Alex Kane: A future border poll poses greater threat to Good Friday Agreement than Brexit

He could have been describing Boris Johnson.

The man is impossible to fathom or second guess.

If you bundled all of the foibles of English literature’s great comic characters into one new, fantastically grotesque character, you would have something resembling Johnson.

While not without extraordinary talent as a writer and public speaker, his lack of a filter pushes him further and yet further down the path of self-destructive recklessness.

That the consequence of such recklessness often involves spectacular U-turns and downright ‘porkies’ is neither here nor there: for him, truth is whatever he needs it to be at any particular time.

Last October, for example, he agreed to a Northern Ireland Protocol which left NI in semi-colonial status and angered all of unionism. He trumpeted it as part a of a ‘wonderful, oven-ready deal,’ included it in the Withdrawal Agreement and made the whole deal the centrepiece of his general election manifesto.

A year later he decided that this deal – his deal – was ‘contradictory’ and would need rewritten because it would leave NI isolated from the rest of the UK, something that was ‘unforeseen’ when he agreed to it last year.

That’s a lie. It was not unforeseen. I cannot think of a single unionist representative or observer (including this column a number of times) who did not point out that the protocol threatened NI’s position within the UK: although I also argued that the ultimate challenge would be a border poll, which is why I wanted all sections of unionism to start talking to each other and war-gaming all possibilities.

But Johnson, Cummings, the ERG and the Conservative parliamentary party all knew the risks within the protocol last October, because the DUP’s 10 MPs were briefing them on the dangers.

Mind you, Tony Blair and John Major were also aware of the threats to NI’s position within the UK, but I don’t remember them issuing joint statements about those risks.

Yet in yesterday’s Sunday Times they had a joint piece about Johnson’s new bill: ‘The government seeks to do so by the extraordinary pretence that breaking international law is necessary to “save the Good Friday Agreement”, which has given us peace in Northern Ireland for more than two decades and utterly changed the relationship between the UK and its nearest neighbour, the Republic of Ireland. We disagree. The government’s action does not protect the Good Friday Agreement – it imperils it.’

The Good Friday Agreement doesn’t even consider the possibility of a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. There’s nothing in the agreement which says that the UK – all of it – cannot make decisions about its own future. There’s nothing in the agreement which excludes NI from any future UK referendum on any subject.

There’s nothing in the agreement which says that if a majority in NI didn’t vote the same way as a majority across the rest of the UK, then NI shouldn’t be bound by the decision. Yet, on the basis of ‘nothing’ we are expected to concede the argument that the agreement and peace process itself is under threat.

Brexit doesn’t undermine the right of people in NI to identify themselves as Irish, British or both. Brexit doesn’t prevent a border poll at some point in the future. Brexit doesn’t stop the Assembly from functioning. Brexit doesn’t prevent the Irish government from establishing a Shared Island Unit and making preparations for a united Ireland. Brexit doesn’t prevent Sinn Fein from campaigning for a border poll.

Brexit doesn’t prevent other elements of nationalism from pursuing their own unity campaigns.

Brexit doesn’t open the doors to violence (although it doesn’t seem to prevent people who should know better from peddling the nonsense that it does). Brexit doesn’t mean the end of the agreement (although it does mean rethinking aspects of it). Brexit doesn’t mean ending a good UK/RoI relationship (even though EU negotiators seem willing to pay that price). And it’s worth noting that since SF only ever regarded it as a ‘transition phase to eventual unity’ their post-Brexit referendum concerns about the agreement ring a little hollow.

I voted for the Good Friday Agreement. I also voted to leave the EU. And yes, I did consider the impact that Leave might have on the agreement and British/Irish relations.

My conclusion was that there were no potential difficulties which could not, with goodwill and careful negotiation, be addressed and resolved to everyone’s mutual satisfaction.

Anyway, as a citizen of the UK who has had long-held, thought-through reservations about the EU, was I supposed to either not vote in a referendum on an issue which really mattered to me, or vote against my beliefs because of some unspecified or manufactured threats to the agreement and peace process?

To those who have concerns about Brexit’s impact on the agreement and peace process I would ask you this: doesn’t a border poll (which, as regular readers will know, I have no objection to) have potential consequences for the agreement, stability and peace process which are far greater than the consequences of Brexit?

Yet I’m not hearing any of you expressing reservations about that particular referendum. Maybe the mistake was not including the possibility of an EU referendum in the 1998 agreement.

Back to the ‘very observable curiosity’ that is Johnson and what he’s likely to do next. Who knows? He’s let unionism down three times since early 2019 and would do it again if he needed to.

His bill doesn’t actually resolve the key threat to unionism in the protocol. He may not get it through (he didn’t discuss it with many people first). He may abandon it if he gets other concessions from the EU. Like Dominic Cummings, he enjoys ‘creative destruction and ... breaking things’.

If unionism and Northern Ireland are casualties I’m not sure he would lose much sleep.

But I am sure I would never trust him..

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