Henry McDonald: The quiet retreat from ‘rigorous implementation’ of the Northern Ireland Protocol

The policy in question once called “rigorous implementation.”

It was the stated position of the Alliance Party in confederacy with Sinn Fein, the SDLP and the NI Greens that there should be no tweaks, changes or elements of the Northern Ireland Protocol ever being overridden by the British Government.

Back in 2020 the four pro-EU parties wanted a full, undiluted, unbending Protocol that while guaranteeing no hard border on the island of Ireland placed a new frontier down the middle of the Irish Sea, which in unionist eyes has since de-coupled Northern Ireland from Great Britain economically and constitutionally.

Now midway through 2022 we hear a very different message from at least two of those parties that signed a joint letter urging “rigorous implementation” of the post-Brexit trade deal.

On Thursday after their meeting with Richard Neal and his colleagues from the US House of Representatives, the Alliance Party were singing a different tune from the one they were performing two years ago.

Alliance deputy leader Stephen Farry revealed that he had suggested to the US delegation that they use their influence in Brussels to urge the EU to be more “flexible” in negotiations aimed at fixing the Protocol.

When asked what the Congress members’ response to that request was, Mr Farry said: “They absolutely concur with that and indeed they stressed to us that that was the message handed to Maros Sefkovic only a few days ago” when they met in the Belgian capital.

It is certainly a long way from “rigorous” to “flexible” and underlines how facts on the ground (or more accurately facts on sea and at the ports) have shifted Alliance’s stance.

The SDLP and even Sinn Fein have talked in recent days about practical changes that may be needed to re-calibrate the post-Brexit trade arrangement albeit with all Europhile parties urging the DUP to rejoin the Executive now.

The DUP is likely to take a very different lesson from the one that commercial reality has taught the pro-Protocol parties - pressure can work.

The quiet abandonment of “rigorous implementation” combined with the Liz Truss legislation empowering the UK to unilaterally alter the Protocol will embolden the DUP to hold out until they see the Bill in its entirety,