mercalia wrote:Ad Hominem arguments fail to deal with the issues. Separate off what he said then from whether what he is saying now is true or not? I suppose then the UK govt thought that ALL parties were dealing with the GFA, the EU was only apparantly so, rather having another agenda. It is clear now that the EU is more concerned with its ideology than the GFA.
What are the issues? I suppose we'd better take the PM's view.
- The backstop is anti-democratic.
- It is so anti-democratic that the PM and most of his cabinet have voted for it.
- We don't need a backstop because there will be alternative arrangements.
And this is how I understand it.
- The backstop was a UK proposal, to avoid the internal and unavoidable contradictions of the UK government's position.
- Alternative arrangements that are consistent with both WTO and GFA would render the backstop unnecessary.
- The government has no confidence in its alternative arrangements, but is unwilling to admit that it has competing and incompatible demands.
Mercalia. There may indeed be problems with the backstop, but they are irrelevant. The important thing is the UK government's position in relation to the backstop - and that's just a jumble of meaningless soundbites. That's a UK problem, not an EU problem.