The G7 meeting in Cornwall, last weekend, showed that, for all of Johnson and the Brexiters bravado, over recent years, Brexit is still not done. It illustrates the difference between appearance and reality. The Brexiters will point to the appearance that Brexit is done, in the shape of a piece of paper - The Withdrawal Agreement - and the fact that its consequence is that Britain no longer has representation within the political institutions of the EU. However, the reality is that six months after the Transition Period ended, Brexit is still a live issue, between Britain and the EU, now drawing in also the US; Britain is still effectively subjected to the rules of the EU Single Market, and, in the case of Northern Ireland, as a result of the Protocol that Johnson signed, not just effectively, but legally, subject to those rules.
Brexit formed about two-thirds of the time of the discussion of G7 members outside the formal business. The motivation for that, surprisingly came from Johnson, given that most expected that he would wait until the G7 and NATO meetings had concluded before once again taking up a hard stance on Brexit, threatening to negate the Protocol. Is that just an indication of Johnson's inept political skills? Maybe, but also, by raising it during the meeting, it inevitably made clear that Britain was already becoming seen as an outsider, a pariah, not just in relation to the EU, but also in relation to the US, and other G7 members. Biden made clear his alliance with the EU as against Britain on the issue.
When it comes to Johnson confronting the hard line Brexiters in his own party, and the DUP, therefore, he can point to Britain's isolation as a reason for caution, in continuing to pursue such a course. It has to be remembered that Johnson never was a committed Brexiteer, other than for the purpose of his own self-advancement, in the same way that he wrote silly stories about the EU demanding straight bananas, when he was a Telegraph journalist, not because he believed such nonsense, which in fact, he knew to be untrue, but solely because he knew that such trolling was lapped up, by the small-minded, petty-bourgeois readers of the Torygrpah. Johnson's own position on Brexit was always that he thought that some new series of opt-outs for Britain from the EU, as with those obtained by Thatcher and Blair, would be the optimal solution.
In fact, its suggested that EU officials have been having talks with the UK government about Britain re-joining the single market at some point, when things in Britain have become dire enough.
That would have happened straight away in the case of a crash out Brexit. But, if Johnson pushes the line of unilaterally abrogating the Northern Ireland Protocol, then the same thing would happen. The EU is already taking Britain to court over its previous unilateral action, and now says that if Britain undertakes further such unilateral action, which its reported Johnson may do at the end of June, then not only would they take legal action, but they would go for a full out trade war. That would cripple the UK economy in fairly short order.
On the weekend politics programmes, one interviewer asked Emily Thornberry whether her position, in relation to the Protocol, was not just that of a Remainer who simply wanted Britain to capitulate to the EU. But, the reality is, of course, that, Remainer or not, the EU is an economy seven times bigger than the UK. It can cut off the island UK economy, in a way that the UK cannot do to Europe. It is simply a question of realpolitik that the EU is even more powerful than its seven times larger economy, suggests when it comes to its dealing with the UK. A moralist might not like the fact that the EU can crush the UK, in any such dealings, but the world does not operate on the basis of moralism, but economic, social and political power.
So, whether Dominic Raab's moral sensibilities were offended or not by Emmanuel Macron's comment to the effect that Northern Ireland is a separate country to England, is irrelevant. In fact, of course, Macron was technically correct as against Raab, in several respects. Firstly, it had been asked of Macron how he would feel if Toulouse were required to be treated differently to Paris. Macron rightly replied that Toulouse and Paris are in the same country.
Even setting aside the question that Northern Ireland is a part of the island of Ireland, a country that was annexed, as a whole, by British colonialism, and that only a part of that annexation has been relinquished, still requiring the process of self-determination for Ireland to be completed, with the reunification of the island, it is also factually the case that Northern Ireland itself, currently, is a separate country to England, just as Scotland is a different country to England, as is Wales. A look at the fact that Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales each have separate football teams to that of England, each of which compete independently in international competitions is a manifestation of that.
But, more significantly, Macron is right, because, in this specific context, of the Withdrawal Agreement, the fact of Northern Ireland being a separate country from England, and from Scotland and Wales, is the direct consequence of the conditions created by Johnson's "oven ready deal", and his decision to place a border down the Irish Sea! That in terms of the relations between the UK and the EU, set down in black and white in the Withdrawal Agreement, and the Northern Irish Protocol, the very thing that Johnson and his negotiator David Frost insisted upon, and which only six months ago they proclaimed as an excellent and historic deal, Northern Ireland, legally is a separate country and subject to different terms and conditions to the rest of the UK! That is a direct consequence not just of Brexit, but of the decisions that Johnson and his government have made in relation to its implementation.
There are several obvious solutions to the problems faced by Northern Ireland resulting from the idiocy of the fudge that Johnson created. First of all, for businesses in Northern Ireland, there is a simple answer to the problems they now face sourcing supplies from the UK. Instead source your supplies from the Republic, and those difficulties disappear! Hard line Loyalist small businesses will not want to be seen to be doing that, for obvious political reasons, though I suspect that many Loyalist small businesses, particularly those close to the border will already be doing that quietly. Large businesses like TESCO will not want to be doing it for several reasons. Firstly, they have established supply lines to TESCO on the mainland, and its large purchasing operations, but secondly, politically they would face pressure from the UK government, if they were seen to be separating Northern Ireland from Brexit Britain, in effect putting into practice the obvious reality of current material conditions that drive inexorably to a United Ireland.
The second thing that could resolve much of the current issues, would be if Britain simply signed an agreement with the EU on food hygiene and animal standards, such as Switzerland has with the EU. The EU has even put that proposal to the UK, as the means to remove about 80% of the checks currently required between Britain and Northern Ireland, which superficially is what Britain says its objections revolve around. I say superficially, because its clear that is just a smokescreen, and that what Britain is doing is using Northern Ireland as a Trojan Horse, in the way it has done throughout the negotiations since 2016, and is why the Brexiters always insisted that all of the problems that are now manifest would never arise. What Britain is doing as it has done all along, in conformity with the history of perfidious Albion, is to sign a deal and then to immediately renege upon it.
Britain will not sign such a deal as an immediate solution to that problem, whilst it thinks it can get away with reneging on the current deal. For one thing, it again shows that Brexit is not done, and that Britain is forced by economic and political reality to assume a subordinate position in relation to the EU, and to abide by its rules, regulations and conditions. It blows apart the nonsense claims about "taking back control", and national sovereignty. The reality is that no such control has been taken back, and in practice Britain has lost a vast amount of control and influence as a result of Brexit, because it no longer has a seat at the EU table.
Thirdly, Britain as a whole could resume negotiations with the EU, negotiations, which have never in reality stopped despite claims about Brexit having been done, and as this weekends row, shows continue to occupy centre stage. Britain could simply accept reality before too much further damage is done, start negotiating to re-join the Single Market and Customs Union, and then all of the requirements of the Protocol disappear. But, the obvious question would then be raised, if we are members of the Single market and Customs Union, should we not, also have a seat at the table. In effect, that is the have cake and eat it scenario that Johnson has always really advocated. But its an impossibility, as with its Labour variant, proposed by Corbyn. The EU is not going to allow the UK to be a member of the Single Market and Customs Union, and to participate in the formulation of policy, unless it is also a member of the EU, any more than a trades union would allow members of a separate Staff Association to have that kind of relation to its decision making processes. The inevitability of requiring to re-join the Single market and Customs Union, is also the inevitability that Britain, sooner or later, will have to re-join the EU itself, but now on worse terms than it had when it left.
Fourthly, and the solution that is most immediately in the control of the people of Northern Ireland itself is that Northern Ireland does the obvious rational thing, and reunites with the Republic. On that basis, the question of a border within Ireland disappears, and the question of the Protocol also disappears, because a United Ireland would just have one single external border with the UK, in the same way as all other EU countries, have one external border with the UK. The thing standing in the way of that is a minority of hard line Loyalists, who are being whipped up by the DUP, and others to their Right, as well as the concept of Loyalist violence being used cynically by the UK government. But, the bigotry of a minority of Loyalists cannot again be allowed to prevent the establishment of a United Ireland, if that is what its people as a whole desire. We would not have allowed the minority of white settlers in South Africa to prevent the removal of apartheid, simply on the basis of their threats of violence, if their privileges were ended.
Just as Britain's future inevitably resides once more inside the EU, because that is the path in which history is marching across the globe, as the nation state acts as a fetter on further capitalist development, and is replaced by large multinational economic and political unions, so the reunification of Ireland is also inevitable, for the same material and historic reasons.
Lenin, noting that Sismondi bemoaned the growth of the towns at the expense of the countryside, wrote,
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