Tag: Backstop

Did Leo get the Johnson and Johnson treatment?

by dsmooney, posted in Backstop, Border, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Leo Varadkar

 

This column appeared on Broadsheet.ie on October 14th in the aftermath of the Johnson/Varadkar meeting at the Wirral to discuss Brexit. The two men were said to have spoken in private for 90 minutes without officials or advisers present. Did those talks focus on the specific details of the Irish border arrangements or were they more political?

LBJ

Visitors to the Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) presidential library in Austin, Texas get to have their photos taken against a life size photo of the 6’ 4” LBJ leaning over them, appearing – figuratively – to bend them to his will. It is called “The Johnson Treatment”.

The original photo featured LBJ’s soon to be US Supreme Court justice Abe Fortas. It is just one of many photos of LBJ applying the eponymous “treatment”, once described by the pre-eminent Washington political columnist, Mary McGrory, as “an incredible, potent mixture of persuasion, badgering, flattery, threats, reminders of past favours and future advantages.”

In a fascinating interview at the John F Kennedy library, LBJ’s speechwriter (and husband of the great presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin), the late Richard Goodwin tells how LBJ worked his “treatment” on the segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace after the Selma marches. Wallace had come to the White House, Goodwin recounts: Continue reading “Did Leo get the Johnson and Johnson treatment?” →

.@BorisJohnson’s Cunning #Brexit Re-Run Plan

by dsmooney, posted in Backstop, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland
This column predated the meeting between the Taoiseach and the British Prime Minister. Here I look at what is behind the Brexiteer’s obsession with getting rid of the Backstop (be it Northern Ireland only or UK wide.  It first appeared here on Broadsheet.ie on October 7th. 

borisjohnson

Opening his Sunday morning BBC1 show yesterday, Andrew Marr wondered if Boris Johnson’s cunning Brexit plan was to pretend that he has a cunning plan to cover the fact that he doesn’t have a cunning plan.

Mr Marr has a point. Most of Johnson’s cunning plans have thus far failed. His ruse to prorogue parliament was demolished by the Supreme Court, and he has still to win a single vote in the House of Commons. He entered Downing Street at the head of a government with a majority (via the DUP) of one. Now, thanks to his handling of the grandest of the Tory grandees, it has a majority of minus 42.

Yet, despite these failures and setbacks, Johnson is doing well in the polls. The Tories now enjoy a steady lead over the Labour party of anywhere between 7% and 13% (YouGov polling). As with John F Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis, it seems that the worse he does, the more popular he gets.

This is Johnson’s cunning plan. A speedy election putting the Tories back with a solid majority, no longer dependant on the DUP and ERG. Johnson believes in nothing as deeply as he believes in his destiny to lead.

Continue reading “.@BorisJohnson’s Cunning #Brexit Re-Run Plan” →

Tackling the #Brexit Threat of #DirectRule in Northern Ireland Directly

by dsmooney, posted in Backstop, Border, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Good Friday Agreement, Leo Varadkar

This article first appeared on Broadsheet on September 10th 2019

Good-Friday-2

Boris Johnson came to call on us, He wanted to tell all of us, Brexit won’t put a wall ‘round us, it’s frictionless.

Not so, says Leo back to him. We’re waitin’ for some facts from ‘em, So it’s the Backstop we’ll be backing then, Athena.

Take him up to Monto, Monto, Monto…

If you listen closely you can just hear the ghost of George Hodnett groan at the thought of his comic folk song “Monto” having my pitiful new verse inflicted upon it.

Nonetheless, commemorating the visit of the reigning contender for the twin titles of worst and last ever UK Prime Minister to our fair city, in verse does somehow seem appropriate.

Continue reading “Tackling the #Brexit Threat of #DirectRule in Northern Ireland Directly” →

Topic: @BorisJohnson – the last #UK Prime Minister?

by dsmooney, posted in Backstop, Border, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Leo Varadkar, Politics, UK politics

This article first appeared on Broadsheet.ie on July 30th, 2019. Any optimism that existed in my previous article from a week before was, by now, gone 

boris-johnson-house-of-commons-2039497

This day last week Boris Johnson became the new leader of the Tory party. Profiling him here I described Johnson as the incoming Prime Minister of the slowly disunifying United Kingdom.

A few days later the SNP leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford MP, described Johnson in even starker and bleaker terms hailing him as the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Comments over the last few days suggest that Blackford may well be close to the truth.

Last week I hoped that Johnson might use his admiration for Churchillian rhetoric to define – for the first time ever – what Brexit means.

Johnson had a very small window in which to set out a deliverable form of Brexit and give Britain a transition period during which it could have the best of both worlds. It would be fully out of the political and administrative institutions of the European Union. Out of the Parliament, the Commission and the Council, but would still have the economic benefits of membership while it negotiated the terms of its future arrangement.

Continue reading “Topic: @BorisJohnson – the last #UK Prime Minister?” →

So… it’s Boris

by dsmooney, posted in Boris Johnson, Brexit, Politics, Tanaiste, Taoiseach, UK politics

This article was written within hours of Boris Johnson winning the Tory leadership. Looking back on it I am intrigued at how optimistic I was that Johnson would avail of the opportunity to define Brexit in terms that were deliverable for the UK. I see that I concluded saying that the following days would tell a lot. Regrettably they did and none of it was good.

It first appeared on Broadsheet.ie on July 23rd 2019.

BORIS-JOHNSON.jpg

So, it’s Boris. I suppose, if I want to be true to the spirit of Boris Johnson, I should have written two columns on the outcome of the Tory leadership election and not just one.

One for if he wins. One for if he loses. Both claiming with equal and absolute certainty that I knew this would be the outcome.

Instead, I have opted to do it the old-fashioned way and write just the one piece after the result was confirmed.

Today’s selection of Boris Johnson, by a more than two-thirds majority on an almost 90% turnout of the Tory party membership, as the new leader and next prime minister is hardly surprising. At least has not been that surprising since round one of the MPs vote to pick the two final candidates.

His confirmation as Prime Minister of the slowly disuniting Kingdom of Great Britain and parts of Northern Ireland tomorrow afternoon will at the same time, paradoxically, change nothing and everything on Brexit.

Continue reading “So… it’s Boris” →

The UK’s #Brexit politics is so bust that it even makes the #Dáil look good

by dsmooney, posted in Brexit, Dáil, Politics, UK politics

This column appeared first on Broadsheet.ie

If you ever start to despair while watching Dáil Éireann live – stop, take a deep breath and think… well, at least it’s not as bad as the House of Commons.

While this may not offer a huge amount of comfort and certainly does not ease the frustration of seeing the current Dáil initiating some decent pieces of legislation, only for them to disappear into a black hole of money messages and other governmental devices designed to stifle debate, it is still something to bear in mind.

For decades I have been listening to some folks opining on how the UK political and legislative system works better than here. While some of this may have been driven by an element of cultural cringe, it was also informed by the idea that politics in the UK is more policy driven and based on ideas.

Irish politics, they argue, is just too tribal, too based around the centre. We do not have the benefits of the big policy debates and arguments between left and right as happens in the UK.

Continue reading “The UK’s #Brexit politics is so bust that it even makes the #Dáil look good” →

Trimbling in fear of #Brexit #Backstop

by dsmooney, posted in Border, Brexit, Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland, Politics
This column first appeared on www.broadsheet.ie on Feb 5th 2019

Trimble

British Prime Minister, Theresa May is in Belfast today to make a speech at… sorry… to give a speech to local business leaders. The speech will re-state her “absolute commitment” to avoiding a hard border, post Brexit.

Her statement of commitment is welcome, just as welcome as it was when first made over two years ago, but with only seven weeks to go to the March 29th exit and after 18 exhaustive months of negotiations, surely it is not asking too much to expect her to say how she will turn this commitment into reality?

This is a crisis of her own making. She says she is committed to no hard border, but then she also says that she is equally committed to having a Brexit that takes the United Kingdom of Great Britain and parts of Northern Ireland out of the EU’s Customs Union and the Single Market, as well as out of the EU institutions.

The hard truth is that she cannot commit to ensuring no customs union, no single market and no hard border at the same time. You can do two out of three, but you cannot do all three.

Continue reading “Trimbling in fear of #Brexit #Backstop” →

Foster, Wilson and the rest are just DUP-ing themselves on #Brexit

by dsmooney, posted in Arlene Foster, Border, Brexit, DUP, Politics

This column appeared on broadsheet.ie on Oct 23rd, 2018 

image-3

Many, many years ago I went to see the great Billy Connolly perform live at the Gaiety theatre. He talked about his brief time working as a riveter in the Clyde side shipyards.

At one point he asked the audience if we recalled those old British Pathé newsreels of jaunty, merry Glasgow shipbuilders waving their hats and cheering loudly as the ship, on they had been working, was launched and slid into the Clyde.

As Connolly reminded us, though the newsreels portrayed these workers as delighting in the completion of another fine ship, the simple reality what they were actually waving goodbye to their jobs as most of them would be laid off the next day.

Today’s DUP is very much like those shipbuilders. In happily cheering-on the prospect of a hard Brexit they are celebrating the end of any economic future for Northern Ireland.

Continue reading “Foster, Wilson and the rest are just DUP-ing themselves on #Brexit” →