EU to launch court action against Liz Truss’s smuggler’s charter for Northern Ireland
I can’t say I blame the European Union chiefs.
As mentioned on This Site before, Liz Truss’s plan to ease the burden on businesses caused by the Northern Ireland Protocol of the Brexit deal effectively creates a “smuggler’s charter”.
It creates the concept of “green lanes” and “red lanes” for trade, with goods coming from Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) into Northern Ireland and which are staying there using the green lane – meaning no checks and minimal paperwork, while goods moving from Great Britain through NI into Ireland or the wider European Union would use the red lane – continuing to be checked at ports in Northern Ireland.
How would anybody know the “green lane” goods were stopping in Northern Ireland – or even whether the goods in the lorries were really as described in the paperwork?
I previously suggested that, alongside plans to ease checks on goods coming into the UK from the EU, this could create a people-smuggling pipeline all the way through to Ireland, wrecking any strategy to prevent it put up by Priti ‘Send ‘Em To Rwanda’ Patel.
The UK also wants the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice (ECJ) to have no future role in deciding disputes involving the protocol, with an independent arbiter sitting in judgement instead.
Independent, as defined by whom? I can see legal disputes over who should judge rattling on until Doomsday.
In response, the EU has indicated it will restart legal action it began in March last year, when it accused the UK of delaying, without consultation, the enforcement of parts of the protocol relating to customs checks – and may go further by taking the UK to the ECJ over claims it did too little to set up border control posts and share data with the EU.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the very law intended to remove the UK from ECJ judgments led to it facing just such a fate?
The problem facing the UK’s Tory government – particularly those dunces Liz Truss and Boris Johnson – is that unionists in Northern Ireland are likely to tear up the Good Friday Agreement if they can’t get free trade between the Province and Great Britain.
That could lead to a resurgence of the infamous “Troubles”.
Sadly, the Labour opposition has no better ideas. Keir Starmer has said negotiation with the EU is the best way forward – but advocated using “guile”, which implies that he wants to deceive the EU into giving UK vested interests what they want.
Level heads can see that no workable solution is being suggested by anybody. They all seem determined to upset each other rather than find a way forward.
How sad to see our supposed national and international leaders squabbling like children.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
We thumbed our nose at the EU(not all of us)but still expect to be treated as though we have some kind of “entitlement”. We don’t.
If the twits in charge hadn’t thought it through and that is rather obvious now, that they indeed had not, then they can explain themselves to those many people they misled with so many lies and so much disinformation.
It’s no more than they deserve.
Why should Britain be exempt from the rules and given special treatment. Wasn’t it Bungling Boris who said in essence to them…We don’t need you….and ….we can do better on our own….?
Well, we are on our own and what a pig’s ear the Tories(and the leaderless Labour Party, one really cannot conflate Starmer’s dictatorship as leadership)are making of our Economy. It’s worrisome, but I fear it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better and Corbyn and his Corbynomics are a memory only. What a terrible waste of a good and innovative road forwards, rather than two steps backward only.
If actions at court are successful, and I have no doubt they will be, this gives the EU the right to then take action against the UK. This would be sanctions and tariffs. This, on top of everything else going on, will put the UK in a position it hasn’t been in for many, many years. The last time things were this bad we were lucky to have North Sea oil revenues come on stream to bail us out. We are using those revenues now and we have increased tax on it temporarily. We have nowhere to go. I imagine this will lead to yet more victim blaming from the Tories as they kick the most vulnerable in society while they are down and introduce MORE sneaky cuts. For example – moving from PIP/ESA to UC means that the extra entitlement on ESA disappears. The govt has promised not to take this away but to keep payments at the same level until UC comes up to meet it – it will take YEARS but at least it’s not a cut. What they HAVEN’T told people is that ANY change of circumstances means they will then start from scratch on UC and LOSE this extra money completely. A drop in some cases of £80/wk whilst they struggle to ‘heat or eat’ A change of circumstances could be worsening health or even a change of address. This massive drop in income in these circumstances WILL lead directly to deaths..