… because some of them are asking that Donald Trump be brought in to salvage Theresa May’s floundering efforts and twist the arms of the Irish over the intractable border issue.
Conservative MPs, who oppose the prime minister’s European Union exit deal, want her to approach the US president and request that he lobby the Irish government to give ground in negotiations, Sky News reported on Tuesday.
…But senior EU figures have resisted calls to reopen negotiations, in part because of opposition from the Irish government to altering the backstop.
…The demand comes amid concerns that the new US Congress would side with Dublin against any changes that would put at risk the Good Friday Agreement, which was negotiated between the UK and Ireland with the help of the US.
That way lies madness. There is no situation so bad that Donald Trump’s intervention would not make worse.
It’s like watching an impending car crash, all in slow motion. I just can’t take my eyes off it.
The result I expect: https://imgur.com/r/europe/uxnvv
Brexit is like watching your library being burned down by people who can’t read.
That’s what the line on my Facebook feed said. I’d add: “Goaded on by a tiny minority of wealthy publishers and bookstore owners who’ve promised them free books made of gold if they only get rid of the library.”
I have a real fear at this point: I’m about to go on a trip to NZ and Oz. I’m going to be gone a month, more or less. In that time, it’s not impossible that there’ll be another referendum. If there is, and I (and my wife) are not here to vote in it, I keep having irrational fears that our vote will make the difference and Remain will lose (again) but this time directly thanks to me.
Who am I kidding? My vote doesn’t matter…
What brave, courageous, and analytical politicians we have, briefing anonymously that they think Trump would be of any use in the Brexit debate. Right now we don’t need a deal-maker of the sort he thinks he is, nor do we need the sort he actually is. We need someone who can prove that up is down and down is up, and who can make it stick in a court of law.
Is it April 1st already?
Trump supporters and Brexiteers -- we have our idiots, they have theirs. And now Brazilians have theirs.
I feel like I must be missing a lot or woefully misunderstanding something. There are a huge amount of specifics that need to rather suddenly be implemented to pull off the separation, and I get that.
But the sticking points seem terribly simple. They either handle the backstop in a responsible way as the EU is demanding or they put up a barrier and recreate conditions that fostered terrorism and deaths. The vast majority of people with a direct stake in the matter seem to be clearly in favor of responsibility. No big surprise there. And some people with pet theories and imagined grievances about foreigners want a barrier.
I think May is counting on those people buying a clue as the country gets close to disastrously tumbling out of the EU without a deal. I don’t know how practical that is, though. I kind of feel like anyone who feels that way has already had ample opportunity to see what a disaster the whole damn thing is going to be. So-called conservatives especially shouldn’t be rushing headlong into a radical, disastrously costly change like this but imaginary grievances seem quite popular with such crowds the world over these days.
@lanir #6
There is another solution. Northern Ireland could remain part of Ireland, leave the UK, the ocean could be the border, and Britain could compensate them for their inconvenience monetarily. By which I mean, so much promised money and investment from Britain into NI, written into law, that they would not turn it down.
This would:
-- achieve Brexit without breaking the Good Friday agreement
-- remove the necessity for a hard border in Ireland
-- keep Ireland and the EU happy
-- make Northern Ireland (who voted remain after all) happy
-- have Britain take responsibility for their folly and achieve Brexit as a responsible country would (yeah right, I can’t even type this with a straight face)
-- achieve a united Ireland without a uniting of minds, less by politics than by convenience
Should this happen? Yes. Can it? Not a chance.
@file thirteen:
And people accuse Brexiteers of living in a fantasy land. One word: NEVER! NEVER! NEVER! And just because the clip that follows is old, don’t think for a moment that the people of Norn Irn have got less… certain in their views.
@lanir and @file thirteen #6+7 I believe some have also suggested that Northern Ireland could remain part of the U.K., but become fully-aligned with the Customs Union. A special customs zone, if you like. (With or without the freedom of movement, services, and regulatory alignment that goes with the Single Market, I dunno.)
This also creates the customs border in the Irish Sea, instead of in Ireland.
Needless to say, any customs border in the sea goes down like a cup of cold sick with the DUP Christian Taliban in N.Ireland, and with most of the Tory party. So it has zero traction in the UK at the moment. It also drives home the point that Britain becomes the plague island from which you sail well clear when travelling between members of the EU. But we’d deserve it.
@EigenSprocketUK #9
any customs border in the sea goes down like a cup of cold sick with the DUP Christian Taliban in N.Ireland
Ah, but money can soothe many a furrowed brow. Only the thought of the Tories actually deciding to pay out is laughable.
I believe the Tory Ultras, the “D”UP, and the neo-Stalinist headbangers keeping Corbyn’s head firmly embedded in his fundament (Seamus Milne and Andrew Murray) are all for their various reasons delighted at the prospect of a no-deal Brexit: the Ultras because they intend to push through “disaster capitalism”, making a bonfire of environmental and public health protections, employment and many civil rights. the NHS, etc., the “D”UP because it would mean the hard border with the Irish Republic which they pretend to oppose, the neo-Stalinists because they think disaster will cause the proletariat to turn to socialism. Likewise Putin, Trump (if he hasn’t forgotten the whole thing by now) and Bannon because they want to use the UK as a battering ram to attack the EU.