Thread 42 Sunak : Ping Pong with the Enemies of the People

[DuncinToffee]

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They could have given Cameron a voucher for his in flight meal rather than wasting £42m taxpayer's money on plane hire

The Ireland thing is very toxic. A hard border is what a lot of right wing people in the UK want. It would mean all that effort to get the Windsor Framework would be destroyed and even worse, it would not work because the border between NI and ROI has never been effectively policed at all except during the Troubles.

A lot of Brexit people were very angry with the EU stance over NI. They will get what they want if ROI wants border checks.

The thing is that an effective hard border between Ireland and NI is impossible. Whitehall, with its famous encyclopaedic knowledge of geography might not know this but anyone familiar with the country knows the border’s passable in so many places it might as well not exist.

I think Sunak’s jumped the shark with the vouchers suggestion, he appears to have lost the plot.

Once government can do it, you can bet it'll start creeping into people being paid in "vouchers". That you can only spend in company shops.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_Acts

According to the BBC they will be coming after PIP. We need an election now!

the border between NI and ROI has never been effectively policed at all except during the Troubles.

Even then it was never really policed

@bombastix not at the expense of the GFA and power sharing. Hardly anyone in NI wants a hard border. They're much more likely to travel to ROI than GB week to week. Indeed there was only border control there for part of the 80s and 90s when ROI and the UK agreed to enforce one to prevent weapons crossing. Although in practice there's something like 1500 rds crossing that border and they only ever policed a fraction of them. But it was miserable for everyone.

There can't actually be a hard border there it's too porous. So unless the UK agreed to take responsibility for their borders re migrants it will undermine the political goodwill with the EU the bespoke NI agreement was based on.

All Labour needs to is commit to reversing it. Election won. Job done.

Yes it is impossible to police really; it's a soft border and Ireland have a choice. Make it tougher and you affect the Windsor Framework in practice re goods. You may not even be looking in the right place! You don't need to get into a lorry to cross to Ireland, you could literally walk to it! It would be like policing a colander

Exactly. The stupidity is breathtaking. Anything they propose now just won’t happen.

It would be like policing a colander

Perfect analogy and so succinct.

The vouchers idea is cruelty 3 fold:

1. You are identified in public as being less than - you have vouchers for food, adding shame and extra MH issues for basic rights
2. We will pay a company to create vouchers, adding a middle man cost (Tory beneficiary no doubt)
3. We can tell angry Tory voters we spent 1bil on food for poor people when only 500k actually given to the recipients thanks to the above middle man.

It's obvious but worth spelling out for what it is.

@Bigcoatlady - the UK won't do anything at all! Ireland can't ask it to regulate its borders itself as this is part of the EU. The UK will just let it happen.

But neither can Ireland police the border alone without an impact on its own economy. Maybe it will, but with no cooperation from the U.K. it will be useless. Anglo Irish relations aren't exactly good after Brexit.

My point was any check wd be symbolic. The hard right in NI would know that. Since any check wd clearly violate the NI protocol for political reasons the UK wd have to challenge it. But the venue wd be the Irish and European courts - the optics of having to defend our borders in their courts would be terrible.

Equally labour can't afford to let that happen. But they are in a stronger position to negotiate an acceptable agreement with ROI.

I was simply pointing out brinkmanship with ROI won't work as they hold a lot of cards, any challenge they make doesn't just expose the stupidity of Rwanda but the shallowness of Brexit too.

Indeed. All the chickens are coming home to roost at once now.

It doesn't even need UK govt intervention. If the dairy industry felt checks on milk tankers breached the NI protocol they CD challenge it and the issues of UK govt policy necessitating the checks wd fall within scope immediately necessitating the Irish court referring a question to the ECJ about whether the UK's actions violate the NI protocol.

The UK govt has no say on this. They accepted the jurisdiction of a foreign court on this to push Brexit through.

With modern tech, yould could just drone any contraband over the border - and possible get a person over on a drone. Failing that a hang glider.

However "Soft Border Patrol" suggested there are plenty of country lanes that simply cross the border. Miles from anywhere.

When I was in Kenya, in the Masai Mara, we "popped into" Tanzania. By which I mean we circled a concrete obelisk. The guide said the border was only on paper.

The UK govt has no say on this. They accepted the jurisdiction of a foreign court on this to push Brexit through.

The UK has already signalled it will not abide by foreign court rulings it doesn't like.

Couldn't we equally on a local level make our own vouchers and thus avoid VAT on goods that we swapped that way?

I can guarantee there will be some crypto bollocks behind it all. And "AI" too.

Both badly done so as to be useless (think smart meters).

Yes exactly. The UK will likely ignore this for as long as suits it.

What's to stop ROI putting anyone they don't want in a taxi to the nearest NI police station. They could even book an NI taxi firm.

You can return, but then the individual just runs across the border again. The NI police are not responsible for enforcing the border. In fact a big question is what enforcement there is

Well that is really going to help people who have poor mental health. Absolute bastards.

I am not a fan of Rishi Sunak but this manipulation of the Irish border is about the only politically astute thing I have ever seen him do.

It is a shame he does for these purposes, because evidentially he does have some political nous.