14 NEWS Best columns: Europe
IRELAND
A hard post-Brexit border between the Republic
of Ireland and Northern Ireland will require a
massive police presence, said Fergus Finlay. On
a recent trip to a beach in northwestern Ireland,
Google Maps took me on a winding route that
crisscrossed the border. The line was unmarked,
and only the speed limit signs, which switched
back and forth between British miles and Euro-
pean kilometers, told me which country I was in.
What will happen to that border if Britain’s new
prime minister, Boris Johnson, leads the United
Kingdom, including Northern Ireland, out of
the European Union without a deal? The U.K.
and Ireland—which will remain in the EU—willinstantly have “two different tariff regimes, two
different VAT regimes, and two different tax re-
gimes.” It won’t take long for “a new smuggling
industry” to spring up, and that will mean polic-
ing not only the highways but also every little
back-road border crossing. There will be thou-
sands of interactions between civilians and guards
every day, raising the risk of a misunderstanding
or even violence. You’d think such “hardheaded
and sensible” people as the Northern Irish would
never allow such a thing. But the hatred many
Northern Protestants feel for the Republic and
Catholics is so strong that they “will follow John-
son into economic oblivion” out of sheer spite.Ursula von der Leyen, the new president of the Eu-
ropean Commission, “isn’t as naïve as she pretends
to be,” said Georg Escher. Her greatest challenge
as European Union chief will be to reform the
bloc’s disastrous refugee policy, which says that mi-
grants must claim asylum in the first EU country in
which they set foot. That puts an unfair burden on
southern states like Italy and Greece, and the EU
has been trying for years to come up with an equi-
table way to distribute refugees. This week, as she
took office, von der Leyen professed that she never
understood why the EU’s Dublin agreement—
which came into force in 1997—was set up thatway. This is nonsense. Von der Leyen was German
defense minister from 2013 to 2019 and must
know that Germany demanded the Dublin agree-
ment after refugee numbers surged following the
Balkan wars. In the 1990s, some 350,000 Bosnians
fled to Germany, and they were not welcomed. It
will be tough to strike a new deal, with countries
such as Poland and Hungary flatly refusing to take
any African or Middle Eastern migrants at all. But
von der Leyen is open to creative solutions, such
as giving Poland credit for the Ukrainian refugees
it houses. It’s fitting that a German should now be
seeking a remedy for Germany’s “political sin.”GettyOur new prime minister, Boris Johnson,
couldn’t be more different than his “but-
toned-up” predecessor, said Hugo Gye
in The Sun. When a crestfallen Theresa
May announced her resignation in May,
having thrice failed to get Parliament
to approve the Brexit deal she negoti-
ated with the European Union, ruling
Conservative Party members were tasked
with choosing the country’s next leader.
The mop-haired former London mayor
“rode a wave of optimism with his char-
ismatic personality” to sweep aside nine
rival candidates, eventually defeating his
last standing challenger—Foreign Secre-
tary Jeremy Hunt—by a 2-to-1 margin. After campaigning on
promises to get Britain out of the EU by Oct. 31—trade deal or
no trade deal—unite the country, and defeat opposition Labour
Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in the next general election, Johnson
gave an ebullient victory speech peppered with jokes. “Some
wag has already pointed out ‘deliver, unite, and defeat’ was not
the best slogan because it spells out ‘DUD,’” he said. “But they
forgot the final E, my friends, E for energize! And I say to all the
doubters: DUDE, we are going to energize the country.”God help us with this buffoon in charge, said Hannah Jane
Parkinson in The Guardian. Johnson is “a racist”—he has referred
to black people as “pickaninnies”—“an inveterate liar, a man
who makes Machiavelli look misunderstood.” He made himself
the face of the Vote Leave campaign during the 2016 Brexit refer-
endum, falsely telling voters that quitting the EU would save Brits
350 million pounds ($440 million) a week. Then, when the refer-endum passed and the hard work of ne-
gotiating Britain’s exit began, he slunk
away. Boris would never have been
elected prime minister in a countrywide
vote, but he is being forced upon us by
Conservative Party members represent-
ing just “0.2 percent of the nation.”Johnson faces an impossible task, said
John Rentoul in Independent.co.uk. He
will try to renegotiate May’s exit agree-
ment with the EU, but “he won’t ob-
tain significant changes.” Brussels can’t
allow a hard border to go up between
the Republic of Ireland, an EU mem-
ber, and the U.K. province of Northern Ireland, and will insist on
the “backstop”—a measure that keeps the U.K. closely tied to
the EU and “is described as vassalage by the Brexit purists who
sabotaged May’s deal.” And Johnson can’t simply yank the U.K.
out of the bloc with no deal, because Parliament would block
such an economically damaging move. Johnson would be humili-
ated, a general election would be called, and Corbyn might win.Cynics wrote off Boris’ hero, Winston Churchill, too, said Ste-
ven Glover in the Daily Mail. When Churchill came to power
in 1940, many in his Conservative Party thought him “flashy,
unreliable, and lacking in judgment,” indeed, a “half-breed
American” (Johnson and Churchill had U.S.-born mothers). Like
Churchill, Johnson has also “craved the highest office in the land
since he was a child.” Such ambition gives him a “mystical sense
of personal destiny.” Maybe such unearned confidence is just
what is needed to get Brexit done.Armed police
will be
everywhere
Fergus Finlay
IIrish Examiner
GERMANY
Johnson: Big promises and big challengesMigrant
standoff
is our fault
Georg Escher
Nürnberger Nachrichten
United Kingdom: Can Prime Minister Boris deliver Brexit?