But my first choice for the con-artist accolade would be Sunak.

He is permitting the rhetoric on these talks over the NIP to be escalated, conveying the impression that something meaningful is about to happen. This is enough, it seems, to smoke out the Oaf and his allies, encouraging them to make a last stand over an issue that no one really cares very much about, potentially coming a cropper – more Isandlwana than Rorke’s Drift.

The point is that, although so-called “negotiations” have been going on for many months, giving the impression that a serious revision of the protocol is underway, the facts belie the impression.

The Commission has made it very clear that the EU will not renegotiate the protocol, arguing that reflects “a delicate, long-negotiated balance, protecting the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement in all its parts”.

Thus, what we are seeing is in the nature of informal talks on what the Commission calls “facilitating the implementation of the protocol”, giving the people and businesses in Northern Ireland “long-term legal certainty and predictability”.

The outcome can only be an equally informal – in the sense that it is not legally binding – agreement which leaves the text of the protocol intact, and all the nasties in place to which Johnson now objects, notwithstanding that he agreed it in the first place, and then bounced parliament into ratifying it, on the back of a general election.

We now get to the point where the hype has been stoked up to fever pitch, with talk of imminent agreement, with even at one time expectations of an announcement being made on the Sunday being raised.

This has morphed into a meeting today between Sunak and von der Leyen, whence the deal will be consummated, with the prime minister claiming that he has won “big concessions” – enough for a triumphal joint press conference and the presentation of the deal to parliament, although it has not been explicitly confirmed that there will be a vote.

These developments have opened the way for the predicted Tory revolt, following a warning by Tory Eurosceptics and the DUP that they will not back the deal unless EU law is “expunged” from Northern Ireland – something which the Telegraph tells us “they fear” Sunak’s agreement will fail to do.

It says something here of the status of the media coverage that it is retailing “fear” when, despite the draft remaining unseen at the time of writing, there is not the slightest possibility of EU law being conveniently “expunged”, as the text of the treaty is not to be changed.

The situation is not helped by the BBC’s Lauren Turner – a “senior broadcast journalist” – whose latest contribution to Twitter is to inform the world that there is, “Nothing like the midnight adrenaline rush of a cat who doesn’t live in your house running in when you get home in the dark and open the door (and when you’re not great with animals)”.

She writes a politically illiterate piece on the BBC website, talking about the UK wanting to “change the protocol”, then immediately citing Dominic Raab saying that Britain and the EU were “on the cusp” of a deal, thereby implying that protocol change is on the table.

Even the BBC’s Europe editor, Katya Adler – who should by now know better – writes of the prime minister needing to “revise” the protocol sufficiently to persuade the Democratic Unionist Party to join and therefore restore the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.

But then, as we know, this isn’t about Northern Ireland or the protocol, making von der Leyen’s imminent cameo appearance all part of the grotesque theatricals that are being stoked by a typically ignorant media, concerned more with the soap opera than the substance.

Some detail of Sunak’s tactics comes through in The Times, where he is said to be launching a “private charm offensive” to win round influential Conservative Brexiteers to his deal.

Sunak, we are told, has spent the past few days in one-to-one meetings with “senior Brexiteer backbenchers” taking them through the outline of the deal that he will announce today, trying “to assuage their concerns”.

Senior cabinet ministers have been drafted in to ring round other members of the Tory parliamentary party to brief them on the key elements of the agreement before the formal announcement today.

So far, the tactics seem to be working. One of Sunak’s “marks” has been Steve Baker, a “key Brexiteer” as former ERG leader and now Northern Ireland minister. Sources “close to Baker” have accused Downing Street of excluding him from details of the talks, suggesting he would resign if he was not satisfied with the compromise. After a meeting with the prime minister, though, he declined to comment but gave a thumbs-up as he left Downing Street.

One-by-one, it seems, the opposition is being whittled down. A conveniently anonymous “senior Conservative Brexiteer”, who has met Sunak, says he has been convinced by the prime minister that the deal being struck would be enough for him to support.

“This is a better deal than any of his [Sunak’s] predecessors got”, is the line being projected. “It is probably not perfect and they don’t tell you its weaknesses. But frankly it sounds like something that Boris would have grabbed with both hands if he’s been offered it”.

What must encourage Sunak is that there are said to be “no more than twenty Tory MPs” who will be implacably opposed to the deal. But then, says our anonymous senior Conservative Brexiteer, “you have to factor in other motivations like Johnson’s supporters”, pointing to the real game being played out. “It’s pretty clear”, says this person, “that he [Johnson] wants to use this deal to damage Sunak but what I don’t know is how much support he has”.

Another Conservative MP agrees that about 20 members of the European Research Group of Brexiteer Tories were implacably opposed to any compromise, but that most MPs were willing to give Downing Street the benefit of the doubt at this stage. Sunak looks as if he could be in for an easy win.

However, another MP who said they had been encouraged by what they had been told warned that: “We need to see the documents”. He (or it?) concedes that the government and the EU “seem to have made significant progress and got a lot of concessions that the EU have always said are impossible”, adding: “A lot of us are prepared to be supportive if Downing Street has really done what they claim to have done”.

And there’s the rub. No one has yet seen the detail. Frustrations are being fuelled, says the Telegraph, by the fact that Brexiteers feel they have been left in the dark during the talks. One Eurosceptic MP complains that Downing Street had kept them and colleagues out of the loop because it wanted to “set everything up” and present the deal to MPs as a fait accompli.

Another said that even members of the Cabinet appeared to be unaware of the details of the deal, comparing Number 10’s approach to the secrecy of Theresa May’s administration.

When Sunak does at last publish the proposals, he is expected to do so without the explicit endorsement of the DUP, which only represents 25 percent of the Northern Ireland electorate. However, their lawyers will scrutinise its text line by line before deciding whether it meets their criteria for acceptance in a process that the Telegraph also calls “renegotiation”.

Although Tory eurosceptics are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, and the DUP MPs would have trouble slicing warm butter, when they actually see Sunak’s fabulous deal, some of them may have the nounce to realise that they’ve been had by a glorious fudge.

They then may realise that this is all a fuss about nothing – other than a ploy to bring the Oaf into the open and allow him to self-destruct. If, after all, Johnson’s much-touted rebellion fails to get off the ground, Sunak will emerge stronger from the charade, confident that the persistent ignorance of his MPs and the media will let him get away with it.

Much in the manner of Cameron vetoing a treaty (not), the prime minister will bask in the glory of a non-amended treaty – and smacking down Johnson. Then the dogs bark, and the caravan moves on. Sunak lives to fight another day.