But not for long: the two prime ministers did not grab a single front page of an English newspaper the next morning. The media caravan rushed forward. After all, Northern Ireland was precisely the kind of serious, complex and historically pivotal issue that the coverage of the referendum failed to avoid. In fact, in a survey of King’s College London, which analyzed 350,000 articles in print and electronic form during the 10-week referendum campaign, Northern Ireland was not listed at all. One of the biggest mistakes of the remaining side (one among many) was the campaign as if the result depended on the consequences of the question on the ballot. It is as if Britain would choose whether to reject EU membership on the basis of what this decision meant. The withdrawal side fought instead on the grounds that the decision could mean anything you wanted, and that the so-called consequences were scary stories created by a hospitable elite with vested interests in the status quo. people like Blair and the Major. Six years later, the structure of the argument has not changed. Only pro-Europeans are talking about consequences, while Brexit supporters are campaigning against them, as if the rest had won. Only with Boris Johnson on Downing Street can they now write their delusions into law. This is the perverted genesis of the bill released Monday, ostensibly to rectify the Northern Ireland Exit Agreement Protocol – the treaty signed by Johnson in 2019. The proposed bill would give ministers the power to delete and rewrite any part. of the old deal they do not like. We do not need to study the small letters to understand how blatant this is for the rules of international diplomacy. The conditions are in place to guarantee continuity and stability in relations between states, so that even capricious leaders can rely on dealing with neighbors and allies according to fixed parameters. A country that is relieved of this obligation becomes a scammer. It is also revealing that the bill targets every aspect of the protocol, not just customs procedures that cause symbolic and constitutional inconvenience to trade unionists, raising barriers between Britain and Northern Ireland. If the ministers were sincere in their claim that they were focusing on the issue of borders, they would not go into the weeds, claiming anything like the jurisdiction of European courts or regulatory alignment. The pursuit of these goals is a sign that a nominal policy for Northern Ireland has been adapted to the obsession of the English Tory Eurosceptics. The dictation was taken by Foreign Minister Liz Truce, who acknowledges the influence that the hardline European Parliamentary Research Group will have on any future decision on Conservative leadership. For the same reason, Johnson can not defy the ERG, although Downing Street has informed that its demands have not been completely swallowed up. An even more extreme approach would have legislated the immediate destruction of all bridges to Europe. The current version only creates a mechanism for recording them without warning. This capacity is contained in the “delegated powers” – statutory means by which ministers can legislate with almost no parliamentary control. Lawmakers voting in favor of the bill will sign their opinion on any agreement Johnson believes he can make to replace the one he is now sabotaging. This is an insult to democracy, but also a possible way back to diplomacy. It is the last reason that the British Brexit defenders and the trade unionists of Northern Ireland are reluctant to approve a plan that exists only to their satisfaction. They assume, I rightly believe, that Johnson could still distance himself from the full confrontation with Brussels that his actions seem to be flirting. He wants the spectacle of an internal political battle – where his enemies can be seen as remnants of revenge – but not the financial pain that would follow a complete collapse of inter-channel relations. He wants to lead a heroic charge against the mythical dragon “Europe”, which is still stubbornly breathing fire despite previous murders, and now holding the “dominance” girl captive in Northern Ireland. Of course he does. It is the myth on which his career was built. In the last narrative, in 2019, it ended with the coronation of King Boris. Meanwhile, in the real world, the prime minister has a chancellor advising against a trade war with the real Europe in the midst of a real cost-of-life crisis. In the real world, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom outside London with a growing economy, thanks to its unique access to the single market – an advantage of a protocol backed by the majority of Stormont voters. of last month. Also in the real world, Brussels can not really negotiate with a prime minister who violates the treaties and has only a fragile leadership of a party that does not trust him, nor where European politics is decided by MPs who will never be satisfied with any agreement. They can not be satisfied because the result they want is to be liberated from a world where the single market matters, where the EU is a strong economic entity and where Britain must compromise to restore the privileges it rejected, thinking it was a burden. That’s the real meaning of the Northern Ireland Protocol bill. It is not, as its advocates claim, a solution to the financial problems caused by customs controls on goods passing through Britain. Nor will it be able to alleviate the trade union insult inflicted on the Irish Sea by regulatory borders. It will not shock Brussels on concessions, nor will it convince anyone who believes that Johnson is an incredible prime minister that it is anything else. It is the inevitable degeneration into irrationality of the government defined by Brexit. It is a dogma that makes it an enemy of reality. If this enemy does not succumb to rhetoric, he must be suppressed by law. Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist
