With less than six weeks to go until 31 October and Boris Johnson\u2019s \u2018do or die\u2019 Brexit, the UK and the EU27 seem no closer to reaching agreement on revised terms for the UK\u2019s withdrawal than they were when the new government was formed at the end of the July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Primarily, it is a lack of \u2018viable\u2019 and \u2018concrete\u2019 UK ideas for an alternative to the current backstop<\/a> provisions that is holding up progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The UK government complains that the EU is refusing to be flexible; while the EU says it has failed to receive any \u2018credible\u2019 proposals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is not, however, simply the lack of a \u2018fully workable and legally operational<\/a>\u2019 solution to avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland that explains the current impasse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More fundamentally, the Johnson government is no longer seeking to achieve the same outcome as its predecessor. It has shifted \u2013 or is at least trying to shift \u2013 the goal posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his August letter to Donald Tusk, Johnson was clear: \u2018we cannot continue to endorse the specific commitment in paragraph 49 of the December 2017 Joint Report, to \u201cfull alignment\u201d with wide areas of the single market and the customs union\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He added: \u2018That cannot be the basis for the future relationship, and it is not a basis for the sound governance of Northern Ireland\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To continue reading please click here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n David Phinnemore<\/a> is a Professor of European Politics at Queen’s University Belfast. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Article originally appeared on The UK in a Changing Europe <\/a>site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The featured image<\/a><\/em> has been used courtesy of a <\/em>Creative Commons license. <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Having physical infrastructure and additional checks and controls away from the border does not avoid a hard border; it simply places the hardened post-Brexit border elsewhere says Lisa Whitten and David Phinnemore. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2564,"featured_media":5931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[762,42,98,106],"class_list":["post-5928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","tag-backstop","tag-brexit","tag-eu","tag-northern-ireland"],"mb":[],"acf":{"authors":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":null,"value":null,"field":{"ID":9774,"key":"field_66d0cbf58f930","label":"Authors","name":"authors","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"relationship","value":null,"menu_order":1,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":9772,"wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"post_type":["authors"],"post_status":["publish"],"taxonomy":"","filters":["search"],"return_format":"id","min":0,"max":10,"allow_in_bindings":0,"elements":["featured_image"],"bidirectional":0,"bidirectional_target":[],"_name":"authors","_valid":1}},"description":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":"","value":"","field":{"ID":9776,"key":"field_66d2183027749","label":"Description","name":"description","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"wysiwyg","value":null,"menu_order":3,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":9772,"wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"default_value":"","allow_in_bindings":0,"tabs":"all","toolbar":"basic","media_upload":0,"delay":1,"_name":"description","_valid":1}}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/76\/2019\/09\/goal-posts.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"mfb_rest_fields":["title","jetpack_featured_media_url","jetpack_sharing_enabled","amp_enabled"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2564"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}