Owen Polley: It is appalling that the Conservative and Unionist Party has joined in the gaslighting of unionists over a role for Dublin in internal Northern Ireland matters

​That was because the Northern Ireland Protocol cut this province off from the rest of the UK economically, via a trade border, and handed political powers over an integral part of British territory to the EU.

As a result, the DUP eventually refused to implement an arrangement that undermined critical aspects of the Union, including our right to trade on the same footing as Great Britain. It argued, justifiably, that the 1998 deal was underpinned by the ‘principle of consent’ and should therefore guarantee our rights as part of the United Kingdom.

Into the fray, last week, came the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at Westminster.

This body, which scrutinises NI policy on behalf of the House of Commons, published a report that was supposedly aimed at restoring the institutions at Stormont and putting them on a sustainable footing.

One of its key suggestions was that any changes to Northern Ireland’s political system should be made ‘in close consultation’ with the Republic of Ireland’s government.

In the context of the problem it was tackling, that was an incredibly unhelpful intervention and one that was surely delivered in the knowledge that it would provoke unionists.

The protocol caused power-sharing to capsize precisely because it diluted British sovereignty over part of the UK. Yet, the committee’s solution to this failure was to invite another foreign power to interfere in our internal affairs.

At the very least, that’s jaw-droppingly ironic. Indeed, there’s a horrible term that’s become fashionable called ‘gaslighting,’ which describes a form of psychological manipulation that causes someone to question the most basic and indisputable facts about their existence.

This word is abused regularly in political discussion, but, as much as I hate it, it’s appropriate in this context. In fact, it’s almost the only way to explain some of the behaviour of Westminster politicians since the protocol was signed.

The initial insistence, for example, that there was no border in the Irish Sea, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Rishi Sunak’s subsequent claim that the Windsor Framework removed ‘any sense’ of such a trade barrier. And now this.

The Northern Ireland select committee is chaired by the Conservative MP, Sir Robert Buckland. But he is new to the job, having replaced his party colleague, Simon Hoare, at the end of last month.

In a preamble to the document, the committee noted that Mr Hoare, who became infamous among unionists for endorsing nationalist-friendly talking points during the Brexit negotiations and sneering at eleventh night bonfires, worked on this report.

The two DUP MPs that belong to the committee, and form half of its Northern Ireland contingent, are Jim Shannon and Carla Lockhart. Predictably, they refused to agree to a document that effectively seeks to sideline their party rather than deal with its concerns about the protocol.

The report was endorsed by the SDLP, which is always going to support a bigger role for Dublin in Northern Ireland’s governance, and the Alliance Party. Alliance is supposed to be ‘constitutionally agnostic’ and accept the principle of consent. By now, though, it’s not surprising that it backed yet another measure that would erode this province’s place in the UK by stealth.

In the Belfast Agreement, the Republic’s government was deliberately excluded from having a say in strand one matters, involving Northern Ireland’s internal affairs. Those issues were the sole responsibility of the devolved institutions and the Westminster government, which stepped in to administer direct rule when power-sharing failed.

Alliance’s member on the select committee, Stephen Farry, argued that, because none of the agreement’s strands were working, Dublin should be consulted on the whole thing. In the past, he’s claimed that in the absence of devolution we can no longer have direct rule and Dublin must be consulted on policy decisions.

The Alliance party likes to portray itself as pragmatic, as compared to its overly ideological unionist opponents, but its behaviour has consistently shown this to be nonsense.

At every juncture of the Brexit process, Alliance tried to maximise our links to the EU, even when that meant creating barriers for our far more economically important relationships with the rest of the UK. It demanded that the protocol, which proved utterly unworkable in its original form, be ‘rigorously implemented’.

Alliance, in truth, is steeped with modern liberal disdain for the nation state and that’s reflected in its support for every measure that would turn Northern Ireland into a constitutional hybrid – not a full part of the UK, but not quite integrated into a separatist all-Ireland republic either.

It’s not, as some people claim a nationalist party, but it is comfortable with diluting almost every aspect of our British status, then making disparaging remarks about those who object, like Naomi Long’s quip about identity not being defined by sausages.

As for the Conservative and Unionist party, as it is still officially named: it is damning that a committee that contained at least three of its MPs drafted a report that mirrored the Alliance party’s worldview, proved highly amenable to the SDLP, and thoroughly appalled both the DUP and the UUP.

It raises the question, was this a genuine attempt to solve problems with power-sharing, or was it an implied threat that if Stormont did not return unionists would be punished?