Britain’s prime minister Boris Johnson (2R) and his wife Carrie Johnson (R) walk with US president Joe Biden and US First Lady Jill Biden prior to a bilateral meeting at Carbis Bay, Cornwall. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty

If relations between the three points of the Brexit triangle of Dublin, London, and Brussels were dodgy before this week, they have deteriorated further in recent days as the temperature rises over the Northern Ireland protocol.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney, admitted that there was “some strain in the relationship between Dublin and London” over the protocol. Understatement of the year. Relations between the two governments have not been as poor since the days when Margaret Thatcher was in Downing Street and Charles Haughey was in Merrion Street.

Privately some senior officials, who, prior to Brexit, delighted in the diplomatic and political achievement of better relations between Ireland and the UK than at any time since Independence, are aghast at the state of play.

But it is what it is. Politicians are taking pot-shots at each other, officials are briefing against each other’s governments with accusations that the other is endangering the peace process and charges of sheer hypocrisy. Some senior figures are aghast at the state of Anglo-Irish relations and old hands warn that the peace process only flourishes and Northern Ireland only makes progress when the two governments are working in lockstep; right now, it looks like the opposite of that.

Reneging

The connected relationship between the EU and the UK is even worse. The EU is accusing the UK of reneging on an agreement and warns that it will take legal steps to seek redress. The UK’s position is that the EU has adopted a more legalistic and nitpicking approach than the UK thought it would when it agreed the protocol. “They have taken an approach that is less discretionary than we thought they would,” says one senior Downing Street official. The UK’s Brexit minister David Frost says that Britain “underestimated the effect” of the Northern Ireland protocol.

But this is completely dismissed on the Irish and the EU side. Even some formerly at the heart of the British government eye it with skepticism. Former permanent secretary at the department for exiting the EU Philip Rycroft told Times Radio this week: “Take that with a large pinch of salt. The UK side knew exactly what they were signing up to. The UK has to accept responsibility.”

But the UK side is clear in its accusation that it is the EU that is failing to take account of the special circumstances in Northern Ireland, and say that the EU’s understanding of the North – and indeed, of the wider UK – is sketchy. The EU doesn’t realize – or doesn’t care – that the checks on goods entering the North make unionists “feel less British”, says one senior UK official.

EU negotiators often refer to Northern Ireland as being in the EU, the British say, with barely concealed irritation. They describe an approach characterized as “we decide who gets access to our market and Northern Ireland is now part of our market”, in the words of one senior official.

Irish and EU officials almost shout: this is what you agreed.

Coveney put it more sharply on Thursday: “When we have Lord Frost visiting Northern Ireland and saying the protocol is not sustainable, that is a problem, when he was the person who negotiated the protocol,” he said.

“It’s impossible to overstate the annoyance with the British behaviour on the North,” says one senior Irish official. Another says that the Irish Government has conveyed the message to the British: “If you’re seeking to push things to the limit, you’re nearly there.”

Seething

And London is seething that Dublin persuaded US president Joe Biden to intervene, sending an unprecedented diplomatic rebuke to Boris Johnson’s government over its treatment of the protocol, and the implications for the peace process.

The message followed a lengthy meeting between Coveney and the US national security adviser Jake Sullivan at Shannon Airport recently. Internal Irish Government readouts of the meeting suggested that the American tone was “what can we do to help?”

The British reaction can be gauged by the headline in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday: “Joe Biden should keep his sneering anti-British, anti-Brexit views to himself.”

Having applied a wrecking ball to the UK-Ireland and the UK-EU relationship, Brexit is now taking its toll on the “special relationship”. As it hosts the G7 meeting this weekend, the UK looks more isolated than ever.

Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/ni-protocol-tensions-threaten-uk-ireland-uk-eu-and-uk-us-relations-1.4589953

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LONDON — Prime Minister Theresa May told fellow Conservative Party lawmakers on Wednesday that she was prepared to resign before the next round of Brexit negotiations with the European Union, offering up her leadership post in an effort to persuade hard-liners to support her unpopular plan to exit the bloc.

May’s offer to curtail her political career to save her vision for Brexit was a desperate gambit. Whether it will be enough to pass her withdrawal plan was not clear.

What was obvious was that Parliament still does not know its own mind on Brexit.

In a special late-night session of “indicative votes,” an effort to find new ways to break the impasse, the House of Commons could not produce a majority for any of eight Brexit proposals put forth by members.

The closest vote was for a “soft” Brexit based on a new customs union with the E.U. It lost by eight. A call to stage a second Brexit referendum was defeated by 27 votes.

On a day when Parliament thought it would take control of Brexit, May and her deal still dominated.

Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay told the House that members’ go-nowhere voting demonstrated that “there are no easy options here. There is no simple way forward.”

Barclay said the best deal on offer was still the one May negotiated, and he urged the House to reconsider it. “If we do not do that, then there are no guarantees about where this process will end,” he warned.

Approving a withdrawal deal is necessary before Britain and the E.U. can negotiate their future relationship.

May offered no timetable for her possible departure. Some Tory lawmakers said a leadership election within the party could happen over the summer, with May leaving 10 Downing Street by the autumn. Other reports suggested a new leader could be in place by July. Swapping prime ministers within the party would not require a general election.

May’s announcement was made behind closed doors, at a meeting of Tory backbenchers — rank-and-file Conservative Party members — at the Palace of Westminster. There were no reporters in the room.

“I have heard very clearly the mood of the parliamentary party. I know there is a desire for a new approach, and new leadership, in the second phase of the Brexit negotiations, and I won’t stand in the way of that,” May told the lawmakers, according to excerpts released by Downing Street.

“I am prepared to leave this job earlier than I intended in order to do what is right for our country and our party,” she said.

While May’s offer to step aside encouraged a number of Conservative rebels to say they now will support her twice-defeated Brexit deal, she still may not have enough votes for the deal to pass this divided Parliament.

Crashing out of the European Union without a deal as well as a long delay, a general election or a second referendum all remain options as the chaos of Brexit continues.

The prime minister’s surprise announcement was seen as key to getting dozens of hardcore Brexiteers, including Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, to back her Brexit play.

Johnson, May’s former foreign secretary, suggested to colleagues that he will now support May’s Brexit deal, this after months of condemning it as a treaty that would make Britain “a vassal” to Brussels.

Rees-Mogg, a Conservative House member who is a power broker in these negotiations, said he would back May’s deal as long as Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionists did. He tweeted that “half a loaf is better than no bread.” He fears losing Brexit entirely.

But on Wednesday night, the Democratic Unionist Party said it still could not back May’s Brexit plan, citing a too-great risk that Northern Ireland would be trapped by the arrangements made over how to keep the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland open.

Without the DUP, May’s deal faces tough odds.

It was unclear whether May’s promise to resign would be honored if lawmakers do not approve her exit deal.

Critics were quick to note the vagueness of her vow to step down.

“If I were them, I’d want it in blood,” Margaret Beckett, a Labour Party politician, told the BBC. “I’ve lost track of how many times she’s promised she won’t lead them into the next election and suddenly it’s turned out that she might after all.”

May was also criticized as focusing on her party and its fractious naysayers.

“Theresa May’s pledge to Tory MPs to stand down if they vote for her deal shows once and for all that her chaotic Brexit negotiations have been about party management, not principles or the public interest,” tweeted opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. “A change of government can’t be a Tory stitch-up, the people must decide.”

The Conservative Party has a long history of leaders being felled by issues concerning Europe. David Cameron, Margaret Thatcher and John Major were all toppled in part because of issues relating to Britain’s relationship with the continent.

But many lawmakers — of all parties — think May has made a shambles of the exit process.

Her right-wing critics say May’s Brexit plan could leave Britain too closely tied to European rules and regulations, failing the test of “taking back control” from Brussels. Those who want a softer Brexit say May set down too many red lines during negotiations.

May says the withdrawal agreement, negotiated with her European counterparts over the past two years, is the best possible option and honors the results of the June 2016 Brexit referendum, in which voters opted to leave the E.U. by 52 percent to 48 percent.

With the news that May could be stepping down, the British chattering class quickly pivoted to speculation over who might replace her.

[Meet the five men who could replace Theresa May as British prime minister]

The top contenders, at least on Wednesday, included Johnson and the government ministers Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt, ­David Lidington and Sajid Javid.

Before May’s announcement, the votes in the House of Commons had been expected to be the main event of the day. Speaker John Bercow opened the debate on different flavors of Brexit by saying he hoped it would “give the House a chance to start the process of positively indicating what it wants.”

The House’s answer was a mush.

There was neither a clear majority for a “soft” or “hard” exit from the E.U.

The Labour Party’s plan for an “alternative” Brexit also failed.

At the end of the day, the House managed only to continue to convey what it does not want, which includes Britain’s leaving the continental trading bloc without a deal.

The votes were nonbinding. Another round of such “indicative” voting could occur next week.

After the results were announced, Oliver Letwin, the Conservative member of Parliament who helped pave the way for the indicative votes, said he had not expected any option to garner a majority, and he said Parliament should hold another round of votes Monday.

Some lawmakers in the chamber jeered at him and could be heard saying “that’s ridiculous” and “crazy.”

On the other side of the English Channel, the Europeans wait and wait. Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, told legislators Wednesday in Brussels that the E.U. should be open to a long extension if Britain wanted to “rethink” its strategy.

“You cannot betray the 6 million people who signed a petition to revoke Article 50 — the 1 million people who marched for a people’s vote or the increasing majority of people who want to remain in the European Union,” Tusk said.

The general division in the British Parliament gave no clear indication to the Europeans what London might favor. Still, European leaders who gathered last week to give Britain a brief respite from its initial Brexit departure date also said they could extend the clock even further — if only the Britons would hold late-May elections for the European Parliament.

Thus far, Prime Minister May has refused.

E.U. leaders also would embrace a British move to stay in the European Customs Union. Although that possibility was among the proposals rejected Wednesday, it was still one of the more popular choices. Some negotiators have said that arrangements for Britain to stay in the customs union could be made within hours — not days or weeks — and that doing so would ensure that the Irish border remains open. But Britain would be stuck without an independent trade policy, a disappointment to ardent Brexiteers.

Michael Birnbaum and Quentin Ariès in Brussels contributed to this report.

Read more:

Brits pretend they’re sick of Brexit. But truth is they’re obsessed.

Britain will not leave on March 29 after E.U. allows a short Brexit reprieve

What is Brexit? Britain’s political drama, explained.

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/brexit-votes/2019/03/27/d044bb28-4fcc-11e9-bdb7-44f948cc0605_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.902d610b806f

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