Owen Polley: The UK government is asking shop assistants to deliver its Windsor Framework propaganda to the public

Last week, the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) told this newspaper, “We are continuing to take forward work to implement the Windsor Framework, and are engaging the Northern Ireland parties as part of those efforts.”

If that means it does plan to take ‘unilateral control’, the development could be interpreted in one of a number of ways.

It could be seen as a purely practical measure, designed to avoid delays caused by the absence of local ministers. In other words, it might be intended to fill the ‘power vacuum’ cited by Politics Home.

Equally, it could be perceived as a threat to circumvent unionists and implement the framework in a way that ignores their concerns. That’s what the Ulster Unionist leader, Doug Beattie, hinted at, when he warned that the government was ‘siphoning off’ aspects of the framework to direct rule. This process, according to Mr Beattie, offered “final proof that (the UUP’s) call for the restoration of devolved government is the right one.”

Another interpretation is that ministers are trying to give the DUP an excuse for dropping its boycott of the executive. This theory suggests that, if the government takes sole responsibility for beefing up the sea border, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson and his party can deny that they are implementing the framework by restoring power-sharing.

In the real world, it’s difficult to see how the DUP could deploy that argument, without being accused of extreme slipperiness.

The ‘threat’ thesis, though, gained more traction last week when Chris Heaton-Harris announced a consultation into raising revenues in Northern Ireland. The secretary of state previously asked civil servants to investigate policies like reinstating prescription charges, raising university tuition fees and introducing a separate bill for water. Now he wants the public’s views on these proposals.

The idea that the government could force Northern Ireland’s finances onto a sustainable footing and impose some responsibility has been used before to surmount crises at Stormont. In 2007, Tony Blair’s Labour used the proposed introduction of water charges to pressure parties into the St Andrew’s Agreement.

The reaction this time, including from the DUP, suggested that any reformed executive will simply deliver more populist decisions and demand more money from the Treasury, rather than confront long-standing issues with crumbling infrastructure, an unreformed health service and a stretched budget.

It’s this exceptionalist and entitled attitude that meant that Northern Ireland could call upon few political friends and sympathisers, when the protocol and then the framework undermined our place in the Union.

Some politicians in London asked, with justification, why unionists now demanded to be treated like the rest of the UK, when in so many cases they were happy to be the odd region out, and indeed defended that status robustly.

There were traces of that rationale in a News Letter column by Lords Bew and Godson last Thursday.

The two peers have made compelling contributions to national debate, through the conservative think-tank Policy Exchange. But in this article they implied that, though the framework is ‘imperfect’, the DUP needs to ‘work with the grain’ and restore Stormont.

The difficulty with this way of thinking, which reliably asks unionists to accept a bit less Union on the promise that it will eventually secure their future in the UK, is that soon there will be little Union left to give.

While the government admittedly retains many economic powers over Northern Ireland, our ability to trade on the same basis as the rest of the country was at the heart of our place in the United Kingdom.

Unionists are not being purist when they allege that the protocol diluted the Union and that the framework in many ways makes our position worse. To anyone who watched the new arrangements being picked apart or followed how they are being implemented, this is an obvious truth.

The problem is that the desire to be treated as a full, integrated part of the UK is inconsistently articulated and patchily argued.

It seems that the government is not quite sure how the framework will operate, that they will see how many companies use the green lane when it opens, or continue to send parcels to Northern Ireland.

Unfortunately, we’ve already heard from many businesses that they don’t expect a significant improvement and that they’re frustrated with the lack of information they’ve received from the government. Indeed, companies like DPD and DHL have already compiled extensive lists of products they will no longer ship to Northern Ireland.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) sent retailers a script last week, designed to reassure customers about new labels that, thanks to the framework, are required on many products. The government is asking shop assistants to deliver its propaganda to the public.

Unionists may fail to combat all of this, and they’ve played a role in allowing it to happen, but it would be nice to see some recognition from the authorities of the scale of what is being imposed upon them, rather than constant entreaties to effectively lie back and think of Britain.