02/06/2018
It is a good day if I can go to bed knowing what I'm going to write about on the next. So murky and uninspiring have been some of the more recent non-developments that it's been past midnight on occasions before I've settled on the subject of my daily blogpost. Far too often, I'm getting to see the pale light of dawn before I retire.
By that reckoning, what is now the day before yesterday was a good day. I went to bed aware of
this - an "exclusive" from Tom Newton Dunn, political editor of
The Sun, together with Harry Cole.
David Davis, we were told, had devised a ten-mile-wide trade buffer zone along Northern Ireland border, in a bid to break the deadlock in the Brexit talks. And, in a "radical blueprint", the province would operate a double hatted regime of European and British regulations at the same time, so it could trade freely with both.
Into yesterday morning, the coprophagic media was beginning to feast on the story. Dutifully, the gullible
Telegraph ran with it early in the morning, illustrating the muddle with the headline: "Northern Ireland 'could have dual UK-EU status under plans to break Brexit deadlock'".
Northern Ireland, we were informed, could be granted dual UK-EU regulatory status after Brexit "under proposals being considered by David Davis" in a bid to secure Cabinet agreement on a "Mac Fac 2" (sic). This was a claimed attributed to
The Sun, acknowledging that the proposal would "model the two-tier regulatory system in Lichtenstein". Northern Ireland would thus operate under EU and UK regulations, "eliminating the need for a hard border with the Republic".
This, clearly, is not so much a "Max Fac" as a "Mad Max" idea, not least because the absence of border checks would allow free passage of non-conforming goods into the Republic, affording them free circulation within the Single Market as a whole â precisely what the EU is keen to prevent.
With that, however, we had the
Guardian pick up the story just before midday, running the headline: "Brexit: Davis considers joint EU and UK status for Northern Ireland". The sub-heading told us that his department "says it is refining trade plans amid reports of border 'buffer zone' solution".
By then, I was already crafting my own personal "line" for today's blogpost. As there was only one source for the story -
The Sun - and Davis's department was declining to comment directly, I was going to advise caution.
Newton Dunn, its principal author, has been known to bend the facts when he has needed to make a point. In my view, he is one of the least reliable political journalists on the block â and that is from a very bad bunch. Therefore, anything he writes should be taken with a very large pinch of salt â especially in the absence of any corroboration, official or otherwise.
As it happened, I need not have worried. Mr Dunn's red meat was too raw even for our media carnivores, and the cracks were not slow in appearing. The
Independent was one of the papers that led the way, its headline telling us that the collective wasn't going to bite. Although the core of the story survived, its thrust was "David Davis mocked for 'fantastical' plans for Northern Ireland 'buffer zone'".
This was matched by a
press release from the DUP's Sammy Wilson. He remarked that the status of the "latest leaked proposals" is "unclear". None of these proposals, he said, "have been discussed with the DUP and at first examination they appear to be at best contradictory".
Then, with all the
gravitas and attention to detail that we've come to expect, the BBC
pitched in with the website headline: "A border 'buffer zone' dismissed as 'bonkers'". Downgraded to an "alleged" proposal, the idea was now being condemned by John McGrane of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce. It was he who described the plans as "bonkers", adding for good measure that they had "no substance".
The death knell finally came in the late afternoon when the
Guardian ran a headline: "No 10 denies idea of joint EU and UK status for Northern Ireland".
David Davis had now only "reportedly" devised idea as a workaround for "max fac" customs scheme and Downing Street was putting the boot in, saying it could not accept plans that treated the region differently from the rest of the UK. Newton Dunn's "exclusive" had lasted a mere 18 hours.
Where the idea came from in the first place is anyone's guess, but a clue came buried in Dunn's original text when he wrote that Brexit Ministry officials had taken "inspiration" for the double hatted model from the tiny European state of Liechtenstein, which the EU (supposedly) allows to operate both the Swiss and EEA regimes at the same time.
Reading on, one then sees: "The border buffer zone was first suggested by controversial Brexit thinker Shanker Singham, of the Institute of Economic Affairs, who is close to several Leave backing Cabinet ministers".
This may guide us to the source. It certainly has all the hallmarks of classic Singham stupidity. Effectively, we are being asked to believe that, because Switzerland and Liechtenstein share some regimes and have a common external customs border (as befits their customs union), this solves the problem of the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
Whoever dreamed this one up, though, clearly hasn't understood that the common regimes eliminate the customs border between the Swiss and Liechtenstein administrations. But there are jointly manned customs posts on the border with Austria (one pictured), making the border with Liechtenstein as hard as they come.
The equivalent would be Northern Ireland and the Republic agreeing their own customs union and declaring a common administrative border. Together, their authorities would jointly man customs posts at Irish ports on the external border, to intercept goods coming onto the island from Great Britain. A snowball might have a better chance at the centre of our sun, but it would be a close-run thing.
By midnight, bringing us into today,
The Times was on the case. It was announcing it was "Back to the drawing board as David Davis admits Irish border plan won't work".
This report had David Davis conceding that surveillance technology cannot be used to police the Northern Ireland border "in a major climbdown that leaves Brexiteers' favoured customs plan in disarray".
According to this paper â keeping faith with its sister publication - the news of Mr Davis's climbdown "was first reported in
The Sun". That's not exactly as I read it - but then, I may have missed something. That, presumably, is what "breaking the deadlock" meant.
Anyhow,
The Times has it that its sister paper had also suggested that the Brexit secretary had already come up with an alternative idea to allow the EU to protect the integrity of its single market after Brexit that does not rely on technology. But
The Times now concedes that No 10 and several sources confirmed that this plan would not work. It would create a special status for Northern Ireland, with rules distinct from the rest of the UK â a red line for the Democratic Unionist Party.
To conclude, the paper quietly observes that, "In a sign of the pain the ideas caused, some officials even disputed that the ideas attributed to David Davis in yesterday's
Sun ought to be labelled as a 'plan'". The reason, it says, is clear: "it simply won't work, as it breaches an astonishing number of red lines".
This brings the
Mail into the fray, publishing only minutes after
The Times. It declares that the government's favoured Irish option, the customs partnership, has died a death, and has been "quietly dropped" as a viable option.
That, apparently, leaves "Max Fac" as the only game in town, which effectively means there is no game at all. In a somewhat low-key fashion, the
Mail thus concludes that the lack of an Irish solution "appears to have scuppered ministers' hopes to have agreed customs arrangements with the EU this month".
This, of course, should have been the front-page headline. We have just taken another lurch towards a "no deal" outcome, thrust into the cold at midnight 29 March next year, without even a whiff of a transition period.
Returning to
The Times, we read that Theresa May is about to hit a brick wall. "It is increasingly clear", the paper says, "that she cannot both please the Brexiteers and protect Northern Ireland". It then spoils the analysis with dribble about staying inside the customs union.
But even idiot journalists can't conceal the key message: the game is almost played out and we're
domed.
