The Northern Ireland Protocol paradox - or, why can’t Boris Johnson supporters spot the obvious? The sabre rattling nonsense of the UK government threatening to invoke Article 16 of the NI Protocol embarrassingly refuses to die. It doesn’t matter that the jig was up when the US intervened, causing a mini-Suez no one in the political media took real notice of. This is just an indelible part of the Brexit script, so Frost, BJ, and all the rest of them along for the ride have to pretend like the Tories might decide to commit political suicide if they don’t get their way on something the vast majority of people in England, which is where they need to hang onto seats next election time, do not give the slightest crap about.
coming to this one late, but from Chris Grey's columns I've read quite a lot in there about how Johnson was getting people to back the withdrawal agreement and the Northern Ireland Protocol specifically by telling the ERG types that he didn't intend to actually apply the agreed terms and that it could all be renegotiated or ignored after it had been passed. So it's not only the case that he agreed to the NIP purely to get over his immediate problem of being able to go into the 2019 election with a "Get Brexit Done" slogan, but that even at the very time he was pushing the WA as the touted "Oven Ready Deal" he was winking at the Brexit Ultras that they didn't really *mean* any of this stuff right from the start.
coming to this one late, but from Chris Grey's columns I've read quite a lot in there about how Johnson was getting people to back the withdrawal agreement and the Northern Ireland Protocol specifically by telling the ERG types that he didn't intend to actually apply the agreed terms and that it could all be renegotiated or ignored after it had been passed. So it's not only the case that he agreed to the NIP purely to get over his immediate problem of being able to go into the 2019 election with a "Get Brexit Done" slogan, but that even at the very time he was pushing the WA as the touted "Oven Ready Deal" he was winking at the Brexit Ultras that they didn't really *mean* any of this stuff right from the start.