Ben Lowry: Unionism needs a debate - about pragmatism versus principle​

​This is a welcome retreat from his criticism of “naysayers” in the aftermath of the agreement, which looked thin-skinned. Far from being upset about his critics, Sir Jeffrey should be delighted and relieved that he is experiencing so little challenge to his deal.

There is nothing remotely akin to the onslaught that David Trimble received in the immediate aftermath of the 1998 Belfast Agreement that the DUP now cites so relentlessly. Criticism that Mr Trimble, later Lord Trimble, got from unionists inside his party and out.

We have now just passed one of the most remarkable fortnights in the history of unionism. Northern Ireland has suffered its worst constitutional setback to its position in the UK since its foundation, and criticism of it all has been astonishingly muted (the disastrous 1985 Anglo Irish Agreement, while it enabled all the problems that have flowed for unionism thereafter, was a bigger political failure and a worse moment of isolation for unionism than now, and yet its consultative role for the Republic was far more limited in scope than is the current application of EU law).

For all the anguished commentary about the DUP’s 12 party officers and the party executive and the DUP rank-and-file, not a single MLA has voiced significant misgivings about the ongoing trade barrier. There has been no wave of defections from the party, not even a trickle. Several DUP peers and MPs made clear that they oppose the deal in noteworthy speeches over the past week. Even so, my observation prior to the deal that it was hard to see a DUP return to Stormont without a rupture has not been borne out. I did caveat that observation by saying that it might all be a replay of the muted DUP return to Stormont in 2020 (I do not have room here to recap on why I thought that New Decade New Approach, and the then NI Secretary Julian Smith’s central role in it, was so bad, and the DUP and UUP response to it so disappointing).

That this time Lord Dodds, Lord Morrow and Sammy Wilson have made clear their opposition to the Safeguarding the Union document shows that there is more internal DUP opposition than there was to the 2020 Stormont return. But the latest unionist concession to get devolution back – accepting, albeit grudgingly, an Irish Sea border – is much greater than it was four years ago so you would expect the opposition to be more significant, yet it is only marginally so.

The Orange Order and the Loyalist Communities Council have been either silent or quietly supportive of the deal. The loyalist Moore Holmes wrote recently that “the Irish Sea Border will still exist, but it would do so in a limited capacity, less than what it did before. That is the very definition of progress” – hardly a fierce rejection of the deal.

One reason for the unionist support is that it is widely believed that the Irish Sea border has been removed. Such a perception is good for Sir Jeffrey and his party, and it is good the Rishi Sunak’s government. But it is not good for unionism.

The Irish Sea border has patently not been removed and to say so is either misleading, or else it betrays a failure to understand the fundamentals of Northern Ireland’s position under the EU Customs Code and under the jurisdiction of the EU for hundreds of regulations. This does not just amount to the movement of goods but also whether or not we can have particular goods, of which the coming EU dental amalgam filling ban is just the latest illustration. Border control posts are being constructed in NI.

It is wrong to imply that only goods travelling on to the Republic-EU will be checked because component goods that will be sent to manufacturers that might sell on their finished product to the EU will also be checked. In any event, even the complete abolition of checks would not alter the fact that the boundary where the underlying laws change has been moved to a point between Great Britain and NI.

To understand how objectionable that should be to unionists just consider how objectionable the reverse was to nationalist Ireland. It was made crystal clear, indeed explicitly so in a speech that Simon Coveney gave in Belfast in November 2017, before even the backstop, that Dublin would not accept a major change in jurisdiction at the Irish land border, even if there was no checking at the frontier, not even if checks happened in, say, Ballymena or Bangor. He said that “ ... whether those border checks happen on the border, or in business premises or in farmyards is a different issue, but as far as I am concerned that is all border infrastructure preventing free movement, preventing trade ... and we won’t stand for it”.

Do I imply that nothing has been achieved by Sir Jeffrey? No. He makes a good case that the DUP quitting Stormont finally focused minds in Boris Johnson’s government, and set in train a process that led to the Windsor Framework, which for all its overblown claims was a notable improvement on what would have been the full implementation of the NI Protocol. By staying out over the last year the DUP achieved further easements and helped secure a notable, albeit belated, UK retreat from its stance of neutrality on NI (which accelerated all-Ireland thinking and which has been a hopeless response to overtly pro nationalist Irish officials).

Peter Robinson always made a case that a Stormont boycott would only have limited application.

As editor of the only unionist daily newspaper I have always said that we will cover both sides of the unionist debate. But the debate now is between pragmatism and principle. The arguments for a Stormont return were compelling, but mainly because of the outrageous threat of an increased say for Ireland in NI matters. The arguments against Stormont are compelling too, indeed the argument that devolution itself undermines the Union. This very week it has been disturbing to hear unionists as shrill in their criticism of UK largesse as Sinn Fein.

We need the unionist debate that Sir Jeffrey welcomes, and you will find it on these pages.