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walkitoutWhen one travels, one learns new things. This is generally presented as being a positive and desirable aspect of travel, altho in my experience, many of the new things learned when traveling (or even just planning travel) are actually quite painful. But sometimes, they are painful to _other people_, and sometimes, that is absolutely hilarious. Sort of, pratfall, slapstick comedy, but IRL and involving governments.
In the course of planning some travel I hope to engage in eventually, I was reading some of the rules about what you can and cannot bring with you when you travel to certain places from certain other places. Vague enough! Specifically, like, if you bring apples or a salami sandwich, or cheese and crackers or whatever on the plane, do you have to put them in the trash before going through customs or potentially wind up with your bag searched. I mean, we’ve all been there, right? It’s always surprisingly difficult to answer what ought to be a very simple question: do I have to bin it before customs or not.
Anyway. As I was poking through Ireland’s rules, I ran across some other stuff, that led me to read these two wikipedia articles. And I hope you read them, too! They are hilarious! I had commented, as Brexit was occurring, that I didn’t really think it would happen, and of course it didn’t by the “date certain”, and the only real reason it ever happened is because the pandemic reduced governmental capacity to keep kicking the can down the road so the UK was permitted to … get what it wanted. Sort of.
One of the sticking points was always the border between Northern Ireland (part of the UK) and the Republic of Ireland (part of the EU) and specifically, a very old, painfully attained agreement not to have a hard border between the two of them, ever. In the minds of Certain People in the UK, that meant, free movement of goods would continue even after the end of the UK’s Special membership in the EU.
What _actually_ wound up happening was that goods moved freely right up to where Northern Ireland had an edge with the rest of the UK, and at that point, they could go _into_ the rest of the UK, but not the other way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Ireland_Protocol
Just so we are clear. The effect of Brexit was that there was a EU required border _within the UK_. I mean, there just isn’t anything funnier than that, from a sovereignty perspective.
Apparently a few months ago, Sunak, current leader of the UK, and against the preferences of the two previous leaders of the UK, agreed to some modifications of this state of affairs. You can read about them in this wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_Framework
Roughly, this gives the Northern Ireland Assembly a veto power on EU regulations within Northern Ireland. Of course, post-Brexit, EU regulations _don’t apply_ within the UK, and Northern Ireland is part of the UK, NOT part of the EU. So, that’s kind of hilarious! Sure, veto things … that don’t apply to you anyway. Whatever!
And also, the framework puts in place some additional detail on how that border _within the UK_ but _required by the EU_ will be run.
All of this is _extra_ hilarious, because the Assembly can’t do anything at all anyway, so basically this agreement gives a body the right to do a veto that they will never get it together enough to use, over some rules that don’t really apply to them anyway. And the UK has now fully signed onto that internal-to-the-UK border required by the EU — which it was in such a hurry to separate itself from via Brexit.
I hope y’all found that as funny as I did. I will also note that this really seems to make Northern Ireland, somewhat inadvertently, a free trade zone. One wonders how that will develop!
In the course of planning some travel I hope to engage in eventually, I was reading some of the rules about what you can and cannot bring with you when you travel to certain places from certain other places. Vague enough! Specifically, like, if you bring apples or a salami sandwich, or cheese and crackers or whatever on the plane, do you have to put them in the trash before going through customs or potentially wind up with your bag searched. I mean, we’ve all been there, right? It’s always surprisingly difficult to answer what ought to be a very simple question: do I have to bin it before customs or not.
Anyway. As I was poking through Ireland’s rules, I ran across some other stuff, that led me to read these two wikipedia articles. And I hope you read them, too! They are hilarious! I had commented, as Brexit was occurring, that I didn’t really think it would happen, and of course it didn’t by the “date certain”, and the only real reason it ever happened is because the pandemic reduced governmental capacity to keep kicking the can down the road so the UK was permitted to … get what it wanted. Sort of.
One of the sticking points was always the border between Northern Ireland (part of the UK) and the Republic of Ireland (part of the EU) and specifically, a very old, painfully attained agreement not to have a hard border between the two of them, ever. In the minds of Certain People in the UK, that meant, free movement of goods would continue even after the end of the UK’s Special membership in the EU.
What _actually_ wound up happening was that goods moved freely right up to where Northern Ireland had an edge with the rest of the UK, and at that point, they could go _into_ the rest of the UK, but not the other way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Ireland_Protocol
Just so we are clear. The effect of Brexit was that there was a EU required border _within the UK_. I mean, there just isn’t anything funnier than that, from a sovereignty perspective.
Apparently a few months ago, Sunak, current leader of the UK, and against the preferences of the two previous leaders of the UK, agreed to some modifications of this state of affairs. You can read about them in this wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_Framework
Roughly, this gives the Northern Ireland Assembly a veto power on EU regulations within Northern Ireland. Of course, post-Brexit, EU regulations _don’t apply_ within the UK, and Northern Ireland is part of the UK, NOT part of the EU. So, that’s kind of hilarious! Sure, veto things … that don’t apply to you anyway. Whatever!
And also, the framework puts in place some additional detail on how that border _within the UK_ but _required by the EU_ will be run.
All of this is _extra_ hilarious, because the Assembly can’t do anything at all anyway, so basically this agreement gives a body the right to do a veto that they will never get it together enough to use, over some rules that don’t really apply to them anyway. And the UK has now fully signed onto that internal-to-the-UK border required by the EU — which it was in such a hurry to separate itself from via Brexit.
I hope y’all found that as funny as I did. I will also note that this really seems to make Northern Ireland, somewhat inadvertently, a free trade zone. One wonders how that will develop!