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Pundits are formulating increasingly convoluted, bellicose justifications for the UK breaching int’l law (eg. @benhabib6 on Sky claiming this is an “annexation” of Northern Ireland by the EU). It might be useful to have a factual thread on the basics, for you to share. 1/8 ~AA
It’s the indefinite nature of the Good Friday (or Belfast) Agreements that tie the UK to the Republic of Ireland (and, by extension, the EU) indefinitely. NOT the Withdrawal Agreement, which was drafted to reflect precisely the UK’s existing guarantees under the GFA. 2/8 ~AA
European Union membership is written explicitly into the GFA, (as is adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights). It envisages integration as not reversible, preceding as it did the Lisbon Treaty and its mechanisms for leaving the EU, by a decade. 3/8 ~AA
The GFA contains no references to hard or soft borders. The UK’s central commitment is to preserve peace, with much broader guarantees of “cross-border cooperation” and an “all-island economy”. Hard and soft border talk has become an inaccurate proxy of that undertaking. 4/8 ~AA
The “backstop” was explicitly conceived as an insurance precisely in case no trade deal could be reached. It is, in all its iterations, a British proposal, to accommodate the UK’s “red lines” of leaving both the Single Market and the Customs Union. 5/8 ~AA https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/the-backstop-was-a-british-proposal-not-one-tabled-by-ireland-or-the-eu-1.3761566
Issues arising from the conflict between Brexit and the GFA were not only predictable, but predicted, eg. Major/Blair on 9/6/2016: Brexit risks “destabilising the complicated constitutional settlement that underpins stability in Northern Ireland”. 6/8 ~AA https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36486016
These warnings were dismissed by Brexiters at the time. “Rather sad” (Arlene Foster), “highly irresponsible” (Theresa Villiers), “simply scaremongering” (Nigel Dodds), “a load of scare stories” (Nigel Farage), and “nothing to fear” (Boris Johnson). 7/8 ~AA
In short, the UK signed the Good Friday Agreements, the UK voted to leave the EU, the UK set its arbitrary red lines, the UK proposed the backstop, the UK negotiated and signed the Withdrawal Agreement. It’s not up to everyone else to solve our nationalist rubik’s cube. 8/8 ~AA
And with that, I say goodbye for another week. ~AA
