Protocol concerns cannot be dismissed as loyalist petulance
It’s reckless to allow a few hiccups around trade undo the delicate balance of power in Northern Ireland, writes
REPEATEDLY throughout Brexit talks, then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s government raised the prospect of violence by dissident republican terrorists as an argument why there could never be a return to a hard border on the island of Ireland.
Leo even went to a dinner of European leaders in Brussels around this time and brandished a newspaper front page from 1972 about the bombing of a Border post which left nine people dead.
His tánaiste, Simon Coveney, said afterwards on Twitter that the attack illustrated the “politics and emotion” which were informing the Irish government’s stance.
Their efforts resulted in the Northern Ireland Protocol, which recognised the North’s “unique circumstances” by effectively keeping it within the remit of EU governance.
All those years of negotiation to protect the gains of the 1998 peace deal have now resulted, just weeks later, in threats to the continuation of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA). They’re just not the threats that were anticipated.
Instead it is loyalists, rather than republicans, who have now officially, albeit temporarily, withdrawn their support for the GFA over concerns at how the protocol is damaging trade, and the broader relationship between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
It’s a classic example of failing to see the real threat because you’re concentrating too heavily on a different one.
It shouldn’t have been beyond the powers of prediction to anticipate that, if a land border would anger nationalists, then a border in the Irish Sea might have the same effect on unionists. Instead the possibility that the protocol might radicalise pro-union opinion was ignored. A land border was regarded as an existential threat; a border in the Irish Sea was seen merely as an administrative tweak.
The withdrawal of support for the GFA by loyalists is not entirely as a result of the protocol. There has been discontent about the workings of the Executive for some time now.
Nor should the statement by the so-called Loyalist Communities Council — which speaks for organisations that, between them, have murdered hundreds of innocent people — be treated as if it was some wise, objective utterance. Loyalists may have prefaced their latest comments by saying that any protest against the protocol should be “peaceful and democratic”, but such caveats mean little when passions become inflamed.
Loyalists were wrong to push the panic button so quickly, while niggles in post-Brexit trade were still being ironed out.
There were other ways to express legitimate concern at risks to the “unfettered access for goods, services, and citizens throughout the
United Kingdom”.
But it would be equally foolish to dismiss this simply as a petulant bout of foot-stamping by loyalist paramilitaries.
Alarm at what the protocol means for Northern Ireland’s place in the union is shared across the board by middleof-the-road unionists, including those who were and are most passionately in favour of staying in the EU. There is no point in the Taoiseach setting up a Shared Island Unit if it simply ignores these people’s concerns and fears.
The British government was equally wrong to unilaterally extend the “grace period” on procedures and checks without first informing the EU, especially after protesting so loudly when Brussels briefly did the same over the supply of vaccines last month.
What can’t be denied is the protocol has seriously disrupted trade into Northern Ireland. Figures published last week show 20pc of customs checks in the entire EU are now being carried out in Northern Ireland, a region with less than half of 1pc of the population.
Those who opposed Britain leaving the EU insist this is merely the inevitable consequence of Brexit itself, but it hardly seems reasonable or proportionate. It certainly does not seem very neighbourly to unionists for the Irish to be so dismissive of the disruption caused by obsessively checking incoming pot plants or the labels on packages. This willingness on both sides to play games with Northern Ireland just in order to get one over on the other couldn’t be more reckless. It’s not very far-thinking either.
The narrative in political and media circles in Ireland since Brexit has been that it makes a united Ireland more likely, because middle-class, pro-EU unionists would rather throw in their lot with Dublin and retain the benefits of EU membership. Perhaps nationalists still think unionist anger with the protocol will have the same outcome.
It’s more likely, however, that it will confirm their fears and suspicions that the Irish Government sees the protocol as a way of detaching Northern Ireland permanently from the UK. If Foreign Affairs Minister Coveney thinks Britain’s actions prove it cannot be trusted as a negotiating partner, why should unionists trust Dublin either when it backs measures which are harming Northern Ireland?
Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was surely right last week when he said that both nationalists and unionists have allowed their competing perceptions of the constitutional status of Northern Ireland to become confused with their feelings about Brexit, when the two issues are and must be entirely separate.
What isn’t being admitted is that this confusion was deliberately and recklessly fostered throughout Brexit talks, and that those pigeons are now coming home to roost.
Ultimately, it’s just about stamping a few documents to allow trade to flow freely. These goods have been coming and going across national borders for years. The goods haven’t changed. The single market cannot possibly be so fragile that a few shrubs threaten its very integrity.
Some human give-andtake, rather than bureaucratic rigidity, would go a long way to restoring goodwill.
‘The protocol has seriously disrupted trade into the North’