What is a backstop? I am informed that it is a sports term, e.g., the catcher in baseball or the goal tender in hockey, i.e., a person or thing placed behind something as a barrier, support, or reinforcement.
Apply the idea to politics. The UK Brexit agreement with the EU provides that no border wall or physical boundary will be reestablished between Ireland and Northern Ireland, i.e., the UK will have to remain in the EU customs union until an alternative to a border is discovered, i.e, a technological device or magic incantation. Radical Brexiters are demanding an end date to the Backstop. The EU says no end date until we have the technology or the magic.
The Backstop was seen as a brilliant solution to keeping Mrs. May in office with the votes of the Northern Irish UDP. Without their votes she would lack a majority. Otherwise she could have dumped them and let the border between England and Ireland be drawn in the Irish Sea. Northern Ireland would de facto be Ireland and remain in the EU. [I hope this is clear; I have puzzled long and hard over it; I could be wrong]
BUT: Mrs. May having lost the vote in Parliament is stymied. This week-end an idea has emerged in
Brexiter quarters that Ireland could leave the EU and join the UK,
hence avoiding a border issue. Irish officials have said absolutely not. Yet, the UK could crash out of at the end of March.
What then would transpire at the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland?
What would happen if Northern Ireland became an independent country, but remained a British Commonwealth nation, similar to Canada or New Zealand? That way they could remain in the EU, but still retain some ties to the UK.
ReplyDeleteKatherine, That is a solution. But, you realize, scores of Cabinet ministers have been cast into outer darkness through the years for even suggesting something like that. Of course, it looks like Mrs. May is headed for outer darkness no matter what else happens.
DeleteI never saw the backstop as brilliant. What it did was keep Britain in the EU de facto but not de jure until there could be a solution to the problem that they could only solve with the backstop. The Brexiters saw right through that.
ReplyDeleteThe solution I like is that Northern Ireland and Scotland join together within the EU and let England and Wales go to wherever Nigel and Boris want to stew in their own juices. I think First Minister Nicola Sturgeon of Scotland looks to be up for that.
You mean the Picts and the Scots rejoin as a nation? They stay in the EU and the Scottish/English border gets a ditch!
DeleteHadrian took care of the wall.
DeleteNo way Northern Ireland wants to be in the Republic.
DeleteIf Scotland and Ireland chose to push for independence separately or together, they would need the blessing of Mother England, and I presume would have to petition for admittance to the EU.
But doesn't that mean that there would then be a hard border between England and Scotland/Ulster?
Plus, as EU nations, how much latitude would Ulster and Scotland have to maintain current economic ties with England? The prosperity of all three entities are so intertwined that severing things could be worse than Brexit.