Boris Johnson will not propose a law to repeal part of the EU Withdrawal Agreement, in a new “betrayal” of unionism
The Minister for Northern Ireland in the British Government, Brandon Lewis, has stated that Boris Johnson will not include a bill to unilaterally reform the Withdrawal Agreement from the European Union in the legislative program that he will present on Tuesday, thus eliminating the possibility of a strong confrontation with Brussels.
Lewis’s statement, in the course of an interview on Wednesday night, indicates that the British Government wants to continue negotiating with the EU the operation of border controls between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, instead of invoking Article 16 of the Irish Protocol to the Withdrawal Agreement, which allows its implementation to be suspended.
The fact that Lewis announced the measure at night, on the eve of election day, has favored the fact that the vote has taken place normally, although it is a blow to the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, who had advanced that the The London government would act very soon after the elections to resolve the dispute over the existence of the new border.
Northern Ireland was moving towards a time of uncertainty about the restoration of its autonomy and its membership of the European common market, after a campaign that is described as “calm” by all witnesses. The benefits of the peace process launched in 1998 are demonstrated in that calm when there are issues at stake that in the past would have created tensions or violence.
Lewis’s announcement makes it more possible that a shared Executive will not be formed in the coming days, due to the refusal of unionist parties to administer the region in the absence of a radical reform of the Protocol. Border controls are, from the EU perspective, the only possible mechanism to keep Northern Ireland in the common European market at the same time as in the British one.
irrelevancies
Another question in the campaign has been whether Sinn Féin will win or the tactical unionist vote will uphold the centuries-old tradition of the region’s leader being a Protestant. The two highest positions in the autonomy, the Chief Minister and the Chief Deputy Minister, have the same powers and must share decisions, but the former has more media visibility. Acceptance of either charge by Donaldson now seems unlikely.
There were no precise participation figures. The BBC asked officers at polling stations to post the voter balance and voter roll on Twitter, to provide an estimate on Thursday night. The data was very fragmented and suggested a decrease in the number of voters with respect to 2017, when the participation was 64.8%.
According to the polls, no party will obtain a higher percentage of votes than that represented by the abstentionists with respect to the census. A high percentage of undecided was detected and, in the circumstances of a possible victory for Sinn Féin, historically associated with the IRA, this high figure suggests that there were voters waiting for more clarity in the last days of the campaign planning a tactical vote.
The electoral system is based, as in the southern republic, on marking the boxes in order of preference and on the distribution of the 90 seats at stake by counting the votes of successive preferences and assigning them by the d’Hondt Rule. It is a system that frustrates due to the lack of immediacy of the results, but that gives importance to all the votes.
The municipal elections will measure the popularity of Johnson
The results of the municipal elections in England, Scotland and Wales will offer this Friday an evaluation of the impact that the saga of holding meetings in Downing Street prohibited by the rules against the spread of the pandemic has had on the popularity of the Conservatives and of its leader, Boris Johnson. The most widespread prediction is that the general elections will be called in 2024.
Analysts’ eyes will focus on the results in the central and northern regions of England, which have gained political prominence because those former Labor strongholds made possible the victory of Brexit in 2016 and of Johnson’s Conservatives in 2019. His Government is committed to a policy of economic promotion of these regions to balance the country.
Victory in those constituencies gives the Government a majority of 73 MPs in the House of Commons. In the indicated regions, the ‘Tories’ won 48 seats in 2019 compared to those obtained in 2017. The latest published poll suggests that Labor will not make great gains in these elections in these disputed areas.
The municipal ones are fragmented into blocks of councils in England and those of this May must be compared with those of 2018, when Labor had very good results. They cannot increase much more, although the poll indicates that they will continue to increase their councils in London. In the capital, the Conservatives won 21 of the 73 seats in the running in 2019, confirming their decline in the capital.
The other look of the analysts is focused towards the south. In votes to replace deputies, held since 2019, residents in traditionally conservative constituencies have opted for the Liberal Democrats, with the support of Labor who voted tactically to avoid the blue victory. If this tactical alliance of the opposition to the Government is repeated in the municipal elections, Johnson is in danger.
The Conservative Party is often portrayed as a power-grabbing machine, as opposed to a Left often mired over doctrinal issues. The discomfort with Johnson in his parliamentary group is due to his behavior during the ‘partygate’, but also because his loss of popularity suggests to the deputies that in 2024 they will lose their seat. When they return to the Commons on Tuesday, the results of these local elections will define the strength of their leader.
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