The lengthy process of negotiation on the Northern Ireland protocol between the European Commission and the British Government appears to be drawing to a close, with agreement anticipated soon, possibly early next week. Reports in the British press in recent weeks have been progressively more optimistic; the responses in Brussels and in Dublin have been more cautious, confirming progress but insisting that final agreement is not yet reached. Belfast, unfortunately, had been left largely in the dark.
UK prime minister Rishi Sunak’s visit to Belfast to brief party leaders yesterday has at last brought the political leaders of Northern Ireland into the process, albeit at one remove. It should have come earlier. If one of the objects of the talks on the protocol is to arrive at a model of implementation that can be acceptable to most unionists, then the representatives of unionists in those talks – the British Government – should have included the leaders of unionism in their consultations.
Sunak says his goal is to see the power-sharing institutions restored at Stormont. But he also wants to avoid the prospect of a trade war with the EU, and to pave the way for easier trade relations with the bloc, in order to give the stuttering UK economy a boost. Unionists may have justifiable suspicions that this is a greater priority for him; it is not, after all, as if the Conservative Party has proved in the past to be a trustworthy ally of the DUP.
It is surely past time for realism in all this: the protocol is not going to be torn up or rewritten. But it is eminently possible to agree new modes of implementation that would see the checks which so offend some unionists greatly diminished and the trappings of a border in the Irish Sea, in which they see the undermining of the North’s constitutional position, rendered mostly unnecessary.
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Any new regime will still see some differences between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. But the whole basis of the 1998 peace settlement is an acknowledgement that the North is different. For one thing, no other part of the UK has its right to join a different country, if a majority so wishes, enshrined in an international treaty. But minor trade differences need not undermine the position of Northern Ireland in the UK.
In fact, an economically prosperous Northern Ireland, with one foot in each of the vast markets of the EU and the UK, would help unionists argue for the status quo in any constitutional debates to come.
Sunak undoubtedly faces a political challenge in securing the agreement of his own party for any new deal. But it is the decision of the DUP that will be pivotal. That presents the greatest test of Jeffrey Donaldson’s leadership, and perhaps the defining test of his career.