Henry Hill

Will Westminster ever fix the Northern Ireland protocol?

(Getty)

Last night’s spat between the Foreign Office and the Treasury was hardly reassuring for Unionists. If you missed it, a Treasury amendment proposed a change to customs regulations where ‘UK’ was replaced with ‘Great Britain’.

What’s so bad about that, you might ask. The answer is that it would have codified the carving-out of Northern Ireland as a separate legal entity. This is something that the protocol establishes: Northern Ireland continues to follow EU customs rules while Great Britain is able to diverge. But this breaking off of Northern Ireland is something the government was supposed to be trying to prevent.

Sure enough, the amendment was pulled and Liz Truss has apparently ordered an investigation into how it got so far without ‘proper political scrutiny’. Delayed action is better than no action, of course. But this event is not going to do anything for the government’s credibility. What’s more, the signs are that ministers are now edging away from triggering Article 16, which would suspend the protocol and restart negotiation.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has completely changed the international situation

This is perfectly defensible, at least on a narrow view of the circumstances. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has completely changed the international situation, and this would be an inopportune time to pick what could be an extremely long and bitter fight with the European Union. The problem is the bigger picture. To Unionists, Boris Johnson is starting to resemble the grand old Duke of York, marching his troops to the top of this hill before marching them back down again. Late last year, the government seemed to be teeing up to trigger Article 16. Then Westminster sources said they’d need to act if there hadn’t been a breakthrough by the end of February.

Given that context, sceptical observers could be forgiven for having their doubts that Truss was really going to trigger it this time – even before the Treasury gave the impression that they had mentally written off Northern Ireland and are itching to tidy up the law accordingly.

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