News6 mins ago
Hallelujah
Is this too good to be true?
No paper checks on goods between NI and GB? Billions of pounds for NI?
Above all the restoration of devolution and historically the first ever nationalist government leader for N Ireland
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"On Wednesday, the government will publish what is known as a command paper laying out what has been agreed. The deal will also be published.
Expect the fine print to be pored over by opponents.
The legislation is expected to pass all stages in Westminster on Thursday and the assembly will sit on Friday or Saturday to elect a speaker."
"Good news - for now, but as always, whenever an Irish problem is solved the Irish come up with another problem."
Very true Khandro, if I was a voter in NI I'd be pushing for elections and a chance to punish the people who've held the country to ransom for the last 23 years. Won't happen though. I think this is the way back though. You can't have Brexit + seamless customs between NI and both Ireland and GB but this needs to be sorted. In fairness to Donaldson, when you have a member of your party's executive wiring himself up at a meeting to leak proceedings as they happen to a party activist, it shows the sort of people who he's had to try to win round
"Is this too good to be true?"
I quite confident it's true. The reports seem confident enough that it will happen.
Whether or not it is good at all (let alone too good) depends on your point of view. I believe that devolution was one of the biggest mistakes that any UK government could have made. This is particularly so with NI, where the model which includes "power sharing" has led to the devolved government being out of commission for more than 9 years of its 35 year existence and for more than two-thirds of the last seven years.
"You can't have Brexit + seamless customs between NI and both Ireland..."
You can. All it needs is a UK government with the courage of its convictions to announce that since neither the UK government nor the Irish government want a hard border on the island of Ireland and since it is only the EU that wants it, the EU can be left to make the necessary arrangements. Quite how they would do this is anybody's guess since they have no authority to impose border controls in Ireland, but that's their problem. Meanwhile, the UK government should simply announce that there will be no restrictions or controls whatsoever over the movement of goods between any parts of the United Kingdom.
