Belfast Agreement @25: London will never upset Sinn Fein or Dublin but it has no such fear of upsetting the DUP, writes John Wilson Foster

The 20th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement (GFA) was celebrated when new-model Stormont, its first offspring, had been inoperative since January 2017. At the time, the GFA had receded from the forefront of our attention; events had overtaken 1998 and even 2017. These included Brexit, which soon offered political opportunity to the EU to capture the weakest and slowest member of the fleeing UK family, and, of course, to Irish republicanism. Sinn Fein had collapsed the devolved government over the cash for ash scandal and demanded the promise of an Irish language act before they would return; this was duly promised by the British government and the NI government staggered to its feet again in early 2020.

Now Stormont is on the canvas again. But this time it is different. There was no impatient hoof-stamping from the mainland when Sinn Fein collapsed Stormont – the averted gaze and then bribery were the preferred responses. But there will be no bribe for the DUP to return; they are seen as the villains of the piece. Moreover, the GFA, though out of mind during Sinn Fein's three-year strategic pretend-sulk, is now centre stage in its silver anniversary guise and presented as something to be honoured by the DUP's ending of its truancy.

Why the two glaring disparities between then and now in the profile of the GFA and the response to Stormont's suspension? One reason for the second disparity is that the 2017 deserters were Sinn Fein and in 2022 the DUP. London does not grapple with Sinn Fein for fear of upsetting Dublin, Washington – and Sinn Fein themselves. But London has no fear of the DUP whose concerns, moreover, it shows no signs of respecting.

The second reason is the difference between the two bones of contention: the RHI scandal and the Windsor Framework (which Lord Frost tells us is just the Protocol re-named). If the collapse of devolved government this time around seems more important than before, it is because it threatens Brexit for Britain: getting Brexit done for the mainland and patching things up with the EU once that is done and dusted. NI can't be allowed to impede this objective.

Nor can any objections to the Windsor Framework from mainland commentators be permitted to block the goalmouth. Columnists in The Spectator, Unherd, Spiked, Conservative Home, The Scotsman, Briefings for Britain and elsewhere have sided with the DUP against what they see as the anti-democratic and anti-sovereignty nature of the framework. Support for a DUP stance by thoughtful commentators on the mainland is unique in my experience. Yet it has been ignored by our lawmakers and the mainstream media. Those who champion the framework also champion the GFA. While they include some unionists (the UUP at the political level), they also include, for their own reasons be it said, Sinn Fein, the Irish government, the EU, and the American administration which is on sorry autopilot under Biden. Add to these, the SDLP and Alliance. And Whitehall.

The economic benefits of the framework are the familiar carrot dangled in front of unionists (the stick is Whitehall's threatened reform of Stormont to neutralise the DUP). This time around, the carrot is Northern Ireland's hybrid economic status in both the UK and EU, the having-your-cake-and-eating-it gambit. This solution separates unionists' material lives from their status as UK citizens, promising economic gain in return for sending into the long grass the question of Northern Ireland's status in the UK. It may be a form of bribery bordering on blackmail. Or perhaps a case of ignorance of what being British means to unionists who reject out of hand the notion of living against their will outside the UK. President Biden, vaguely promising American investment, combines ignorance, bribery and distaste for the UK and unionists alike. NI's reduced status as a British country worries him not a jot.

Once again, economic inducement divides unionist opinion. After Biden's University of Ulster speech, the UUP leader Doug Beattie is quoted as saying: “The president’s visit to Belfast is an indication of the scale of opportunity that stands to be grasped for our people. I believe this opportunity must be grasped by a restored Assembly and Executive ... The next 25 years must be about delivering opportunities and prosperity for all our people."

Go back to Stormont, honour the GFA, accept the Windsor Framework and exploit the possibilities of being economically half in and half out of both the UK and EU. By contrast, at the time of writing, the DUP (and TUV) have so far refused to darken Stormont's doors because the framework has seriously injured NI's place in the Union. The UUP have apparently squared their new enthusiasm for the framework with what their former leader (and co-architect of the GFA), David Trimble, wrote shortly before he died: "Make no mistake about it, the protocol does not safeguard the Good Friday Agreement. It demolishes its central premise by removing the assurance that democratic consent is needed to make any change to the status of Northern Ireland." (Lord Trimble’s essay on this point was republished by the News Letter and is on our website, see link below)

If the squaring has legal foundation acceptable to unionism, it needs to be spelled out. One can see the attraction of economic prosperity to those who wish to unite the population of Northern Ireland ("our people"), since the constitutional question is fundamentally divisive while employment and affluence seem to be neither blue nor green. It is a laudable aspiration. Moreover, we should celebrate the GFA because it helped to bring about the laying down of arms, if not the actual beating of swords into ploughshares. (It seems many swords were stashed against a rainy political day.) As a peacekeeping achievement, the GFA has been a tremendous success. On the question of truth and reconciliation, on the other hand, there has been little of either. Still, plaudits for those framers and supporters who thought they had created a settlement and normalised the temperature of our feverish political scene.

But in no country can the economy be wholly separated from the country's political structure. Besides, an economy is by nature a fluid thing that also reflects the country's politics in the identities of its trading partners. The Windsor Framework will impede trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK and promote greater trade with the Republic of Ireland. And any lessening of the ties between Great Britain and Northern Ireland vibrates with constitutional implication. Championing the framework condones a threat that will almost certainly grow as trade between north and south enlarges and diversifies, and begins to acquire greater EU and Irish characteristics.

Indeed, the entanglement of Northern Ireland's economy in the EU's and Ireland's economies (and without accompanying say) could lead to something even worse. The EU and its proxy the Republic will retain leverage over sectors of the Northern Ireland economy and might well decide to exert it for ends that are both economic and political. The use of what is known in international law circles as economic coercion is not inconceivable. Economic coercion is the imposition of economic costs in pursuit of political concessions.

The GFA has proven just as fluid in its effects. Originally signed by a coalition of the willing, it was possible for some years to overlook the problem at its foundation: the party-political entrenching of constitutional division. The SDLP and UUP gave way to Sinn Fein and the DUP, a coalition of the unwilling. This generated a sectarian interpretation of the agreement. It became for unionists a settlement (firmly inside the UK) and for nationalist activists a pathway (away from the UK towards Dublin).

While unionists were wrong or naive, since the agreement provided for the possibility of a southward reorientation, Sinn Fein, by pushing hard for a united Ireland, especially after 2016, violated the agreement's spirit which was that of co-existence and Steady As She Goes. For many ordinary nationalists and ordinary unionists, it was a chance for Northern Ireland to breathe deeply and begin again. The protocol has continued the regression the GFA was already suffering.

What the careers of both the GFA and Brexit have shown is what the race and gender activists would call the ‘intersectionality' of our problem. To know Northern Ireland is to understand how the economy, language, education, legality and the past (when understood as ‘legacy’) dynamically intersect while they strain between two opposing constitutional aspirations, one far more active and energetic than the other. Those who think that the Windsor Framework solves the problem of the protocol by reducing trade inconveniences just don't get it or want to get it.

This intersectionality seems barely understood by unionists but is thoroughly understood by nationalist activists who for the past century have known that culture is the root-system of nationalist politics. For them, the protocol and the ‘process’ part of the GFA ‘peace process’ are cultural threads of an unfolding narrative. Pursued with determination, there could be incremental cultural changes that cause Northern Ireland to mesh increasingly with the Republic so that over time it becomes unrecognisable as part of the UK. In that situation a border poll might not even be needed.

• Professor John Wilson Foster is co-editor with W.B. Smith of The Idea of the Union (2021) and author of The Space-Blue Chalcedony: Earth's Crises and the Tyler Bounty (2020)

I feel betrayed by the protocol, which rips the heart out of the 1998 deal, wrote David Trimble