Owen Polley: DUP and UUP need to be honest that the Irish Sea border is not about identity but a threat to our place in the UK

Over the summer, it seemed little progress had been made in any negotiations between the DUP and the government on the Northern Ireland Protocol and the Windsor Framework.

At his party’s conference last weekend, though, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson spoke warmly about devolution. He told the UTV’s View From Stormont programme that he was confident a deal could be struck “in the next few weeks and months”.

At Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Question Time, Rishi Sunak described a DUP proposal for an East-West Council, “to discuss and collaborate on the trading and many other opportunities presented by the Union,” as having “considerable merit”. And he went on to praise the contents of Sir Jeffrey’s conference speech.

If this wasn’t choreography, it was taking on that appearance.

While the rumours about an imminent agreement were fomenting, the Cabinet Office minister, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, claimed in a letter to a House of Lords’ committee that concerns about the Windsor Framework had not materialised. This flimsy analysis was reached 11 days after it came into operation.

The government has operated the new arrangements for green and red lanes with a ‘light touch’, so far, but some traders immediately encountered difficulties.

The green lane is initially in operation only for food, but it will expand to cover other types of goods next year. When this happens, the economist, Dr Esmond Birnie, estimates that 75% of the private sector in Northern Ireland will be prevented from using it. The phased introduction of the green lane is intended to obscure these subtleties.

Even so, logistics companies have already experienced problems with unexplained inspections, confusion about paperwork, glitches in new computer systems, issues with groupage and concerns about high volumes of goods moving through the red lane. They are trying their best to operate as smoothly as possible, but they don’t recognise the government’s picture of everything going well.

Some of these problems might be alleviated, though certainly not solved, by reducing checks in the green lane or permitting a greater range of goods to pass through it. It would do nothing, though, to free Northern Irish companies from the burden of EU law, or address the fact that aspects of sovereignty over this territory have passed from the UK to Brussels.

That reality was not acknowledged either by Doug Beattie in new comments about the implementation of the framework and its effects on the Union. “Northern Ireland has not left the UK, I’m as British today as I felt last month,” the UUP leader said on X (formerly Twitter) during one of his prolific social media sessions, “My sense of identity is not that fragile that it is undermined by a trade deal.”

The Ulster Unionists currently claim that the DUP’s boycott of Stormont is damaging Northern Ireland’s place in the UK more than the Irish Sea border. That argument can only be undermined by Mr Beattie’s attempt to portray the Union as a matter of identity and the framework as a ‘trade deal’ that does not impinge upon the constitution.

It was like Naomi Long’s facile remark about identity not being defined by, “where you get your sausages from”. At least, though, Mrs Long is leading a party that claims to be agnostic about our constitutional position and has no special responsibility to explain or understand unionism.

It shouldn’t need saying, but Northern Ireland’s place in the UK and its Britishness is not just a matter of personal identity. The protocol and the framework compromised our ability to play a full role in the economic life of our country, which is one of the key strands that binds together any nation state.

It’s long been a tactic of nationalists to try to confuse issues about sovereignty and the constitution with questions of identity. In that way, they can claim ‘parity of esteem’ for the Republic of Ireland’s symbols, institutions and now even its economy, on the basis that this is all simply about accommodating competing and equally valid national identities, rather than applying the constitutional choice of the people of Northern Ireland.

Surely the UUP could argue the case for Stormont’s return, and articulate the view that it serves the Union’s best interests, without lapsing into confused, contradictory emoting about identity? It could also hold the DUP to account for its blunders as the protocol was introduced, including its acceptance of a regulatory border, without minimising or ignoring the seriousness of the sea border.

The protocol and then the framework, which implemented trade barriers that were previously waived, remain a crisis for unionism. It’s important that the parties have a vigorous debate about how to mitigate the damage.

They will fail their supporters if they are not clear-eyed and honest. The sea border is the biggest ongoing challenge to our place in the UK and a bullish attitude to identity will not repair the damage it is causing.

Neither will some threadbare commitments from an outgoing government, that received two more bruising by-election defeats at the end of last week, form a convincing case that the framework’s flaws have been sorted.