Irish backstop: Answer is in the Detail

There’s not long to engineer a workable proposal for the backstop is one of those impromptu ‘do or die’ moments Boris Johnson keeps theatrically retorting. In desperation he seemingly agreed to the challenge and viewed it as a UK/EU reopening of a deal, hard to know what deal? However, these minor points are superfluous during these times on non-experts. The Boris Johnson whistle-stop tour of Europe was a great success, leading onto the G7 Summit. Within hours of the ’30 day’ statement  Greg Hands, one of the authors of the Alternative Agreement Report , claimed it’s as if the EU27 haven’t read our 271 page document predominantly about the NI / Irish border. I slowly sank into my chair and thought long and hard.

Primary aim is to not fog yourself with Brexit dysfunction, that’s quite a feat – for the answer is not what we’re use to per se; alas, what’s deemed high performance enough to influence the EU to rethink their future relationship possibly with all EU States with borders with their neighbours. It’s worth considering if frictionless borders have to be determined on whether you’re in the union / memberships - progressive trade reforms could suggest not.  If anything, lessons have been lying around for half a century and this inevitably could’ve gifted the UK progressive compromises two years ago. But regrettably politics shifted into tribalism and remains so; now dormant models in how we treat each UK County for example have to be rehashed in Westminster.

The backstop honours the EU’s position as agreed by the Irish government and doesn’t compromise the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, removing the backstop isn’t an option, henceforth a similar mechanism has to be ruled in without the political toxicity. For the record, this concept hasn’t been entirely ruled out by any party and open for negotiation. In the ‘AAR,’ it specifies: ‘Because the UK is leaving the EU, we believe that some change to the status quo is unavoidable.’ No wonder Barnier has dug deep and poured sea water all over the sandcastles.  Minimal changes are white noise to Barnier’s negotiating team; everyone has a different version of ‘minimal changes.’

Instead maximise on positive outcomes. Suddenly the rewards will stipulate a worthy focus and priorities will reform. Of course, the Backstop is not fundamentally checkpoint psychology; however the culture has to prop up the technological ideology and vice versa. By 2017 it should’ve been all systems go and overtly could’ve attracted immense global talent and investment in regards to innovators of product heat / sensor technologies, nevertheless it was another missed opportunity. Again, politics got in the way.

When Barnier said in a recent article that we can look at the Alternative Agreement once the Withdrawal Technicality Draft was signed, it truly meant that. This discourse implies strongly we’re swamped in ‘kidding yourself pandemonium’ at Westminster; they’ve announced that negotiations are taking place with Boris Johnson’s Team and the signs are encouraging – absurdity reigns. Any deviation from the GFA is disrespecting the peace agreement; period. Anyone whom waffles on about who’ll erect the border and so forth? Is doing the GFA and relative peace an injustice - what makes this scenario decidedly worse is the broken Stormont government, this furthermore, has a far less chance of mending itself with protectionist mantra picking the scab. Tragic for the people of this region, unspeakable violence has already encroached on odious Brexit, the New IRA has admitted slaying the journalist Lyra McKee .Only 29 years of age, with the whole of her life ahead of her -- indeed, something to think about when you’re backing a prorogation to stem the tide of democracy merely to aid a populist debacle on our shores. The stakes cannot be higher.

There’s a stalemate in how the interim report can run on gas, Merkel and the EU have murmured long and hard that such an arrangement will take years to implement to a workable conclusion. All that the report proclaims is the ‘possibility of monitoring NI / Irish trade relations’ and the myopic language that the backstop effectively replaces the work of the bodies of the BA/GFA. Inviting these same bodies to be involved in designated monitoring devalues the basic functions of the GFA in its entirety. Cack-handed irrationality personified. Already dissident Repubicans have managed five attacks this year alone and by Halloween they’ll coordinated with smuggling rings and seek out 300 border crossings, weak on cover and surveillance.

 Typical of Johnson’s Admin to overlook the potential illegal good pandemic from Bonfire Night on-wards. You can’t help but ascertain there’s governance aloofness even on simplistic border strategies.Oddly Parliament hasn’t got out of politics’ mode to underline key points of backstop basics. My fear is that the calamitous non-arrangement will be the catalyst for dissident Republicans keen to shape British politics – albeit done so not with the rational hand of compromise but in with a bloodied hand of hatred.

NI trade is the answer, though. Enough for the EU to prick their ears and reconsider their business hubs across Europe; enough to enable a friction-less border – the type the die-hard Brexit have openly spoken about without any connection to how it would be achieved.  There maybe even time to garner EU funding for AI / Clean Energy business enterprises on the Irish border, perhaps crypto-currency centres for establishing new age finance predominantly on the ‘Cloud.’ All of these innovations are on the Silicon agenda, and a historical Northern Ireland is an ideal location – indeed, some of the business gurus of Silicon Valley are chomping at the bit to develop an Irish consortium dug down into the so-called new world global order.

Much of the idea-hub is untouched, unknown and just like the Irish backstop the answer rests in the concept of trade / investment and rejuvenation. What I will agree with Dominic Cummings over is there’s  painfully few of us who’re capable of intersecting management and new technologies to solve an intercontinental political dilemma and of course U-turn on a national catastrophe. The consensus would be to dismiss these possible theories as a babbling delusion, albeit, not dissimilar to what 17.4 million electorates voted for in 2016. We won’t learn in time.