Union dues

Wrong about everything else, why would David Frost be right about Northern Ireland?

In the twilight of the last stretch of British conservative government in the mid-1990s, columnist Edward Pearce came up with his own definition of the “British disease”. Not overpowered unions and inflation, he wrote, but “intellectual laziness” combined with “debating skill”¹.

I’m often reminded of this depressingly spot-on comment when observing the political – and especially the professional pundit – class in the wild. Most recently, it was after reading the partial write-up (I’m not strong enough to listen) of Brendan O’Neill’s love-in with David Frost – the former diplomat/lobbyist² picked by Boris Johnson to negotiate the EU-UK withdrawal agreement and its notorious Northern Ireland protocol.

Since he left Johnson’s cabinet, Frost has found a comfortable niche as a libertarian critic of his own withdrawal agreement as well as of government measures to contain the Covid pandemic and achieve net-zero carbon emissions. So it’s little surprise that his praise for Rishi Sunak’s renegotiation of the protocol into a premium Windsor edition came in the form of faint damns. But it was this throwaway claim that got me thinking: “Unless you’re a member of the EU, no other country in the world has to put up with this sort of thing”.

Is this right? It certainly sounds right, whether you agree with the need for the protocol or not. But is it? What was it that forced three and a bit British prime ministers to tolerate the restraint imposed on their country’s sovereignty by special measures to accommodate a province accounting for less than 3% of the UK’s population and 1.5% of its output?

The answer isn’t: because the EU made them. Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Sunak all had a choice. They had the power to take Northern Ireland out of the EU’s customs union and the European Economic Area (EEA) on identical terms to England, Wales and Scotland. They didn’t have to “put up with this sort of thing”. Instead, they chose to preserve the settlement that ended the low-intensity conflict in 1998 while avoiding serious diplomatic damage with the US and the overnight erection of tariff barriers with the EU. This was a political choice. Brexiters had won the 2016 referendum but not by much. Even the risk of a resumed terrorist campaign remembered only by over-30s and a guaranteed recession brought on by a UK-EU trade war would have turned public sentiment around in short order. An equivalent of the Truss implosion would have come three years earlier and they all knew it.

An “unbelievably special position”

Of the four prime ministers in the last four years, only May understood how fundamental Northern Ireland would be to Brexit, but she blew it. “Brexit means Brexit” did have to mean leaving the EU’s customs union but it didn’t have to mean diverging from its tariff schedule or refusing a customs-cooperation agreement. Above all, it didn’t have to mean leaving the EEA. Once she accepted the advice of her nationalist gurus and used her January 2017 Lancaster House speech to reject Margaret Thatcher’s “most outstanding achievement”, May lit the long fuse on a crisis that would doom Brexit, immolate her party, and accelerate Irish unification.

To this day, some people argue that the “May deal”, which was repeatedly rejected by parliament in 2019, would have resolved the Northern Ireland problem. In a recent The Rest Is Politics podcast, her former minister Rory Stewart argued that the 2019 plan dealt with the problem “by effectively leaving Britain in the customs union – that was the thing called the ‘backstop’. So, under her plan, Great Britain would have remained in the customs union and there wouldn’t have been much need for much borders between any of these countries". But this leaves out a critical component of the deal. Aside from the UK shadowing the EU’s customs union, it would “maintain full alignment” with any EEA rules needed to ensure continued cross-border “cooperation” on the island of Ireland.

Once ultras like Frost and the lemming-like Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) had decided that leaving the EU wasn’t enough, May’s proposal was untenable. As her usurper, Johnson had the choice and (after the December 2019 election) the mandate to remove all four UK nations from the EU on equal terms. Instead, he opted against an Irish land border, the imposition of tariffs, and US Congressional retaliation. The result today is, as Sunak put it (to Rejoiners’ fury): “Northern Ireland is in the unbelievably special position, the unique position in the entire world in having privileged access not just to the UK home market, which is the fifth biggest in the world, but also the European Union single market”.

Selective consent

Of course, Sunak is overselling his “Windsor Framework”; he’s a politician. For Northern Irish business, it’s a big improvement on the original arrangements but it’s not unfettered trade. Access to the so-called “green lane” still means registering with a trusted-trader scheme and filling in a scaled-back customs declaration for each transaction. The Irish Sea is still the province’s customs border. The “Stormont brake” will require unobtainable cross-community majorities in the assembly and its use will be strictly ring-fenced.

At face value, popular opinion in Northern Ireland couldn’t be clearer. A majority voted to remain in 2016, has consistently expressed its support for the protocol, and does so now for Sunak’s deal. A new LucidTalk poll conducted on 3-5 March and published in today's Belfast Telegraph reveals that Northern Irish voters support the agreement by a crushing 67% to 27%. However, while support is overwhelming among supporters of the Alliance/Green (98%) parties and Sinn Féin/SDLP (97%), it is just 38% among unionists. Seventy-three per cent of DUP voters say they would vote against the Windsor framework in a referendum.

Should unionism have a veto? Remain cities didn’t after 2016. Edinburgh (74%), Glasgow (67%), London, Manchester, Cardiff (60%), and Liverpool (58%) had no “brake”. Unionists with a strategic mindset would realise that their campaign for a hard Brexit bought them political influence at the expense of the union that was supposed to be their overriding concern. Demographic and social trends are against them and, if they had any sense, they would be reaching for the life raft offered by Jim O’Callaghan, Fianna Fáil’s spokesman on justice in the Irish lower house. In a blueprint for a united Ireland, O’Callaghan points out that the unionist vote accounts for 1% of the UK total but would comprise 11% of the Irish electorate with commensurate influence under a multi-party, coalition system. He also argues for constitutional provisions that would guarantee cabinet positions for unionists and the relocation of an empowered senate to Stormont.

Unification isn’t the only solution to the perennial Northern Ireland problem. Another would be to formalise its “unique position” and assign the province an in-and-out status similar to San Marino, Andorra, and Monaco – an enclave with special access to and free movement in both markets. The DUP and the Conservative right will hate the idea - like they hate any idea that isn’t full sovereignty - but this is the path they chose.

1. While I’ve never forgotten the quote (in The Guardian, I assume), Google can’t find it.

2. Read fellow Substacker Nick Cohen’s February 2021 Frost profile for a full sense of the man: "The inexorable rise of David Frost is a lesson to us. It shows there are civil servants who so want to be politicised that they yearn to become politicians, as long as they do not have to stand for election in the process".