Brexit, the Northern Ireland protocol deal and what it means for Britain

Suggestions that some sort of breakthrough agreement between the UK and EU on Northern Ireland is imminent have been dismissed by Downing Street. Early next week is the latest rumour on timing, but even then it may not suit Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) politicians who are still boycotting the power-sharing executive in Stormont because of it. Whether this latest iteration of the 800-year-old “Irish Question” will ever be solved remains to be seen.

What is the Northern Ireland protocol?

It is part of the UK-EU withdrawal agreement which is enshrined in the Brexit treaty, or EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement; it can’t be changed or renegotiated without the consent of both sides, though it can be rescinded.

It is a cause of constant grief to many Unionists, especially the DUP and hardline loyalists in Northern Ireland because it means that sending goods from say Bradford to Belfast is now procedurally different to sending them from Bradford to Bristol. In many cases, customs declarations must be filled in and some Northern Ireland businesses find the disruption to supplies from the rest of the UK irksome and costly. Consumers in Northern Ireland complain that once-familiar items are no longer on supermarket shelves.

On a more purely political level the DUP says the protocol leaves a democratic deficit, with laws made in Brussels imposed on them and the authority of a foreign judiciary, the European Court, would remain in the province even after being removed for the rest of the UK.

On the other hand, nationalists and republicans and the non-aligned Alliance Party are less concerned about the drawbacks, and like the fact that, for some other businesses, the protocol endows them with friction-free access to the Irish and wider EU market as well as barrier-free exports to the rest of the UK, the best of both worlds. They, and the Ulster Unionists, want devolved government back – even with the protocol still in dispute.

The protocol is a compromise that avoids a hard border on the island of Ireland, which would break at least the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement and threaten a return to the Troubles. As with all compromises, it means sacrifices and concessions on all sides.

What is the root of the problem?

Brexit. Without it, the border issue would never have arisen – and John Major and Tony Blair warned of this risk during the 2016 referendum campaign. Few were listening.

However, there are other factors. If there were no border issue in Ireland, it would simply be a matter of imposing a new economic and trade border between the UK and the EU such as with France or the Netherlands, but the border in Ireland is the only UK-EU land crossing (excepting UK territory in Gibraltar and Cyprus); it is bloodstained, and history haunts it.

How did we end up here?

Theresa May had a plan to get around the problem which she presented to her cabinet at a meeting in Chequers in 2018. She proposed an arrangement whereby the whole UK would stay inside the EU customs union and under some single market rules until such time as “technological solutions” were found that would allow the UK to exit those constraints without imposing a border in the Irish Sea or on the island of Ireland; this partial or “soft” Brexit would be a “backstop” until full Brexit was achievable but it meant full Brexit freedoms such as new trade deals couldn’t be immediately grasped. Because of this, the Chequers plan was unacceptable to the DUP, the Conservative European Research Group, and some of May’s cabinet – David Davis and Boris Johnson resigned over it.

Johnson then captured the leadership partly on the back of hostility to the Chequers plan, which had failed to win sufficient support from opposition parties – thus the endless House of Commons deadlock, chaos and record-breaking defeats suffered by the minority May government. He promised a “backstopectomy” and that there’d be a border in the Irish Sea “over my dead body”. Once inside No 10, he negotiated exactly the opposite with his “oven-ready deal” which betrayed the DUP. Having given jobs in cabinet to prominent Brexiteers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, Andrea Leadsom, Priti Patel and Theresa Villiers, he successfully neutered most of his internal critics and got his deal approved via the December 2019 general election, signed with the EU by Christmas and passed by parliament by the end of January 2020. To many looking beyond the immediate relief, it looked as if Northern Ireland was sacrificed to a quick, flawed deal on a self-imposed deadline.

It is rumoured Johnson never read the protocol or the withdrawal agreement.

What are the logical solutions?

What are the illogical solutions?

Pretending the EU-UK border doesn’t need to exist, and can be just forgotten about and ignored for the sake of a quiet life, which was more or less Johnson’s undeclared policy for his entire premiership.

What will happen now?

Everyone except the DUP will welcome the changes to the way the protocol is implemented when Sunak presents them next week. The protocol itself will remain unchanged, because it would require a new treaty text and ratification by every EU parliament and regional assembly, and a vote in the UK parliament. A new semi-formal mechanism to consult the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive on EU single market rules may be the nearest they can get to redressing the undoubted democratic deficit. The DUP, which doesn’t like to play second fiddle to Sinn Fein, will continue its boycott. Fresh elections to the Stormont Assembly next year would be the next opportunity to get the Executive back up and running. By then there may be a new government in London too, which might be a catalyst for a DUP rethink.

Although Sunak would probably win any Commons vote on the new deal, he’ll need Labour votes given a threatened Tory rebellion of 100-plus MPs (many of them unhappy with corporation tax hikes, migration, fracking and much else). That could damage his authority and incentivise the likes of Johnson, Rees-Mogg and Truss to move against him.

Nonetheless, the protocol issue has little electoral resonance beyond Westminster, Tory constituency associations and Northern Ireland, and Brexiteers are heartily sick of Brexit not being done. Sunak could be the man who finally did “get Brexit done”. A new policy will soon be in place, part of a rebuilding of UK-EU relations, more in line with public opinion than the Brexit Spartans. The real damage will be to public confidence in a divided party of government, if any further evidence of that were needed.