Sir, – Stephen Collins is effusive in his praise of UK prime minister Rishi Sunak for finally getting Brexit “done” (“Sunak’s political skill and courage bode well for Tories’ future”, Opinion & Analysis, March 3rd). However, the uncomfortable truth for some is that Brexit will never be done.
Unless and until the UK rejoins the EU – an unlikely prospect for at least a generation – successive British governments will continue to grapple with what sort of ongoing Brexit they want and what sort the EU is prepared to offer.
For example, how much access the crucial UK financial services industry will have to EU markets in the long term is yet to be determined.
And even the basic zero-tariffs access the UK enjoys to the EU will constantly be under threat each time its government seeks to diverge from EU rules, thereby undermining “the level playing field” principle on which the basic trade agreement between the UK and the EU was signed.
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Stephen Collins’s contention that reaching an agreement with the EU on the operation of the Northern Ireland protocol opens the door to a coveted trade deal between the UK and the United States is also misplaced. Granted, the current US administration and some members of the US Congress have made it clear to the UK government that no such trade deal would be possible if the British government took unilateral action to damage the Belfast Agreement.
But the wider reason why there is no prospect of a trade deal between the UK and the US is in fact related to internal US politics and has nothing to do with Northern Ireland. President Biden has long indicated that he is in no mind to negotiate international trade deals that are politically toxic and offer little economic return.
This is not going to change as the US enters its next election cycle.
Stephen Collins finishes his piece by suggesting that Rishi Sunak might pull off a political miracle by beating Keir Starmer in the next UK election.
If that were to come to pass, there would be no surer way of continuing the Brexit dramas as, to coin a phrase, the hard Brexiteers in the Conservative Party haven’t gone away, you know. – Yours, etc,
SÉAMUS WHITE,
Stoneybatter,
Dublin 7.