Ben Lowry: Unionists have slowly lost faith in any idea of the best of both worlds from the EU and UK

The question is relevant because both parties in recent days have defended access to the EU single market.

In a new year email from Sir Jeffrey Donaldson to DUP members, the party leader said he wanted to remove the harm done by the protocol by “safeguarding our place in the UK internal market ... whilst retaining our access to the EU single market. These objectives are not mutually exclusive...”

Then the UUP told our political editor David Thompson this week that they “welcome Northern Ireland’s continued access to the the EU’s single market alongside ongoing and essential membership of the UK internal market”.

They said the vast EU single market “represents an enormous opportunity for Northern Ireland businesses and for inward investment”.

Sir Jeffrey did not use the phrase ‘best of both worlds’, unlike his predecessor Peter Robinson, who in November said Northern Ireland “could have virtually the best of both worlds with having access in a seamless way, both to the UK market and the European market”. (Note the caveat ‘virtually’).

Sammy Wilson MP has openly contradicted both Sir Jeffrey and Mr Robinson on their claims.

A problem for the DUP is that this idea of NI getting the best of both worlds was popular in 2017, when in the run-up to the so-called backstop agreed by the UK and EU over Northern Ireland, there was excitement – even among unionists – at the notion of such a win-win scenario, but over time there has been a gradual understanding that the ‘best of both worlds,’ if it exists, comes at a huge cost.

Here are some best of both worlds scenarios, descending from the most desirable for unionists:

​

1. Northern Ireland remains entirely in the UK internal market, and has no barriers, indeed no legal change with the rest of UK, despite Great Britain having left the EU single market. At the same time, NI, alone in the UK, has full, unfettered access – no checks or forms whatsoever – to the EU single market, but no legal exposure to EU laws.

This would be a very good outcome for unionists, in some ways akin to a concept called mutual enforcement, because there would no damage at all to our place in the UK yet totally untouched trade to and from the EU, as if within its single market. Indeed such an arrangement would be perfect for almost any society that got it. But it is a fantasy that was never on offer from the EU.

​

2. Northern Ireland technically leaves the UK internal market but stays in the EU single market, and goods moving between NI and GB do so under EU trade law, albeit with no checks, no form filling, no EU oversight over such movements

This would be the best of both worlds for Northern Ireland in terms of trade movements because no goods would be hindered in any direction: From Bangor to Birmingham and vice versa, or from Belfast to Berlin and vice versa. But even this best of both world scenario would mean constitutional damage of EU law having primacy over UK law re NI trade. That primacy would be essentially unenforced and essentially invisible, but the EU would hardly agree to zero enforcement.

​

3. Northern Ireland leaves the UK internal market but stays in the EU single market for manufactured goods, which move back and forth under EU law, with some checks, form filling, all under EU oversight.

This last scenario essentially what has happened under, first the Northern Ireland Protocol, agreed with the EU by Boris Johnson in late 2019. The impact of some barriers were mitigated first by unilateral grace periods introduced by the UK, then by the Windsor Framework deal a year ago, and might be diminished further by a deal between the DUP and Rishi Sunak.

This means ‘some’ of both worlds, but only the ‘best’ of the EU, not UK. Free movement to and from the EU. Free movement of goods Northern Ireland to Great Britain, but not the other way. GB-NI trade would be hindered, in a way most people will not notice, but slowly diminishing our highly integrated place in the UK economy. This scenario, which is being introduced in stages via the Windsor Framework, causes constitutional harm to NI’s place in the UK – or, observers like Jim Allister put it, irreparable harm. This scenario is hardly best of both.

​

While unionist opposition to the cost of EU access has grown as its implications have sunk in, the DUP has intermittently cited the benefits of EU access over the three years since the trade barrier became live.

Meanwhile, the Ulster Unionists – who were scathing when the DUP accepted the first iteration of Boris Johnson’s NI Protocol in October 2019, on the basis of “democratic consent for any specific alignment between Northern Ireland and the EU, and therefore any regulatory divergence with Great Britain” – now almost gush about EU opportunities.

EU access is something the Alliance Party might advocate, being agnostic on the Union, but it comes at the cost of internal UK trade.

Unionism is in a such difficult place that I think it can plausibly say: our options are poor, we cannot overturn EU law for now and have to make the most of a bad situation. But it cannot present such an outcome as good for unionists – unless unionism now means the British and European unions.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor