Given that he has just announced a bill that could provoke a trade war in the midst of the cost of living crisis, it is remarkable how often members of the government say that what they want is for everyone to calm down.
The intention to pass laws has already been officially announced, but it is not clear when the bill will be deliberately seen by lawmakers. Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis says it was never meant to be this week. Of course not. Now the only commitment is “before the summer”.
Should that have happened? The original plan began with Connor Burns, with his new title of US Special Envoy to the Northern Ireland Protocol, sent to Boston and Washington to take care of the UK’s predicament. Burns was tasked with mitigating the skeptical White House that the protocol had to be changed, armed with the vast volumes of documents required by traders under the new system to demonstrate how bad the situation was.
And it might have been a sensible diplomatic mission if the Times hadn’t filled his weapons with expired plans for the bill that was announced by Liz Truss on Tuesday. US diplomats and key lawmakers were angry that they were blinded.
A day earlier in the United States, newspapers had reported on how hard-line Trus was prepared and how her cabinet colleagues – and rivals in the leadership – Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove had softened. It was a “flutter of leadership,” a Cabinet source told Trus.
The expiration of the plans caused shock waves in European capitals, prompting threats to cancel the UK’s trade deal, one of the three weapons available to each country in the trade deal. Trusse responded to brief quotes late in the evening, saying EU-proposed solutions would worsen the situation.
All of the above may suggest that choreography has been set – Boris Johnson is happy to use the memories of the Battle of Brexit as a way to focus his support on weight loss. But sources close to Johnson seem genuinely annoyed, and there has been no attempt to disguise Trusse’s irritation from the way it was handled.
No 10 sources have openly informed against Trus with ugly details in the Sunday newspapers. Even on Monday, they stressed that Johnson had harsh words with his foreign minister and told her to cool things down. So there is now a need for damage control – perhaps because Johnson hoped he could adopt a state image and declare the bill in a tone of “more grief than anger”.
For the past few days, he has been playing peacemaker, releasing an essay of 2,200 words about Northern Ireland on Monday, which was much more careful on matters of nationality than some of his critics might have expected. But, of course, it’s also probably satisfying for Johnson to see his biggest rivals, Sunak and Trus, a little scared – although his foreign minister eventually got what he wanted.
Most ministers are optimistic that there will be progress in the negotiations, as are Tory MPs, who are afraid to vote on the bill but believe it will never get there. Those with even a medium-term memory will remember a similar tactic on the Internal Market Bill and its plans to violate international law “in a limited and specific way”. The bill was a transparent tactic for negotiations and was dropped as soon as it became appropriate to do so.
However, it is hard to argue that it is not even more urgent now, as Northern Ireland does not have a functioning government. On Monday, DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson stared at the tactics, saying the announcement that legislation was coming was “just words”.
The big, perhaps unintended consequences of the past week are that it seems to have forced the DUP to go further in its anti-protocol tactics than before, warning that they will not return to Stormont until the law is passed.
If all this is “just words”, no one knows exactly how the real action will unfold.
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