As I write, the UK is drinking in the Last Chance saloon. Despite Theresa May travelling around Europe and button-holing the leaders of various countries, the EU including the south of Ireland are standing firm. Backstop means backstop. So is there anything the UK can do, other than go for an abject surrender and to hell with the DUP? Well, maybe.
The news this morning is that four UK-based academics have presented a report to the Joint Committee of the human rights organisations, north and south in Ireland. In the report they point out an uncomfortable fact: the Common Travel Area (CTA) between Britain and Ireland which, for nearly one hundred years, has allowed the citizens of the south of Ireland and the subjects/citizens of the UK to travel, live and work in each other’s state, may need looking at.
What’s uncomfortable about that? Well, it seems the CTA is held together by a whole patchwork of laws, which in turn are underpinned by EU law. Once the UK exits the EU, a fresh treaty between Britain and the south of Ireland may be necessary.
You hear the alarm bells? No one’s saying it – yet- but I can’t see the Brits not using this as a big blunt bargaining chip in the final negotiations. If you don’t stop this backstop nonsense, and agree with us that it’ll last for three months or, OK, at a stretch three years, then we’re going to pull the CTA rug from under your bog-trotter feet. See how you like them apples, Paddy.
I may be wrong, of course. Perhaps the CTA is equally beneficial to the UK as it is to the south of Ireland. But then look at the UK and the EU: that was a mutually beneficial system. And the Brits decide it was time they knocked the house down.
If Theresa May doesn’t weaponise the CTA, she’s even dimmer than I thought.
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