1.Boris Johnson’s secret weapon against the EU revealed!
Unless you read the Daily Express every day you will be unaware of this, but Boris Johnson is about to cause an “international storm”. Not anything to do with Ukraine, no. Rather, he’s sending Conor Burns, the Northern Ireland Secretary, to Washington to have a little chat with Biden about Northern Ireland. That’s it. That’s the story. This is what the Daily Express feels will result in an “international storm”.
Burns, you see, is a “Catholic Unionist”, and so he will explain to the president of the United States that he’s got it all wrong about the NI Protocol and that Biden should take the UK’s position on this much more seriously than is currently the case. Given the UK’s position on the NI Protocol can be summarised as follows, there could be a crucial flaw in the plan:
UK: That customs border in the Irish Sea we signed up to, we don’t want it any longer.
EU: Right then, what’s your alternative?
UK: We want you to treat us like we’re still in the Single Market and Customs Union even though we left both by dint of own free will.
EU: No, we’re not going to do that.
UK: Screw you then, poop face.
EU: The deal is the deal as signed. Do anything stupid and we’ll retaliate.
UK: Oh right. We’ll have another think then.
I would be interested to see how Burns lays out this eloquent position to the president and the US State Department. I feel that however well the NI Secretary performs, somehow he’ll never get them to see that Brexit really was an example of a small, plucky nation throwing off the chains of dictatorship, much like America itself did in 1776.
I love this whole idea. Like Conor Burns is going to go to Washington, give his little spiel, and the power structure of DC is collectively going to suddenly go, “That’s it! We never understood the whole Ireland thing before, but now we get it! And we’re totally on your side, throwing all strategic alliances that have been solid for decades aside for no good reason!'“
This is what Brexit has come to. Already, just over two years after the Withdrawal Agreement was made international law, a fact the Tories have been strangely trying to ignore ever since, the whole project has been reduced to Conor Burns going to Washington to try and convince the president of the United States that the European Union are just a bunch of meanie poos in the hopes that this will turn everything around. In other words, the whole project has already collapsed, which is remarkable. All that’s left is what will no doubt be years of this rubbish, inflating ridiculous fancies into one last way to make Brexit work that no one, including those closest to the project’s core, will be able to articulate. A couple of years of this rubbish at least - one can only hope the Labour party would engage in less of this nonsense and actually try and fix the problems created by Johnson’s terrible trade deal, as opposed to attempting to constantly hide behind ridiculous stunts like sending Conor Burns to Washington as a visibly desperate punt.
2. Lord Frost to become PM Frost?
We’re now entering a weird phase of the Brexit project, one where it is starting to crumble around everyone’s ears and yet it’s too early for anyone to change their minds on the subject given the culture war around it, and so the stuff that gets talked up that’s Brexit related gets more and more ridiculous every week. If you thought the “Mr Burns Goes to Washington” story above was as bad as it gets, hold on tight.
Another bogus Brexity story out this week poses the following question: Will David Frost give up his peerage and run for the House of Commons? I have no idea, but if he does, he’s an even bigger idiot than I already thought he was. After all, he’s made it now - a hero of the new right and in a position where he won’t be called out on his bullshit, so he can just milk the cow for all it’s worth. Why would he want to chuck the ermine in, all to end up as the guy holding the Brexit bag full of barf at the end of the road?
I suppose because someone within the Tory Brexit bubble might be pumping up his ego with ill-advised bile, telling him the leadership of the Conservative Party is all his if he wants it, should he just take the leap. David, let me give you some career advice, even though I know you won’t listen: don’t do it. The chances are high it would be a total flop and you’ll have packed in a peerage for nothing. Keep doing your thing, writing articles for the Telegraph, complaining about everything from the outside. Becoming an MP, even if you managed to get elected, would only remind everyone that you are at the very least partly responsible for this bag of crap known as the UK-EU trade deal. Stay on the sidelines as a folk hero to morons, it’s safer there.
3. British civil servants try and help save Great Britain in a shocking scandal!
Yet another gem from the Daily Express this week, this time headlined as being about British civil servants trying to “scupper a £10b trade deal” with Australia. What’s interesting is that when you get into the weeds of the story, such as they are given, the moral of it is the precise opposite to the one the Express appears to be trying to pedal.
George Brandis, the former Australian ambassador to the UK, provides most of the colour to the story. The basic tale he tells seems to be this: Whitehall civil servants were fighting on behalf of Great Britain to make sure a trade deal lined up with British national interests, while Liz Truss, the now Foreign Secretary and former International Trade Secretary, was siding with a foreign power against them.
For what it’s worth, I for one don’t buy any of this and feel like the story is a great example of the Daily Express being unconscionably scurrilous against a member of Her Majesty’s Cabinet. I don’t believe for one second that Liz Truss tried to sell out the UK in the interests of a foreign power and was constantly prevented from doing so by the Whitehall civil service. This is beyond the pale and I just don’t know where the Express gets this stuff from. Other than Australian civil servants, of course, I got that, but you know, I meant that more existentially.
Sorry if I’ve seemed broken by this week’s Brexit news. The stupidity of all of this is starting to get to me.
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Keep sane and I will return next week with the worst of Brexit, as ever.
The idea that Burns as a “Catholic Unionist” makes some sort of weighty political point is risible. Sectarian divisions in NI, though very really, have always been used a cipher by UKG to avoid the actual nuances of politics in the state. If you can categorise the Irish as mad, bad barbarians hell-bent on religious strife, then you can avoid the serious constitutional issues. And that worked for about 100 years. Truth is Irish republicanism was founded by northern Protestants and the republican movement has always incorporated a significant Protestant minority. Similarly, there’s a swath of middle class Catholicism that supports the Union. That Burns apparently ambiguous state has some important statement to make could only have a strategic role in the minds of folk who don’t understand NI. But hey, nobody ever accused the Tories of that!
Hopefully Frost does take over that should finish Brexit and the Tories.
I must say you have to hand it to Bozo as he is great at breaking up unions
First the EU and now the UK.
Has anyone done more damage to Britain postwar.
And the DUP finishing 3 will mean Bozo is billy no mates in Parliament.