Britain threatens to flout international law

IT IS STAGGERINGEUEUEU to see a British minister brazenly admit to Parliament that the government intends to breach international law. Yet that is what Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, did this week—even if he sought to qualify the move as “very specific and limited”. The plan in the proposed internal-market bill is to override parts of the Brexit withdrawal agreement, a treaty ratified only in January, that relate to trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Because it will remain subject to the European Union’s customs code and single-market rules, special treatment is needed for the province to avert a hard border with Ireland. Reflecting the fact that there is no precedent for Britain unilaterally breaching an international treaty in this way, the government’s most senior legal adviser promptly quit.What is Boris Johnson’s government playing at? It may be that he is resigned to Britain leaving the transition period on December 31st without a trade deal with the in place. The Brexit talks seem irretrievably stuck, so some in Downing Street now favour this option. Yet a kinder interpretation is that the prime minister is engaging in a tactical ploy to ratchet up the pressure on the . Threats to rewrite the withdrawal agreement are of a piece with his insistence that, unlike his predecessor, Theresa May, he will not blink at the last minute, and his claim that no deal would be a “good outcome” for Britain. By making no deal look more chaotic, he may hope to force leaders to compromise in their rigid demand for a level playing-field on state subsidies (see ).