Rishi Sunak and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen hailed a ‘decisive breakthrough’ as they unveiled their updated version of the Northern Ireland Protocol deal, but will it wash with the people of Northern Ireland?
For those just back from Mars, the Protocol was an attempt to reconcile the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union with the indigestible fact of a land border between the two jurisdictions on the island of Ireland. It was incorporated into the Brexit withdrawal agreement after months of torturous negotiations. The Protocol was designed to enable Northern Ireland to trade freely with the EU market and so eliminate the need for physical border controls that some politicians argued, with unseemly relish, might allow terrorism to flourish on a frontier already painted with blood.
The price for this access was that goods coming to Northern Ireland from Great Britain would be subject to EU inspection. This imposition was seized on by Unionists as a ‘sea border’ that conferred semi-detached status on the province’s place within the Union. The obvious benefits of allowing businesses in Northern Ireland to have unfettered access to two huge markets at the cost of undermining constitutional settlement of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement.
Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, hasn’t budged on the Stormont boycott
The details and arguments are esoteric, even for the vast majority of Northern Ireland’s citizens. They care less about national identity than they do about crumbling health and education services and infrastructure. But this issue, of course, still has political potency.
The Northern Ireland Assembly has been without executive government for nearly a year because the DUP, unionism’s largest party at Stormont, refuses to participate – due to the Protocol. While other parties, warmer to the compromise, could co-operate to form a government, this isn’t possible in a jurisdiction where mandatory coalition means the two standard bearers for Unionism and Nationalism can collapse the Executive. Both have done so for tactical reasons. Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, hasn’t budged on the boycott despite enormous pressure to do so from the UK Government. He’s said the imposition of the Protocol is ‘a fundamental destruction of power-sharing through the abandonment of consent and cross-community consensus.’
The DUP has set seven tests for today’s negotiated settlement to allow the party to return to the assembly, where Sinn Fein would for the first time attain the office of First Minister. The attempted murder of a senior police officer by dissident republican terrorists last week underlines the visceral instability of Northern Ireland’s imperfect peace, 25 years after the Belfast Agreement. Restive Loyalist voices are also invoking violence and street disorder to defend what they see as a relentless erosion of British identity that the Protocol represents. Will the mooted Windsor agreement on the Protocol put violent extremism back to sleep too?
The Protocol has become a proxy for the eternal and often self-defeating suspicion that Perfidious Albion is selling Northern Ireland down the river. Claims of ‘second class’ citizenship are animated by daft bureaucratic hurdles for British goods inbound to Northern Ireland and arcana around veterinary regulations. It’s easy to grow weary of these complaints. But perhaps the default betrayal instinct is not so fanciful given the fact the Protocol was bodged up by a man who, when he needed DUP votes, told their conference – looking them straight in the eyes – that an Irish Sea border was anathema to him.
The DUP, who have gone to ground ahead of the announcement and who have been only superficially involved in negotiations, will not want to be bounced into an immediate verdict. So far we’ve had some gnomic responses to the the plan, which involves – according to Rishi Sunak – the removal of ‘any sense’ of an Irish Sea border by the creation of Red and Green lanes to separate GB goods to Northern Ireland (with no checks) from goods destined for the Irish republic (which will retain checks).
There will be hours, or perhaps days, of smoke-filled rooms at the DUP’s Belfast HQ on the emerging detail. In essence, because the Protocol cannot be killed, much of the response will be down to domestic politics: how well can an inevitable compromise be sold to their constituency as a win?
While Sunak has the ERG ultras to contend with, Donaldson has a resurgent TUV to his right. They will be keen to capitalise on any split between his hardline position on the Protocol’s democratic illegitimacy and what emerges in the fudge. The difference here is that the DUP’s response to the deal has to be traded off against votes draining away to other pro-British parties.
But in terms of what actually preoccupies voters, failing public services are dominant, according to recent polls. Paradoxically this might give the DUP room for manoeuvre and some electoral credit for biting the bullet on the Protocol.
Northern Ireland’s health service is in calamitous decline. It is the worst area in the UK by a huge margin on hospital waiting times. The cost-of-living crisis has been aggravated by absurd complexities around energy grants for people without an executive to pull the levers. Northern Ireland’s economy falters behind even the imperceptible growth in the rest of the UK. It’s southern neighbour surges. These factors might be sufficient cover for the DUP to accept the deal and go back into Stormont with substantial credit and a narrative around getting Northern Ireland back to work. The party ought to be doing this and taking the licks.
The new agreement is a chance to reset politics and capitalise on the rare unity that gathered politicians together in condemnation of last week’s terrorist attack. The DUP would be foolish not to get behind Sunak.
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