In the last two years the United Kingdom has signed two treaties with the European Union, the withdrawal agreement containing the Northern Ireland protocol, and a trade and co-operation agreement. It is worth recalling this because to listen to the government would give the impression it faces a deeply hostile EU which wants nothing more than to see Brexit fail economically and Northern Ireland suffer most.

---<snip>---

Equally it suggests that its negotiating tactics remain the same. If the UK speaks a bit more clearly, sends some more legal text, makes a few more threats, that the EU will finally see reason; it will realise borders are not required for goods going from Great Britain to the EU via Ireland, and the single market will be protected all the same.

It is often stated that Britain has not got over victory in the second World War, but these tactics are more suggestive of the first World War: once more over the top and this time it will be different. And, so far, with the same lack of success. But this time, or at least some time, it will be successful, for anything other than Northern Ireland fully Brexiting on the same basis as the rest of the country will always be a problem to Frost.

Now it may seem incredible that the UK government has not enhanced its understanding of Brexit in 5½ years. Some think that it must be deliberate, an attempt to undermine the EU or Belfast Agreement. Yet, a close reading of actions and words suggests it's more a case of genuine belief.

Most prominent in this regard is Frost's constant underplaying of the risks to the single market to support the argument that a light touch regulatory approach cannot be a threat. In the latest speech he suggests the UK will never check imported products as the EU does, as if this issue is simply unimportant.

He's entirely situational in his  thinking, what gets him out of the hole today. Any consequences can be dealt with down the road. Strategy and planning are for nerds, who cares when Boris can just pop up and do his "well ...er ....gosh ...crikey" clown act and everybody forgives him?

Frost is just a patsy, a clockwork toy who can be wound and let loose to stomp around a bit. I don't think he cares about Ulster any more than Boris does. But it's another day, another dollar, over the top we go.

Will they worry that they're making a united Ieland more likely? No. Not till it happens. Then Boris will parachute in and, no doubt, do his clown act, and every body will forgive him and Ulster will forget all about it. Who needs a plan?

keep to the Fen Causeway

There is growing pessimism among senior Irish Government figures about the prospects for agreement between the British government and the EU on the Northern Ireland protocol, and acute concern over the implications of the continuing dispute for political stability in the North.

<snip>

And while some officials and under-the-radar contacts continue, even at ministerial level this week - and Taoiseach Micheál Martin stressed the need for dialogue between the EU and UK on Wednesday - the truth is that relations between Dublin and London continue to trundle along at a nadir. Unsurprisingly, Ministers and officials are deeply worried about that.

For months it has been both an analytical problem and a diplomatic parlour game in Dublin, trying to figure out if Boris Johnson's government actually wants a solution to the protocol problems, or is it just interested in stoking division with the EU for domestic political purposes.

Not just in Dublin, either; in his Lisbon speech on Tuesday, the EU's Brexit minister and chief negotiator David Frost specifically denied that Downing Street saw any domestic political advantage in continuing Brexit disputes.

This is widely disbelieved in many EU circles. In Dublin, there are mixed views. One senior official reckons it's a bit of both; part searching for a solution, part happy to continue a fractious process that offers the potential for "Boris bashes Eurocrats" headlines.

What concerns Dublin most is not the British motivation but the results of the continuing conflict over the protocol, and the potential for further political polarisation and destabilisation in the North.

Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie, highly thought of in Dublin, warned of the need for the EU and UK to open meaningful negotiations in order to find a solution. The possible consequences are clearly on his mind too.

"A brick will turn into a petrol bomb and a petrol bomb will turn into a coffin," he warned.

Under pressure from the protocol disputes, he said, Stormont institutions could collapse; indeed DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson has expressly threatened this move. "If Stormont collapses, there'll be a power vacuum and a power vacuum can lead to violence," Beattie said.

This realisation is shared in Dublin and it is what is driving the Government's silent and barely concealed fury with Frost and Johnson.

One senior Government official involved in Northern Ireland affairs tells colleagues on an almost daily basis that the Conservative administration in Westminster are "vandals" when it comes to the Belfast Agreement. They will destroy it without a second thought, the official warns.

Tweets by Johnson's former adviser Dominic Cummings claiming that the prime minister signed up to the protocol as a deliberate act of deception have only heightened feelings in Dublin and around the EU.

"Frost has blown out of the water any idea that they are acting in good faith," said another source. "The only question is how much damage they are prepared to do to Northern Ireland and to the Good Friday Agreement."

Asked if the EU Commission might be willing to concede its position on the ECJ relinquishing some of its oversight role, Mr Martin said the court had never formed part of the discussions with Mr Johnson around the Northern Irish protocol or the related political difficulties that arose for the British government.

"The main sticking point all along on the ground was around the free flow of goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, " said Mr Martin.

"Even with the British PM, in the discussions I have with him in respect of Northern Ireland, it was, emotively, people talking about the sausages getting to Northern Ireland and so on.

"You know what, the sausages can now get to Northern Ireland. I don't want to be facetious about it but the bottom line is we got over that too," he said.

He said that the free flow of goods, medicines, a simplified system for testing animals, were all the key issues.

<snip>

Meanwhile DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson has told European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic the EU's proposed changes to the Northern Ireland protocol "fall short of what is needed".

Mr Donaldson said "short-term fixes" would not solve the problems and what was needed was a "sustainable solution which removes the Irish Sea border and restores our place within the United Kingdom."

Mr Sefcovic is to meet virtually with the leaders of the five parties in the Northern Executive on Thursday.

UUP's Lord Empey demands answers from Ian Paisley over claim PM promised to 'tear up' NI Protocol [_link]

— Belfast Telegraph (@BelTel) October 14, 2021

Minor nitpick: that would be AUKUS; there's no need to belittle the UK with a lowercase 'k' when they're suffering empty shelves already  🙂
Also, the French anger over AUKUS has been mainly directed at Australia and the USA, with the UK's role dismissed by the French pols (beneath our notice). Macron's gov recalled the French ambassadors to Australia and to the US, but pointedly, not the ambassador to the UK - couldn't be arsed...

Still, AUKUS has added to a growing pile of French gov distrust of the Boris Johnson crowd overall, despite a very strong and enduring military cooperation (search for Lancaster House Treaties) that started in the 1960's, before the UK even joined the EU (Jaguar aircraft, Lynx helicopter), but I digress.

Fishing, around Jersey (Guernsey has granted all the requested fishing licenses) but also other UK waters are a surprising point of contention: even though fishing represents less than 0.1% of the GDP of both countries, fishermen are regarded as an important constituency on both sides of the Channel. Fishing issues in UK waters are also important in Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark.

And yes, with Macron unofficially starting his reelection campaign, there is little appetite to keep putting up with London's demands, especially when everybody knows they will never accept the NI protocol and will trigger the A16, probably before the end of the year.

The real question is actually whether the EU will really start effective retaliatory measures when (not if) it happens. Just like Poland, this will be existential for the EU.

Give Brexiters a Millimeter, They'll Take a Mile - Bloomberg Opinion

But even taking all this into account, the scalpel wielded by the Commission -- lifting as much as half of customs checks and almost all sanitary checks on food imports, by its calculation -- could eventually risk cutting through the deal's fat and hitting muscle. Officials grumble of "blood on the floor" in bending rules. The EU risks sacrificing its own internal unity for the sake of the U.K.'s.

It is not enough for Brussels' technocrats to want to be the "adults in the room" at a time when the Brexiters are whipping up public opinion and eyeing divergence from data-protection rules.  At some point the U.K.'s bluff is going to have to be called. Leo Varadkar, Ireland's deputy prime minister, is taking a stab at this: On Wednesday, he leaped on tweets by Johnson's former aide Dominic Cummings supporting the idea that the U.K.'s aim was to go back on trade terms the moment they were signed. "The message must go out to all countries around the world that this is a British government that doesn't necessarily keep its word," he told RTE. If that means contingency planning for a tariff war, so be it.

The again, if the UK intends to trigger A16 in any case, it's won't matter that much. As Varadkar is warning us: contingency planning for a tariff war.

David Frost's admirers in the Conservative party have welcomed the European Commission's proposals on the Northern Ireland protocol as evidence that his tough negotiating style has worked. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, former party leader Iain Duncan Smith said Frost had shown that the EU understands the language of determined strength.

"He has learned vital lessons from our experience in previous negotiations, when EU officials dug their heels in and laughed up their sleeves as we signed up to their terms. The most important element of the EU's response to British proposals yesterday was not the detail, but the fact that we are now in a renegotiation - something which Frost's critics said would never happen," he said.

But Duncan Smith, who along with every other Conservative MP trooped through the lobbies at Westminster to vote for the protocol less than two years ago, warned Frost against trying to negotiate a series of easements and derogations.

"The EU wants nothing more than to hang on to the notion that the protocol, as originally agreed, remains essentially intact. If he goes down that road it will leave us tied up in complicated EU law and ultimately ruled on by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), no matter the shape of an arbitration panel placed under it," he said.

By offering such sweeping easements to how the protocol is operated, the commission has exposed itself to the charge that, if such changes are possible within the agreement it should have offered them before now. It also runs the risk that an emboldened Frost will simply pocket the concessions and try to wring out more, before collapsing the negotiations over the issue of the ECJ's role in adjudicating how EU single market rules are enforced in Northern Ireland.

In his speech in Lisbon on Tuesday, Frost complained about the EU's frequent accusations that Britain, which introduced legislation last year to overturn the protocol, was a bad faith negotiator. A few hours later, Boris Johnson's former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, tweeted that the British government had never intended to implement the protocol.

Cummings said they agreed to the protocol in October 2019 in order to get a Brexit deal done but had always planned to "ditch the bits we didn't like" after winning a general election two months later. Cummings absolved Johnson of lying on the basis that Johnson didn't have "a scooby doo" what he was signing up to. But the DUP's Ian Paisley said on Wednesday that Johnson had promised him in October 2019 that he would tear up the protocol after signing it.

"Boris Johnson did tell me personally that he would, after agreeing to the protocol, he would sign up to changing that protocol and indeed tearing it up, that this was just for the semantics," he told the BBC.

Imports from North rise as Brexit rules bite

Although the value of goods exported from the Republic to Great Britain in the first eight months of 2021 rose 21 per cent to almost €9.2 billion, imports slumped 30 per cent to €7.3 billion compared to the same period in 2020.

Among the reasons for the change are the challenges of complying with customs requirements in a post-Brexit environment.

Imports from Northern Ireland to the Republic meanwhile rose 61 per cent over the same period to €2.5 billion, while exports were 47 per cent higher at €2.2 billion.