Ben Lowry: Northern Ireland needs a new business group that has as its sole aim lobbying for our full place in UK internal market

It was the work of many hands.

Brexiteers blame Theresa May and her negotiators for chronic weakness after she became prime minister, weeks after the 2016 referendum until he took over in 2019.

But unionists were largely quiet and complacent during the ‘phoney war’, from the June plebiscite result until the Irish backstop 18 months later in December 2017, when little happened. For much of that time the Article 50 process to quit the EU had not even been triggered.

This newspaper, for example, backed a soft Brexit as the best compromise between the overall UK eurosceptic impulse to leave and the need to keep the Union together, by not inflaming separatists. A Norway deal, which would have meant keeping all the UK in the vast EU single market, would have removed any need for checks on standards of goods.

But there was no debate within unionism. Some politicians began to cite as a mantra that Northern Ireland had to leave both single market and tariff free customs union. Guess how much success that had? None. NI is, in effect, staying in both of those EU structures.

Change at the Irish land border in terms of trade was not inconceivable if it was gradual and slight.

With hindsight almost all unionists failed to appreciate the significance of two major changes in recent decades that sharpened the land border, with no protest: Ireland adopting metric and the euro.

Both changes underlined the daily consequences of the reality of two different jurisdictions (euros are more different from pounds in value than were punts, and it takes time to grasp the speed limit difference between kmh and mph).

For Brexit, however, to introduce both regulatory change and tariffs at the land border at once would have been a huge challenge. The media seized on every cited risk to peace from border checks.

Something that was always going to be hard became almost impossible when business representative organisations supported Theresa May’s backstop, as did big businesses in NI such as Bombardier.

It is often said that Mrs May’s deal was better for the Union than Boris Johnson’s, but hers had no escape route for NI from EU control. His does, via Stormont (albeit so unlikely as to be largely theoretical).

Mrs May’s deal also set the scene for tariffs in the Irish Sea. Her backstop put NI in ‘the’ EU customs union and Great Britain in ‘a’ customs union. This was a looming crisis if GB broke free of such a plan, leaving NI unable to do so.

The constitutional expert Prof Vernon Bognador wrote in February 2018 that a customs union with the EU was the worst of all worlds (see link below). Only Turkey tolerated one. As I thought more about such points, it became increasingly clear to me that middle England would not tolerate such a set up for long.

This is why, in November 2018, the morning after her exit deal was published, I spoke passionately against it on the Nolan Show.

The various versions of the backstop enshrined an idea that there could be no change at the land border. A foolish UK ruled out CCTV at it (polling showed that even most nationalists accepted cameras).

But the near unanimous backing of business groups for the backstop was cited ceaselessly – in the Dail, Westminster, Europe, and the US.

People such as Simon Coveney put particular emphasis on how the Ulster Farmers Union supported it.

Unionist opposition to the backstop was so muted that some unionists almost backed it on legal advice (as opposed to treaty change).

It was an extraordinary time. Barely anyone, apart from Jim Allister, the commentator Owen Polley and a few others, spoke up for our most important trade, with Great Britain (as a result of us being part of the UK internal market).

Some business groups said they were apolitical, and wanted no disruption north-south/east-west and most of all to prevent a crash Brexit. But the idea that cross border trade, above all else, must be unfettered went without serious challenge.

When the Alternative Arrangements Commission (AAC), with their team of international experts, came to Belfast to unveil their findings on how there could be legal divergence between UK/NI and the EU/Republic, but also an open border, it got minimal publicity.

Two reports from respected outlets cited things such as a Tory MP on AAC saying he was still pro the backstop (baffling given that he was presenting an alternative to it) and a business person at the launch who was critical of AAC’s ideas.

The story of how we have ended up with a barrier to movements of goods within the UK is a remarkable one. But its most striking aspect is how business failed to defend a key to our prosperity – unfettered internal UK trade –when many organised voices insisted that lesser cross-border trade be untouched.

Northern Ireland now needs a business organisation that focuses solely on protecting what remains of our place in the UK internal market. And there are enough businesses that have done well out of that market to sponsor such a group.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter deputy editor

• Ben Lowry: Despite funeral breach, SF is back lecturing public on TV

Prof Bognador in 2018 on why a customs union is not feasible

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