Ben Habib: The disaster of the Irish Sea border is here to stay, so let’s cut corporation tax in Northern Ireland

​You would have had to have been living under a political rock not by now to know the Protocol broke the Acts of Union; partitioned the UK; subjugated Northern Ireland to foreign laws; and trampled the principle of cross community consent. In revealing all this our campaign was successful.

But, instead of our government moving to correct the ills we revealed, Prime Minister Sunak, (mis)sold a new version of the Protocol as a solution to it. Indeed, his Windsor Framework is worse than the original. With the first version there was a theoretical way for Stormont ending it in 2024; that has been removed. The red and green lanes do not work to ameliorate trade with the GB. The so called Stormont brake is a fallacy. I could go on but I am sure you get the picture. The Windsor Protocol was passed by the Commons with 515 votes in favour and only 29 against. There is no easy way back from such an emphatic confirmation of the Irish Sea border.

Virtually every constitutional step taken by Westminster since at least 1985 has damaged the Union. With successive defeats and forever facing an existential threat, political unionism seems to be in a state of chronic depression. Northern Ireland’s economy was suffering a long time before the Protocol came into existence. This was partly due to the massive unfair advantage of the Republic’s lower corporation tax rate and the flood of funding it received from the EU (including British money), but also due to political laziness inculcated by handouts from London and general malaise.

So used is political unionism to having to say “no” or “never”, it has lost optimism. Every lost battle strengthens the feeling of betrayal, robbing it of security and forcing it to double down – never to surrender. Its link to GB is not expressed through all the wonderful things that offers but through a dogged refusal to give it up and an addiction to those same handouts from London.

But, as much as there is cause for complaint, our central aim of maintaining the Union will not be advanced by complaint alone. The evidence of this is there for all to see. Sinn Fein has become the largest party in the assembly and local councils. Political unionism needs to find its mojo. Some are calling for unionist parties to merge and cease splitting their own vote. A merger may be sensible, but it would, on its own, be too little too late. And, frankly, given the many differing types of unionism, spending months or years trying to forge such a merger would waste vital time.

The fundamental problem is a failure to articulate a bright future for Northern Ireland within the Union. Northern Ireland needs to yank itself up by its boot straps and become a dynamic vibrant economy in its own right. The province must be an aspirational place to live. If British citizens from across the UK moved to Belfast, the Union automatically would be assured.

The Protocol has done immense damage to traded goods between NI and GB. It has had much less impact on services, especially financial services and all the industries which deal through intellectual resource. This is where we must focus. The first and massive step to be taken is to use powers conferred in 2015 by the Corporation Tax (Northern Ireland) Act to slash corporation tax. With a rate of tax double that of the Republic, Northern Ireland has been bleeding competitiveness. This must be stopped and the flow reversed (for those fretting the loss of London’s handouts, there is a way to introduce a much lower tax rate without losing receipts).

A low tax would immediately have British and Irish businesses relocating to Belfast. The centre of gravity which the Protocol had swung away from GB would swing back. And with the relocation of businesses would come an automatic improvement in all other parts of the economy, including infrastructure, housing and the leisure and retail industries to name a few. There would be more money to invest in education and creating opportunities for the young. Northern Ireland would become an aspirational place to live.

A dynamic economy would go a long way towards saving the Union and undoing the damage of the Protocol. Then there is my old bugbear, the self imposed isolation of political unionism in the province. Why do self-professed unionists turn their back to active politics on the mainland? It is a self contradiction which has come at a massive political cost. Had unionism genuinely been active on the mainland, there would not now even be a Protocol.

Instead, political unionism has relied on the Tories for the protection of the Union. That reliance has been repeatedly, and always will be, abused by the so called Conservative and Unionist Party (the ERG included!). It is high time for political unionism to wake up. If the aim is to assure Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom, its leaders must forge a plan for economic and political prosperity. By all means go on complaining, but for goodness sake get engaged and do something positive.

[Post script: none of the above advocates a return to Stormont. There should be no such return until the Protocol is gone and unionism has got its act together. Some will point out that the cut in tax would need sanctioning by Stormont – there are ways to achieve that out with the national assembly]