Boris Johnson was always going to have a major challenge in negotiating a post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union. But the British prime minister’s move to rewrite agreements with Brussels unilaterally is not helping matters.
On the contrary, Johnson is now endangering three critical matters: the Northern Ireland peace process, Britain’s alliance with Europe, and American interests. As applied to these specific circumstances, Nancy Pelosi was right on Thursday to warn that “the U.K. must respect the Northern Ireland Protocol as signed with the EU to ensure the free flow of goods across the border.” The Democratic speaker of the House went on to warn that if “the U.K. violates that international treaty and Brexit undermines the Good Friday Accord, there will be absolutely no chance of a U.S.-U.K. trade agreement passing the Congress.”
That U.S. trade deal is rightly a Trump administration top priority. Still, it cannot come at the cost of Johnson’s whimsical rewriting of agreed treaty law. This is something we expect from the Chinese Communist Party, not the home of parliaments. Sadly, aggravated by the failure to make progress in EU-U.K. trade talks, Johnson this week introduced new legislation to override elements of a previously agreed deal with the EU governing trade flows across the Irish border. That deal would be enforced if the United Kingdom and the EU were unable to agree on a longer-term trade deal. But Johnson’s own government has admitted that’s what at stake here. Speaking earlier this week, a top British minister accepted that the Internal Market Bill, as tabled before Parliament, “would break international law in a very specific and limited way.” He’s correct.
In specific terms, the bill would allow British ministers to override prior commitments to the EU unilaterally as to the inspection of goods passing between Britain’s border in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state. Johnson’s government insists that its changes are acceptable because “Parliament is sovereign as a matter of domestic law and can pass legislation which is in breach of the UK’s treaty obligations. … [T]reaty obligations only become binding to the extent that they are enshrined in domestic legislation. Whether to enact or repeal legislation, and the content of that legislation, is for Parliament and Parliament alone.” In a strictly legal sense, this is accurate.
Except that there’s more at stake here than strict legal interpretations.
Any unilateral move to govern trade flows through the Irish border would risk retaliation by the EU in defense of its export-import rules. That might mean checkpoints being introduced on the Irish Republic side of the border, in which goods were inspected by EU customs officers. The challenge here is that such a border escalation is viewed as a casus belli by Irish Republicans and would thus risk reigniting the Irish conflict.
That’s why Pelosi is issuing such a stark warning to London that it should reconsider this move. To do otherwise wouldn’t simply jeopardize the Good Friday Agreement that established relative peace in Northern Ireland, but it also would fundamentally undermine America’s relationship with the EU. There are real difficulties in the relationship that cannot be ignored. However, for the United States to accept Britain’s new approach would shred Washington’s credibility. American interests on China, counterterrorism, Russia, trade, and other issues would all be at risk of EU counteraction.
There’s one broader challenge in what Johnson is doing. Disemboweling a central but always controversial element of the EU-U.K. withdrawal agreement, Johnson has evaporated the trust that will be crucial for the future of positive European relations. Put simply, the EU won’t be able to trust any future commitments the U.K. makes. For the same reason of reciprocity, the U.K. won’t be able to trust the EU. Considering the immense range of crucial issues ranging from counterterrorism to immigration to trade to foreign policy to healthcare, this is a very bad idea.
Johnson should urgently reassess his approach.
