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Have taken time to digest internal market bill & talk to various people on both sides. The text is worse than I expected & is/will be a clear breach of Protocol. Some analysis and thoughts on what happens next (spoiler - nothing particularly good)...1/
What surprised me about the clauses in the internal market bill is that not only do they seek to set out UK's interpretation of the Protocol (which might have been defensible) but they pre-emptively set out that UK will ignore any ruling on these issues. Impossible to defend 2/
Furthermore, if the UK wanted to argue that Article 6(1) of the Protocol gave it licence to do these things, it could have earlier on. Indeed I tweeted about this sort of approach in Oct 2019 but UK accepted exit declarations legally required 3/ https://twitter.com/RaoulRuparel/status/1187300778131775491?s=20
Similarly, those arguing Art 184 has been breached in terms of 'good faith' are often the same people that argued this article did not provide sufficient grounds for withdrawing from the original NI backstop negotiation by previous Govt. See below what AG Cox said on it 4/
One aspect forgotten in all this is what this might mean for democratic consent clauses in the Protocol. Do they still apply following a breach? If in the future there is a vote, would it apply to the legal text of the Protocol or UK law/implementation given two are different? 5/
Furthermore, if this goes all the way to the EU being able to suspend parts of the agreement, could they seek to suspend the democratic consent clauses? In theory they can suspend any provisions of the WA aside from citizens rights. It would be a huge step & likely last resort 6/
You may argue that these clauses aren't relevant given the Protocol is not being implemented, but the UK isn't yet saying it won't implement the parts of the Protocol which DUP etc hate the most - checks/admin on goods/food moving GB to NI. So for now they're still relevant 7/
Despite all this I think the EU's response will be calm. It is aware UK wants to drag it into a blame game. A rash move to take the UK to the ECJ or ask for changes to the legislation will prompt tabloid headlines No 10 will enjoy. 8/
As such I think most likely outcome is EU says a deal cannot be done under current approach but it stands ready to do a reasonable deal. This likely leads to a stalemate but with both sides stepping back from the table. Path from there to a deal is now hard to see. 9/ ENDS
