British officials are once again pacing Brussels conference rooms, seeking to rewrite the settlement on Northern Ireland that bedevilled Brexit talks. Unless radical surgery is undertaken to allow food and medicine to move freely, warns David Frost, Britain’s chief negotiator, Britain will invoke Article 16, an emergency clause that could lead to parts of it being unilaterally suspended.
British diplomats long saw the question of whether Britain was truly “sovereign” inside the European Union as a dinner-party thought experiment. What mattered was influence. But according to the Frost doctrine, sovereignty is real and hard, to be clawed back and keenly guarded.membership was to him a “long bad dream”; only when Britain left did it become independent and free. To his interlocutors this seems quixotic, and to those who have experienced real dictatorships, a touch insulting.
Lord Frost is softly-spoken and courteous, and a keen student of Flemish history. But noble ends justify rough means, say his allies. Only if Britain threatens to blow up the talks or tear up agreements will the Europeans give way. “He does not see negotiations as ‘how do we write nice communiqués that don’t do very much,’” says a former official. On Article 16, “he is absolutely willing to pull the trigger.” His cabinet colleagues are more squeamish. No one knows whom Mr Johnson will heed.
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