The Brits should be held to account here by all parties- EU, and other trading partners - Brexit should not harm the agreement they entered freely, and has provided peace for decades.
If the U.K. wants to diverge the its regulatory regime then there must be customs checks where they differ, otherwise smuggling will thrive. Case in point, HMRC did a spot check at Dover (where customs checks are not currently applied) and found most lorries had illegal produce in them.
Sounds like there are three options (I'm going to talk as if from the UK point of view):
- (1) Same customs laws + No custom checks = My sovereignty is getting violated because I can't change my laws without your permission
- (2) Different customs laws + Customs checks = We both have sovereignty and our regulations are enforced, but violent people who hate the border will attack it and kill people; that seems bad.
- (3) Different customs laws + No border = I make my own laws, and I choose to find violators at weigh stations, when pulling over people for traffic offenses, or by inspectors at the final destination (British equivalent of USDA?) I don't care enough about enforcement to check everyone, so I'm not going to make a physical border checkpoint. If you care so much about checking everyone, you're free to make a checkpoint on your own side. Your people will be the ones who do the dying when the violent border haters attack, but that's your problem. We both know border checkpoints here will cost lives, I don't think it's worth it, you do, I do what I think is right on my side, you do what you think is right on your side. That's what being different countries means, we can make different choices when different policy options involve trade-offs.
Option (3) seems pretty reasonable to me.
Only if you live in a fantasy world. The EU outright did not want this as a "solution" so they rejected it. The UK is actually doing something like this at this very moment. The result? We're currently allowing dangerous food into the country.
Your descriptions of options 1 and 2 are total nonsense from the moment you use the word "sovereignty." Nobody's sovereignty is violated by making an agreement, any more than your freedom is violated when you abide by the terms of a contract you freely agreed.
I would personally eat food that passes UK regulations (but not EU regulations), or EU regulations (but not UK regulations).
Are there reports of increased food poisoning attributed to Brexit? (I'm thinking along the lines of either an individual incident report saying "if only this meat had been inspected, it would have been pulled, and these people wouldn't have gotten sick," or a statistical study based on e.g. ER visits per capita for food poisoning symptoms.)
If there's no evidence of people actually getting sick, calling such food "dangerous" seems like fearmongering.
The food has not passed either UK or EU standards checks. EU health and customs bodies do not check food destined for the UK market. And neither do the UK equivalents.
Here is the newspaper report where the spot check was carried out: https://www.kentonline.co.uk/dover/news/uk-risks-food-safety...
So yes, there is evidence that the food is dangerous.
This entire sentence is a lie. The UK wanted a "magic invisible border" on the island of Ireland. The EU explicitly wanted no border at all on the island of Ireland.
If you're not sure how that contradicts what you said, then I'm sorry that your English comprehension education failed you.
Bitterness aside, the island being split in two makes no sense from an outsider.
This is an island smaller than Ohio with five million people on it - people with a shared history going back many hundreds of years and seeming to not want to be separated.
Brexit threw a wrench in the idea of a seamless border between the Republic of Ireland and the UK. You either have a customs border between the islands of Ireland and GB, or you have a customs border between the Republic and the North. I don't see how it feasibly goes any other way, and neither of those make all parties happy.
Many people in Northern Ireland—a narrow majority at the moment—consider themselves to be British and do not want to be separated from the UK. That's why it's such a tricky problem.
Not saying you don't have a point (I have no skin in the game) but I read thousands of similar western comments about various countries "smaller than $state!" and they're never helpful.
You see, people sometimes use familiar locations or factual references to draw comparisons to other items or places.