Boris Johnson is part of the problem in Northern Ireland – but he must also be part of the solution

Although David Cameron is not exactly a great advert for the club of ex-prime ministers, there are times when we should listen to them rather than dismiss them as people who “were the future once”, as Cameron memorably described Tony Blair.

During the 2016 EU referendum campaign, Blair and John Major jointly warned that Brexit would be a “deeply damaging and reckless course” that would put Northern Ireland’s future at risk. For good measure, they argued that the union would be also be threatened, by a “serious risk” of another referendum on Scottish independence. Inevitably, their intervention was attacked as “highly irresponsible” by Brexiteers, dismissed as part of “project fear”, and was a one-day media wonder. 

Now, both gloomy prophecies look like they might come true. Opinion polls suggest the Scottish National Party is heading for an overall majority in the 6 May elections to the Scottish parliament. Northern Ireland has seen the worst violence on its streets for many years, giving Boris Johnson a problem that is painfully close to home. Brexit is not the only cause. Other factors include growing alienation in the loyalist community and a sense that the province has a one-way ticket to a united Ireland; a failure to hold the mourners who broke lockdown restrictions at the funeral of prominent IRA member Bobby Storey to account; and a police crackdown on criminal gangs. 

Johnson’s allies insist Brexit is “no excuse” for rioting by teenagers. But the inconvenient truth for him is that his hard Brexit has created a trade border in the Irish Sea. And this one is indisputably one of his babies, conceived with his Irish counterpart Leo Varadkar during a walk in the grounds of a posh Wirral hotel in 2019. Johnson’s promise it would deliver “unfettered trade” between Northern Ireland and Great Britain is now in tatters. No wonder Democratic Unionist Party figures blame the disturbances partly on “Boris’s betrayal”. 

The DUP backed Brexit, and reluctantly agreed to try to make the Northern Ireland protocol work. Now that the checks, delays and shortages are apparent, the party is calling for the protocol to be scrapped. The DUP faces an existential threat in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections in May next year: a split in the unionist vote could leave Sinn Fein as the largest party and holding the post of first minister, putting the always fragile peace process under threat. 

Ministers have been slow to react to the violence: it took Johnson six days to do a single tweet. Ritual appeals for calm won’t cut much ice in the current toxic atmosphere.

Johnson knows that scrapping the protocol as the DUP demands wouldn’t solve anything; the only alternative is an even more dangerous hard border on land. True, Brexit was always going to favour either nationalists or unionists. Johnson opted for the former and now needs to redress the balance.

But he can’t do it alone. A solution requires three groups of two to reconstruct the consensus on which the 1999 Good Friday Agreement was founded: the province’s unionists and nationalist politicians; the UK and Irish governments; and the UK and the EU. As the only show in town, the protocol must be made to work; no one can risk empty supermarket shelves in today’s climate.

Whitehall officials tell me it is up to Brussels to show more pragmatism and flexibility now that the EU is a big player in a province aligned to the single market. Indeed, the EU has been heavy-handed in implementing the protocol. But the suspicion in Brussels is that the UK’s confrontational approach, since David Frost replaced the more conciliatory Michael Gove as Brexit minister, is aimed at showing that the protocol is unworkable and so must be renegotiated.  

Both sides are playing a very dangerous game by using Northern Ireland to score points and refight their Brexit war. The violence is a chilling echo of the previous Troubles and should persuade them to meet in the middle. If they can’t do that when the stakes are so high, it will send a terrible signal to the rest of the world – and to Joe Biden in particular.

It seems to me that Johnson wants the EU to ride to the rescue by rewriting the protocol, but he will need to give some ground too when technical fixes are thrashed out. Understandably, he doesn’t have much credit in the bank; the EU doesn’t trust him any more than the DUP does.

Although Johnson usually gets away with things in a way that Cameron, Major and Blair could only dream of doing, the trust deficit caused by his own actions may return to haunt him over Northern Ireland.