This blog first appeared as a column in The Andersonstown News.
You could call it quiet satisfaction or you could call it unholy glee, but British politicians and commentators have climbed onto their moral high horses when the EU had to do a handbrake-turn over a suggested vaccine check between the south of Ireland and North(east)ern Ireland (NEI).
“Oooh, how could they be so stupid!” was the spoken or unspoken sentiment. The exception was Michael Gove, whose resemblance to a cocky schoolboy makes all right-thinking people have dreams of approaching him from behind with a sockful of wet sand. Gove the schoolboy assumed the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone of a headmaster: “I think the EU recognise that they made a mistake, following clear conversations that the prime minister has had with the European Commission president and I’ve had with the European vice-president.” Get you, Michael.
Arlene Foster, in her usual soft-spoken way declared the proposed-then-abandoned EU action as “absolutely disgraceful” and an “incredible act of hostility.” Well now – who’d a thunk Arlene would have been so opposed to border checks in Ireland?
So what actually happened? The drug dealers Astrazeneca promised the EU 80 million doses of the vaccine in the first quarter of this year, but delivered just 31 million, with another 9 million on the way.
The EU, miffed that Astrazeneca promised one thing and delivered another, told the company it should use production plants in the UK to deliver what it had promised. The EU also decided that it didn’t make sense for vaccines to be flowing out of the EU to non-EU countries – hence their move (quickly-retracted ) to block vaccines going to the UK via NEI.
Arlene Foster’s “Outrageous” squawk was not so much about vaccines coming through NEI as general trade between GB and NEI. Yes,she starts her sentence being indignant over the Astrazeneca thing, but somehow ends it with complaint about the consequences of the Irish Sea border:
“It’s absolutely disgraceful, and I have to say the Prime Minister now needs to act very quickly to deal with the real trade flows that are being disrupted between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”
As often happens with political unionism, the “Ulster will fight” sabre is being rattled: “There is great unrest and great tension within the community here in Northern Ireland so this protocol that was meant to bring about peace and harmony in Northern Ireland is doing quite the reverse.”
An interviewer pointed out to Arlene that getting rid of the protocol would be in breach of an international treaty: “Well, it didn’t seem to bother the EU yesterday when they breached the treaty in terms of their embarrassment around their vaccine procurement.”
Arlene, Arlene: did the teacher never tell you, when you were a wee girl going to school in Fermanagh, that two wrongs don’t make a right? You can’t justify breaking an international treaty because the EU briefly thought about and then changed its mind regarding checks on vaccines coming from the south into NEI.
But no situation is so bad that the arrival of a policeman doesn’t make it worse, and in NEI, there’s no vaccination programme so scrambled that the addition of 100 members of the British army medical corps won’t make it worse. The best you can hope for, as Pat Sheehan commented in Stormont, is that they don’t get in the way of the professionals.
But there’s more. It appears that Brexit has meant moving military equipment (yes, Virginia – weapons that kill) from GB to NI may get tangled up in red tape. The lean mean fighting machine that is the British army doesn’t like the idea of having to give 15 days’ notice, complete customs declarations and even let NATO know, just because they want to shift some killing equipment from GB to NEI.
Our First Minister insisted on the right of GB to send guns and other lethal stuff from GB to NEI without let or hindrance, and added that the guns thing was just one of “hundreds of problems” created by the protocol.
Fact-check time, Arlene. The shifting guns and the checks on trade and the “hundreds of problems” come less from the protocol and more from the spectacular act of self-harm called Brexit, which you and your party’s MPs helped bring into being and have acted as cheer-leaders for, even when it’s clearly creating damage.
Take care, Arlene. The law of unintended consequences has very sharp teeth which it enjoys sinking into the arse of those who think they know what’s best for the rest of us.
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