The Guardian view on the Northern Ireland protocol bill: reckless provocation
According to Boris Johnson, the Northern Ireland protocol bill amounts to a “relatively trivial set of adjustments”. There is, as ever, a gulf separating the truth and the prime minister’s disingenuous assertions. In reality, the proposed legislation published on Monday is wide-ranging, foolishly confrontational with regard to the European Union, and probably illegal under international law.
Doubtless mindful of future votes that she may need in a future Conservative party leadership contest, the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, talked the bill up rather than down. It would, she said, “fix” outstanding issues. Crossing one EU red line after another, the proposed changes allow the government to unilaterally renege on key elements of the “oven-ready” treaty that Mr Johnson signed in 2020. The existing regime for checks and tariffs between Britain and Northern Ireland, which were introduced to prevent a hard border re-emerging on the island of Ireland, would be dismantled. Rules on state aid and taxation would be overridden. The European court of justice would be removed from its current role in overseeing the agreement. This is a fantasy wishlist for the Eurosceptic hard right.
Unsurprisingly, in the wake of this provocation, Brussels has restated its intention to take legal action against the United Kingdom, citing a flagrant breach of treaty obligations. Maroš Šefčovič, the European commission vice-president in charge of Brexit negotiations for the EU, stated the obvious on Monday when he observed that aggressive unilateralism of this kind is “damaging to mutual trust and a formula for uncertainty”. Northern Ireland business leaders wrote to the government last week to urge the path of negotiation rather than engineer a
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