The rebellion in his own conservative camp has been contained – for the moment – and a first parliamentary hurdle has been crossed: Boris Johnson managed to get his very controversial bill passed at second reading without too much difficulty. “The internal market”, Monday September 14 in the evening. Thirty elected Tory representatives abstained from voting for this text, calling into question part of the country’s commitments under the divorce treaty with the European Union (EU) – 340 elected representatives voted in favor, 263 against.
It would have taken at least fifty Conservative rebels and more abstentions to worry the Prime Minister, who enjoys a very large majority in the House of Commons. Yet this day of debate will likely remain in parliamentary annals as the day when MPs crossed the Rubicon, in defiance of the cardinal principles of British democracy (the rule of law), by voting on a text, which by the admission of Brandon Lewis, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, “Could violate international treaties in a limited and selective manner”.
“A revolver on the table”
“We cannot let Europeans think that they have the power to divide our country”, insisted Boris Johnson by opening the debates in Parliament, refining arguments already advanced the day before in a forum at the Daily Telegraph. The Divorce Treaty with the European Union (EU) was signed in 2019 and, at the time, “In good faith, we have accepted the Northern Irish protocol” intended to avoid the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland. But ” these last months “, claimed Mr Johnson, the EU “Put a revolver on the table” negotiations and “Threatened” of “Block” the movement of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. “No British Prime Minister can accept this”, he added.
This is the reason why Mr Johnson says he wanted the addition, in national law, of a ” security net “ : in the event of no agreement on the future relationship between Brussels and London by the end of 2020, the draft law on the internal market gives the right to British ministers to take unilateral decisions on customs controls between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the state aid regime in Northern Ireland. The divorce treaty, however, provides that these complex but very sensitive issues would be decided jointly with Brussels.
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