British government has basically gone rogue
Posted By: July 06, 2022
IRISH CONGRESSIONAL BRIEFING
Distributed to Congress by Irish National Caucus
“Members of Congress will find this letter in the Irish News helpful
and insightful.” —Fr. Sean Mc Manus.
British government has basically gone rogue
James G. Barry. Dublin 6.
Letters to Editor. Irish News. Belfast. Tuesday, July 5, 2022
After surviving the night of the blond knives, we are now seeing the gradual demise of Boris Johnson. A death by a thousand cuts.
British prime minister Theresa May in her survival year was playing the ‘our precious union’ card amid Brexit crises and a gathering leadership challenge. At a hostile Tory conference, she promised a Festival of Great Britain in celebration of the creativity and innovation of the UK. A UK in accordance with the Act of Union 1801, revised in 1921 for the partition state of the north of Ireland. A no-greater aggressive unionist, Boris Johnson, then British foreign secretary, set off on a tour of what he called the “awesome foursome” UK nations.
Following the European elections held on May 2019, at which the Conservatives failed miserably, Theresa May announced her resignation. Boris Johnson won the Conservative Party leadership and went on to win the 2019 Westminster election, though viewed variously as not genuine, untrustworthy, a political rogue and torch bearer of English nationalism. However, he was seen by Conservatives as the best prospect of getting them re-elected and nothing to do with the advancement of Brexit. Now he had the reins to drive forward with Brexit. Lying in the long grass was the Wee North with its long land border with the Irish Republic and supported by the Belfast Agreement. He had been outspoken in the past about his opposition to the Belfast Agreement. It had been asserted by Theresa May after the referendum that there would be no return to the ‘borders of the past’. Johnson continued to dismiss the idea that the Irish border was a complicated issue. How wrong he was. The north of Ireland is also no longer legally in the EU Customs Union, but remains an entry point into it, creating the Irish Sea border, a de facto customs border down the Irish Sea.
Boris Johnson is struggling to come to terms with the hard divorce from the EU which he so relentlessly pursued. He claims the protocol is causing real problems in the north of Ireland and must be fixed. The British government has now come up with legislation to unilaterally override parts of the north of Ireland Protocol and it has passed its first hurdle in Westminster – in fact a breaking of international law. A deal they had initially signed up too was part of the withdrawal agreement with the EU following Brexit, declaring it a victory for Britannia.
DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson is claiming his party’s pressure has brought about the progress being made on the bill. Donaldson was never in favor of the Good Friday Agreement and even left the UUP over it. The DUP’s current behavior is being tolerated by Johnson and his hardline Brexiteers, to be used as their patsy in any future negotiations with the EU.
The British government has basically gone rogue.
END.
