Tag: Tory party

Backstop, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Conservative Party, Northern Ireland

Boris Leaves #Brexit Wriggle Room

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
This blogpost was written on Sunday morning, June 9th, 2019

theresa-may-boris-johnson

It’s as if the past three years never happened. Airbrush Theresa May and her Brexit negotiations out of history. It’s back to the morning after the referendum and the UK “holds all the cards”.

Well, that seems to be the way Boris Johnson, favourite to become the next Tory leader and Prime Minister, sees it. Or, at least, wants us to see it. Maybe it is all smoke and mirrors.

In an interview in the Sunday Times, Johnson says that, if elected his government would:

  • Hold on to the £39bn Brexit divorce payment until Brussels agreed more favourable terms
  • Scrap the Northern Ireland Backstop and settle the Irish border issue only when the EU was ready to agree a future relationship
  • Guarantee the rights of the 3.2m EU citizens living in the UK
  • Step up preparations for no-deal and prepare for “disruption”.

If there is no deal with the EU on these terms, he would then take the UK out on October 31st next with no deal. Raw, red meat for the Brexit ultras, it would seem.

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Article 50, Brexit, British Government, Conservative Party, UK Labour Party

#Brexit: A New UK Politics in the Making?

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This blog was written on Fri March 30th, 2018

out out
Leave the EEC campaign – 1975 UK Referendum

In the Ireland of the 1950s and 60s, in which I grew up, you had no choice but to go to Sunday mass. You might get away with not going in the big cities, but not in rural Ireland, the valleys of the squinting windows, where everyone knew your business.

Those who were reluctant mass-goers would wait a few minutes until after the mass had started, then slip in and stand furtively at the back. Needless to say, they did not “participate” in the mass and you would rarely, if ever, see them join in the singing of hymns, much less walk up the church to take communion. As soon as the priest gave the final benediction they were out and gone. There in body, but not in spirit.

It often strikes me that this is a useful way of looking at the UK’s membership of the EU: arrived late, stood at the back, participated as little as possible, and a lot of the time, seemed to wish it were elsewhere.

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