Ben Lowry: At times unionism seems agreed on the seriousness of Northern Ireland Protocol

A striking feature of much of the coverage of the Northern Ireland Protocol is the way in which apparent support for it is talked up breathlessly.
(Left-Right) Ben Habib, Kate Hoey and Jim Allister at a rally against the Northern Ireland Protocol in Crossgar on Friday. You cannot remove core parts of sovereignty and say it doesn’t matter because NI is still in the UK. Photo: Brian Lawless/PA Wire(Left-Right) Ben Habib, Kate Hoey and Jim Allister at a rally against the Northern Ireland Protocol in Crossgar on Friday. You cannot remove core parts of sovereignty and say it doesn’t matter because NI is still in the UK. Photo: Brian Lawless/PA Wire
(Left-Right) Ben Habib, Kate Hoey and Jim Allister at a rally against the Northern Ireland Protocol in Crossgar on Friday. You cannot remove core parts of sovereignty and say it doesn’t matter because NI is still in the UK. Photo: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

This was apparent after the University of Liverpool poll late last year, which was seized on by sections of the media because it supposedly showed unionist support for the Irish Sea border.

But the same poll showed massive support, even among Irish republicans, for unfettered internal UK trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

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Thus those particular findings in that survey were rendered almost meaningless – respondents mostly wanted the protocol, but also wanted free trade across the Irish Sea, made impossible by the protocol.

We have also heard of findings in which the protocol, or other constitutional questions, are found to be of much less concern to voters than other matters such as the NHS.

If so, why do 80% of voters opt for parties that above all are identifiable by their position on the constitutional question, and typically have names that reflect that position?

There is a constant push to say that unionists do not care about the protocol. It is true that a section of unionism does not seem to be particularly bothered by the Irish Sea border, but then it is entirely legitimate to try to make them more concerned about it — to try to explain why something that might seem complex and of distant relevance to our lives is actually of great constitutional significance.

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I have heard pro Union interviewees struggling to respond in broadcasts in which the were put under pressure to accept the notion that the Northern Ireland Protocol is of no constitutional significance because we are still in the United Kingdom.

But this is an absurd point. Having unhindered trade within a country is one of the core characteristics of being a nation.

One thing that has been clear since October 2019 is how the number of people who understood the significance of a regulatory border was minimal, despite a preceding three years in which such a prospect had begun to emerge after the 2016 Brexit referendum.

I reported the run-up to that plebiscite closely, interviewing all the major pro and anti voices who came to Northern Ireland during the campaign, and I also reported extensively on the aftermath, and barely anyone mentioned the extraordinary prospect of the UK losing control of drug approvals in NI.

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John Larkin QC in the anti protocol court case rebutted the argument that the Irish Sea border is of no consequence. Nothing that Northern Ireland in its entirety remains part of the UK unless a majority of people vote otherwise in a referendum, he said this legal protection does not just refer to “the last vestige of sovereignty”.

In other words, you cannot strip away core parts of sovereignty and then say it doesn’t matter because NI is technically still in the Union.

The response of both the Ulster Unionist Party and the DUP to the protocol, and to the various iterations of the backstop that preceded it, has fluctuated — mainly due to the quest of both parties to get ‘moderate’ votes from the aforementioned unionists who seem little troubled by the protocol.

And yet at the Conservative Party conference in October, and at rallies such as last night in Crossgar, there are moments when all the parties come together to accept the seriousness of what has happened.

Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor