Those Tory Brexiter MPs who WANT to believe the EU has no desire to trap the UK in the customs union via the Northern Ireland backstop will be reassured by the agreement between Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker on a new legal instrument saying the EU must negotiate in good faith to avoid the backstop coming into force at all, or for long.
They will also be encouraged by a change to the UK/EU political declaration that will step up work on putting in place alternative arrangements to obviate the need for the backstop – and by the UK government’s declaration of what it would do to get out of the backstop if the EU is ever seen to be trying to imprison the country in it.
But by the government’s own admission, in the motion it has laid before parliament, what these new UK/EU compacts do is ‘reduce the risk the UK could be held in the backstop indefinitely’ but they do not eliminate it.
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