Ben Lowry: This week the full range of unionist MLAs united against the Irish Sea border
This week all unionists in Stormont united to oppose the Irish Sea border. It was a significant moment.
The 36 unionist MLAs who do not have speaker responsibilities voted against the new arrangements for trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. They were defeated by 48 other MLAs in the so-called democratic consent motion, which was introduced by Rishi Sunak’s government in last year’s Windsor Framework after criticism that Stormont was not given a say in the various proposals for post Brexit trading arrangements relating to the province.
In one sense Tuesday’s vote was an emphatic defeat for unionists. But the fact that unionists came together to oppose the trade barrier, given the multiple strands of unionism that have emerged in recent years, including some who have flirted with supporting the idea of the ‘best of both worlds’ (EU and UK), is the latest sign that the much heralded decline of unionists is not assured.
Even prior to this week’s vote, we have seen two positive developments for unionism within the last six months.
The first was unionists pulling back ahead of nationalists in votes in July’s general election, 43% to 40%. Here is a link to a column I wrote then about why I felt that the BBC had ignored unionists again becoming the largest bloc of voters, compared to the coverage of SF coming top in the 2022 Stormont election, and of nationalists getting more votes than unionists in the 2023 council elections.
The second positive development for unionism was Sinn Fein’s poor result in the recent Dail elections in the Republic (I also felt the BBC failed to highlight this failure as much as it did SF’s TD breakthrough in 2020).
This year has not been a good one for the supposedly inevitable ‘new Ireland’.
Another thing to watch in terms of the advance of Irish nationalism is whether Sir Keir Starmer and Hillary Benn come to feel that their gushing ‘reset’ with the Irish government has failed to reap dividends.
For example, Ireland – which is not slow to announce its financial largesse for public projects in Northern Ireland – is paying barely anything on its defence, yet enjoys UK security protection at a time Donald Trump wants Europe to increase defence spending. The UK already spends more on its military, as a share of national economy, than other European nations, so will struggle to increase that given other big pressures on public expenditure.
Previous UK governments have come to lose patience with Ireland on some matter or another. Ted Heath’s 1970-74 government did, over Troubles security issues, as did Labour (1974 to 1979).
Margaret Thatcher’s government, in power until 1990, thought Ireland had not tackled terrorism in the way that London believed was due under the 1985 Anglo Irish Agreement.
Even Tony Blair’s post 1997 government had strained relations at times with Ireland. Dublin was annoyed by the decision to suspend Stormont in 2002. And Peter Mandelson, NI secretary 1999-2001, came to the conclusion that republicans were engaged in a war of political attrition to replace their violence.
The post 2010 Tory government in its final years pushed back with greater force against Ireland than we have seen any UK government do in recent decades.
Not only was Ireland seen as siding with Brussels in taking an unwaveringly tough line against the UK after Brexit, the Irish establishment took an impliedly superior attitude to the UK’s response to covid in 2020. But such scoffing was as nothing compared to the decision of the Irish government to sue the UK over the Legacy Act’s conditional amnesty for historic killers.
This from a country that has entirely escaped scrutiny on legacy, such as its refusal to extradite terrorists (102 out of 110 requests rejected from 1973-97) and whose post 1994 de facto amnesty for the IRA was obvious even before their ex justice minister Michael McDowell admitted it.
While Starmer’s government has largely capitulated to Ireland over its legal case, I wonder what it will think if the new legacy structures seem to be unbalanced against ex squaddies from Labour strongholds?
This week unionist MLAs, from Claire Sugden to Timothy Gaston, rejected the Irish Sea border. It is a long story as to how we ended up with such an internal UK border, and how opposition to it has been so mild. The latter is partly because few people understand trade. Now, however, the full range of unionists have come to see the problems.
As one day they might on legacy too.
• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor