Opinion | Why Boris Johnson’s backtrack on the EU deal is a moral mistake
- If Britain could pass legislation in flagrant disregard of treaty commitments it made only eight months ago, who is it to admonish China for imposing a law on Hong Kong that China considers essential to its sovereignty?
Since moving back to Britain as a British National (Overseas) a month ago, I have been struck by British news channels’ tendency to focus incessantly each week on one or two small issues, such as the government’s mishandling of school exam results, as if they were major crises. I say to my friends here that they are very fortunate Britain is constantly beset with small problems. An issue that can be fixed, unlike the one that has befallen Hong Kong, is by definition a small issue.
A Hong Kong émigré could only look with envy upon this democratic exercise, and it is absolutely right that the referendum result should be implemented. However, as Britain’s Brexit transitional arrangement with the EU expires at the end of December and negotiations for a free trade deal are heading nowhere, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is pushing an internal market bill that, if passed, will breach the Brexit withdrawal agreement, signed in January, and international law.
The bill has lasting repercussions for Britain’s reputation as a state that respects the sanctity of treaties and the rule of law. Arguments the British government has advanced for the bill are disingenuous, and dangerously reminiscent of those Beijing uses to justify its national security law for Hong Kong.
The British government considers the bill necessary to address the stalemate over preventing a hard border between Northern Ireland, a sovereign part of the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland, an EU member. In the absence of a free trade deal, the Northern Ireland protocol enshrined in the Brexit withdrawal agreement becomes operative as of 2021.
