HELP SOUGHT FROM AMERICA AS TORIES BIN PEACE DEAL

Posted by Jim on February 2, 2019

US Congressmen could once again be called on to act in support of peace
in Ireland after the British government openly reneged on a deal to
prevent a hard border after Brexit.

Led by Theresa May, the Tories and the DUP have voted in favour of a
parliamentary amendment to abandon the previously agreed ‘backstop’.

The amendment declares that Westminster would approve a deal with the
EU if the backstop, which protects Ireland from a remilitarised border
across the island, is replaced with unspecified “alternative
arrangements”.

May’s decision to back the game-changing new policy set down by senior
Tory Graham Brady is the clearest sign yet that the British government
has betrayed the 1998 peace deal which ended the armed struggle of the
Provisional IRA.

After a year of crossing their fingers, a hopelessly naive Dublin
government has finally accepted that Theresa May has welshed on the
backstop, which was originally agreed in December 2017.

“It’s an extraordinary situation that when a Prime Minister and a
government negotiates a deal and then goes back and during the
ratification process votes against their own deal, which is what
happened yesterday — and now wants to go back to their negotiating
partner and change everything,” said Foreign Minister Simon Coveney.

With Taoiseach Leo Varadkar left issuing warnings of a return of
British soldiers to the border, Irish nationalism is once again looking
across the Atlantic for support.

But there are signs that Irish-America is wakening to the significance
of Brexit. A resolution opposing the re-imposition of a hard border
through Ireland has now been introduced in the US Congress. Congressman
Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania introduced the resolution on Tuesday.

“One of the great foreign policy achievements of the twentieth century
was the Good Friday Agreement (GFA),” he said. “Brokered by US Special
Envoy George Mitchell, and agreed to by the UK, Republic of Ireland,
and leading parties in Northern Ireland, it eliminated the hard border
that then existed between Northern Ireland the rest of Ireland. Now
Brexit threatens this.

“A hard border would eliminate the free flow of people between Northern
Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which has proved fundamental to
promoting peace and unity. We must not go backwards.”

And as Westminster voted against the backstop, Boyle tweeted: “After
agreeing to the Irish backstop, Theresa May’s government has now
reneged on it. Why would anyone negotiate with her now?”

Richard Neal, the Massachusetts Congressman who was centrally involved
in the Good Friday Agreement and is the co-chairman of the Friends of
Ireland caucus on Capitol Hill, has recently been appointed as head of
the powerful Ways and Means committee. This committee will play a key
role in overseeing any future trade agreement between Britain and the
United States after Britain leaves the European Union.

Britain already faces being shut out of making new trade deals with the
EU after it falls out of the union in March. The promise of a bilateral
trade agreement between Britain and the United States is a central
plank of Britain’s post-Brexit economic policy, given that British
exports to the United States are worth about 100 billion pounds to the
British economy.

At Davos last week, Mr Varadkar was reported as saying privately that
the Irish-American lobby in Congress would never allow a trade deal
with the US to go through if Britain insists on reimposing its hard
border.

Speaking publicly, he warned the British government that it would “be
very difficult for the UK to conclude any trade deals with the question
of the Irish Border unresolved.”