The unasked question
Jan. 30th, 2019 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI won't say that this is "the thing I don't understand about Brexit," becauae I could post every day with a thing I don't understand about Brexit, and still have things left over. But here's the Thing of the Day:
The current obstacle to agreement appears to be the backstop. This is an insurance policy, named, in the hope that this will render it comprehensible to the most conservative of Conservatives for an obsolete cricketing position.
As I understand it, the backstop is a recognition of the fact that as long as Eire and Northern Ireland are both members of the EU, the land border between them is effectively invisible and that this is a good thing. A hard border is associated with the bad old days of the Troubles (to use the habitual euphemism) and almost nobody wants that.
So we have to find a way to keep the border as imperceptible as possible. No problem, say the Brexiteers, we will think of something. There will be a technical solution. Fine, says the EU, but until that's up and running, let's have something to fall back on in the interim. This has generated so much heat that I'm not entirely sure what that something might be, but it appears to mean treating Northern Ireland as a special case, remaining EU compliant when the rest of the UK leaves the EU. Yesterday Parliament voted that the Prime Minister should return to Brussels (I think it was Brussels) and tell them that she still can't sell that deal to Parliament, could she have a different one, please?
So this morning the Brexit Secretary was on my radio explaining that instead of a backstop he wanted "alternative arrangements" and "technical solutions". And the interviewer was quite rightly pressing him about what those "alternative arrangements" and "technical solutions" might be. But what he wasn't asking was, "Why do you care? If you have a magic solution which will keep the border invisible, we'll never need to fall back on the backstop anyway!"
So that's today's Thing I Don't Understand. The backstop matters to me, because I don't believe in those "alternative arrangements" and "technical solutions". But the Brexit Secretary does believe in them. Doesn't he?
The current obstacle to agreement appears to be the backstop. This is an insurance policy, named, in the hope that this will render it comprehensible to the most conservative of Conservatives for an obsolete cricketing position.
As I understand it, the backstop is a recognition of the fact that as long as Eire and Northern Ireland are both members of the EU, the land border between them is effectively invisible and that this is a good thing. A hard border is associated with the bad old days of the Troubles (to use the habitual euphemism) and almost nobody wants that.
So we have to find a way to keep the border as imperceptible as possible. No problem, say the Brexiteers, we will think of something. There will be a technical solution. Fine, says the EU, but until that's up and running, let's have something to fall back on in the interim. This has generated so much heat that I'm not entirely sure what that something might be, but it appears to mean treating Northern Ireland as a special case, remaining EU compliant when the rest of the UK leaves the EU. Yesterday Parliament voted that the Prime Minister should return to Brussels (I think it was Brussels) and tell them that she still can't sell that deal to Parliament, could she have a different one, please?
So this morning the Brexit Secretary was on my radio explaining that instead of a backstop he wanted "alternative arrangements" and "technical solutions". And the interviewer was quite rightly pressing him about what those "alternative arrangements" and "technical solutions" might be. But what he wasn't asking was, "Why do you care? If you have a magic solution which will keep the border invisible, we'll never need to fall back on the backstop anyway!"
So that's today's Thing I Don't Understand. The backstop matters to me, because I don't believe in those "alternative arrangements" and "technical solutions". But the Brexit Secretary does believe in them. Doesn't he?
