Britain must say no to a pint-sized Bonaparte and NI Protocol
Scarcely a day goes by now without some EU apparatchiks, or their fellow travellers in Britain’s media, sanctimoniously deploring that Poland or Hungary has “endangered the rule of law”, “betrayed the values of the Union”, or “eroded democracy”. In fact, both those countries, whose only fault is clinging to their hard-won sovereignty, are infinitely more democratic than the increasingly totalitarian EU.
The rule of law? Brussels does not know the meaning of the term. Fraudulently distorting the EU convergence criteria to admit unfit Greece to membership (that worked well), turning a blind eye to France and Germany violating treaty commitments on deficits and debt levels (pre-Covid), similarly indulging the European Central Bank in its ignoring of treaties – is standard practice by this anarchic behemoth. Its tame European Court of Justice has cavalierly ruled that the EU need not obey international law – even the UN Charter, on one occasion.
If you want an instructive snapshot of the EU’s piratical practices you need only consider its recent treatment of Britain. Emmanuel Macron, has threatened to block British trawlers from French ports, to tighten customs checks on British goods as a form of harassment, even to cut off electricity supplies to Jersey. A British trawler has been detained at Le Havre. Why? For a number of reasons, all of them unjustifiable.
Macron claims that Britain has been unreasonable in denying licences to around 30 smaller French trawlers. But AIS satellite surveillance proves that some boats have applied for licences illegally, on fabricated grounds. In one sense, Britain has behaved badly – not towards the French, but towards its own fishing industry, by issuing licences to 98 per cent of EU vessels that have applied to fish in British waters. So far from being restrictive, the UK has been over-generous, considering that only 15 per cent of Britain’s catch comes from EU waters.
Another reason why Macron is sabre-rattling is for advantage in next year’s French presidential election. Some allowance is made for politicians grandstanding for the benefit of a domestic audience, but in this case there are further issues. Macron is virtually returning to Napoleon’s Continental System, to damage Britain. Even in that, though, he is not simply posturing for the benefit of French voters. The political demise of the Dowager Empress Merkel has created a power vacuum, leading to an outburst of warlordism, in which Macron sees himself as the chief contender for hegemony within the European Union.
Most reprehensibly, Ursula von der Leyen has abetted this pint-sized Bonaparte instead of reining him in. That is because of the other, unspoken part of Macron’s agenda – unspoken, that is, until his prime minister Jean Castex wrote a letter to Ursula von der Leyen, stating that it was important to demonstrate the disadvantages of leaving the EU. Leavers and Remainers have since conducted an exhaustive exegesis on the text, but the implication is obvious: Britain is to be shown to have lost out by leaving the EU.
The entire fishing dispute, though important, is of less significance than the other bone of contention between Britain and the EU: the Northern Ireland Protocol. This is a prime example of the phenomenon whereby people who become habituated to a situation lose sight of how abnormal or outlandish it actually is. In news reports, the NI Protocol sounds like just another instance of trench warfare between bureaucrats on opposing sides of an international dispute. There have been many such issues, but this is totally different. The Northern Ireland Protocol is a massive exercise in deception, in the re-imagining of reality to support a geopolitical fantasy.
Consider the facts. Britain’s exit from the European Union immediately reconfigured the western frontier of the EU. Though still largely sea-girt, it acquired a 310-mile land section, from Lough Foyle to Carlingford Lough, weaving its way across the “island of Ireland”. This was uncongenial to the Irish Republic, an EU member state, which supported Brussels (and subsequently got scant fiscal consideration from the EU) in fabricating a narrative whereby any visible evidence of an Irish land frontier would instantly provoke nationalist terrorist violence and a return to “the Troubles”.
The totem brandished by this alliance was the Good Friday Agreement. It became an axiom that the agreement must be protected at all costs, even though, in the real world, it was not threatened. On that hypocritical premise, abetted by the Irish lobby in the American Democratic Party, an imposition so grotesque as to resemble something out of Alice in Wonderland was fabricated. The pretence was created that the EU border did not run across Ireland – a contradiction of geopolitical reality as well as of international law – but down the Irish Sea.
This fantasy was made a pretext for substantially retaining Northern Ireland within the European Union, with EU officials stationed in the province and customs checks, not between Britain and Ireland, but between one part of the United Kingdom and another. The evident hope in Brussels was to erode links between Northern Ireland and Britain and, by a process of osmosis, facilitate Irish reunification, seen by Brussels as an opportunity to punish Britain by reducing its territory.
Forget all the small-print wrangling about sausages, medicines, and flora and fauna. Behind all the bureaucratic Single Market gobbledegook, the real objective is to subvert and undermine the United Kingdom. The Good Friday Agreement, the supposed primary object of concern, has been seriously damaged, as has trade between Britain and Northern Ireland, as well as the constitutional settlement.
This is beyond outrageous, but it is necessary to apportion the blame correctly. Brussels and Dublin have acted against British interests, but the world of Realpolitik is a jungle: foreign states and confederations will do all they can to inflict damage on a rival power. That is how the world turns. But what is unforgivable is for a government to play into the hands of its enemies by acceding to their wishes. No British government, under any pressure whatsoever, should have agreed to the Northern Ireland Protocol.
The protocol is a dagger at the heart of the United Kingdom. Month by month, it is uncoupling Northern Ireland from Britain, as it was designed to do. If Northern Ireland left the United Kingdom, Scotland would be out of the door five minutes later. If people in Westminster and Whitehall do not realise that, be sure that people in the Berlaymont most certainly do. That is why, regardless of any concessions that might be offered, Britain must unilaterally withdraw from the Northern Irish Protocol, whether by invoking Article 16 or passing primary legislation.
Otherwise, the future of the United Kingdom will be compromised and the implanted tendrils of Brussels control will continue to strangulate Britain. Brexit will never be done. As for the ancillary dispute over fishing rights, Britain is now said to be in “solutions mode”, almost certainly a euphemism for concessions. If so, that will be our latest mistake. There is only one response that aspiring Jupiters such as Emmanuel Macron understand and that is a resounding De Gaulle-style “Non!”