UK politics delay Brexit clarity

Ahead of the main programme, key personnel have been briefing media and have been quite open about what direction the party and country should take.

Normally this may be of some casual interest to Irish farmers, but in the current era, the future well-being of Irish agriculture will be shaped by these deliberations.

Weakened prime minister

At the centre of what is at stake is a seriously weakened prime minister struggling to keep a seriously divided party together to continue in government (with the support of Northern Ireland’s DUP).

For the second time in two weeks, the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, is hogging the limelight. Ahead of the prime minister’s keynote Florence speech on Brexit, he stole the show with a 4,000 word article in The Telegraph.

That restricted the prime minister’s in terms of what she could say.

Party conference

Ahead of the party conference he has done it again with a pronouncement that the two-year transition is the absolute maximum.

Against this backdrop, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Ruth Davison, is cautioning against “over-optimism” from people advocating for Brexit, saying that not recognising the challenges it presents sells people short.

There has also been the unprecedented event of trade union umbrella body the TUC joining forces with employer’s organisation the CBI to warn of the dangers of being outside the structures of the customs union and single market.

Clinging on to the leadership

Since the general election, the prime minister has been weakened to the point that she now appears to be clinging on to the leadership while rivals jockey for position to succeed her.

In particular, the charismatic if erratic Johnson seems to be beyond reproach. When Theresa May was asked in a Sunday morning TV show was he unsackable, she failed to give a clear answer.

Usually this would be just Sunday morning television, with only the most enthusiastic political observers tuned in.

However, for farmers in both Ireland and the UK, the direction the Conservative Party takes will have far-reaching consequences.

All the evidence points to WTO rules excluding Irish beef and cheese from the UK market and leaving nowhere for Northern Irish or Scottish lamb to go. Body language may have improved in the EU-UK Brexit negotiations, but the detail still has not been introduced. That will only emerge when the UK government has clarity on exactly what it wants to achieve.

Read more

Beef offer to Mercosur likely but not certain