The author of this article is Sammy Wilson MP, representing East Antrim in the HoC. He is the DUP’s Brexit spokesman. We re-publish his article on the Withdrawal Agreement with his kind permission.
By now the agreement reached between the Prime Minister and the EU should have been in the parliamentary shredder and Brussels should have been looking at the tattered remains of its one-sided punishing imposition which in March last year the PM Mrs May declared “no British Prime Minister could ever sign up to”.
Instead by delaying the vote on the deal the Prime Minister has given the EU negotiators further hope that she might be able to pull a deal saving a rabbit out of the parliamentary hat if only she could be given some “reassurances”. What those might be even she doesn’t seem to know and to head off to Brussels without any clear demands or without listening to what MPs told her clearly was a sure recipe for failure and further humiliation. That is what seems to have happened.
Let me be clear. If this deal is to have any chance of success then the backstop must be removed from the Withdrawal Agreement. No tinkering with contrary legal appendicies, no amount of political assurances, no clarification that the arrangements are meant to be temporary are going to change our mind or the mind of scores of her own party members.
The reasons are clear. This legally binding document – all 587 pages of it- require the UK to pay £39bn to the EU without any certainty as to what we will get for our money. In fact we don’t even know if any further payments will be required to secure a satisfactory future relationship.
Secondly, it keeps the UK in the Customs Union of the EU which prevents us activating trade deals with other parts of the world which could secure us new markets for our businesses and cheaper goods for our consumers. We could only get out of this stranglehold if and when the EU agrees that it is in its interests. This leaves us open to blackmail in the discussions about future trading relationship with the EU.
Thirdly it requires us to stay tied to a whole range of EU regulations.
Fourthly, even if an agreement was reached about the future relationship with the EU, NI would still be left in the backstop arrangement. Essentially NI would still be a full member of the EU having to accept all the EU regulations and policies, 68 pages of which are listed in the Withdrawal Agreement, and being a full member of the EU Customs Territory.Apart from the obvious and well rehearsed constitutional implications which this would have for the UK, the economic implications for NI are horrendous. NI businesses would be subject to EU regulations which neither Westminster or the Stormont Assembly would have had any say in or ability to change or reject regardless of how damaging they were to the NI economy.
In the words of the legal opinion given to the Cabinet this would cause friction and distortion in trade between NI and GB which takes 60% of our exports in return for an open border with the Republic of Ireland which takes 4%. NI businesses could not participate in any trade deals the UK struck with other parts of the world and consumers could not benefit from the lower prices which those trade deals would produce.
This is not a good deal. It is a dangerous and bad deal – the kind of deal the Prime Minister had said in the past would be worse than no deal. Ironically, having coined the phrase that no deal is better than a bad deal, she is now whipping up a storm of fear at the prospect of leaving the EU without reaching an agreement.
The truth of the matter is there is far less to fear from freeing ourselves from the EU without agreement than staying tied indefinitely under the terms of the deal on offer. We would be richer by £39bn for a start. We would gain additional tax revenue from the duties placed on the huge volume of imports from the EU. We would be immediately free to do trade deals with the rest of the world which would benefit our producers and obtain cheaper products for our consumers. We would have additional tax revenue to spend on our public services. Lastly and most importantly for NI we would have avoided a breakup of the UK.
This is one thing the Prime Minister did get right: No Deal would be better than this Bad Deal.
[Ed: This article was first published on Sammy Wilson’s website.]
Finally, it is refreshing to hear someone other than UKIP talking sense about this Brexit ‘withdrawal agreement’. I just hope that when it comes to the crunch that the DUP MPs will stick to their guns and not cave-in, like the rest of Parliament will likely do.
On a side note though, it raises the question of why nothing is being done in Northern Ireland to get the Assembly functioning again? Unless this is all part of the ‘plan’; neutralise the NI Assembly so it can’t debate these important issues which affect it directly as a devolved administration?
Perhaps it is time to put this ‘power-sharing’ agreement to one side, and have a properly elected house that is accountable to its voters.
Odd to claim that taxing British citizens for buying from the EU means that “We would gain additional tax revenue from the duties placed on the huge volume of imports from the EU”
Taxing people on things that aren’t currently taxed does means that the GOVERNMENT would gain additional tax, but WE would be paying those taxes.
My first thought exactly.
Apart from that, though, I agree with the article.
Even if Ireland did not exist at all, so that theh ‘hard border’ non-issue could be used as a device to RemaIN EU the Proposed Withdrawal Agreement should be rejected as it simply replicates UK membership of the EU without being a member..
Absolutely spot-on. Your comment accurately describes the trap that the EU has set and the stupid MPs in our parliament either cannot or more likely, WILL not see it.
Thank goodness the DUP still have some common sense when May lost it years ago. Hopefully they will be able to hold her to account and ensure that we get the “No Deal” which in effect boils down to the WTO rules that much of the world trades on and no unjustified payemnt of billions to the EU.
“This is one thing the Prime Minister did get right: No Deal would be better than this Bad Deal.”
This PM has set new standards by which to judge levels of incompetence. In years to come she will be the way we judge PMs — yes, we’ll say, the PM is bad, but is she/he as bad as Theresa May? My bet is no, it would take heroic effort to be this bad again.
Perhaps it should be “This is _only_ thing the Prime Minister did get right: No Deal would be better than this Bad Deal.”
JF
I reckon the NI thing will be Abandoned with a huge fanfare After Xmas,TheCommons will accept it with relief and we’ll get the ECJ and all the other bad bits with support from the Journalists Union.Who will be given the rights to drive trains at traindrivers wages..
My apologies Mr Wilson. My comment trivialises a correct article which needs to be accepted.
I’m afraid this is what I also think is the plan.
When Cameron was PM, it was unthinkable there could be anyone worse. Mind you, I guess the same was true of Gordon Brown. Yet in both cases, this perception was proven wrong by their respective successor. I would not rule out the possibility that we will see a yet worse Prime Minister than Theresa May, difficult as such a possibility is presently to imagine.