Owen Polley: Keir Starmer and his Labour government are proving blind to issues with the Irish Sea border
The suggestion that Gerry Adams could be in line for compensation, for his internment without trial during the Troubles, will have made any right-thinking person angry.
At best, the former Sinn Fein president was an ideologist for a movement that waged a brutal terrorist campaign in Northern Ireland and beyond. But it is widely believed that he was a key figure in directing IRA violence, as chair of its Army Council.
In 2023, a court in Belfast claimed that clauses in the legacy act, that prevented Adams and his ilk from gaining compensation, breached their human rights. The Labour government has accepted this argument, by starting to repeal parts of the legislation aimed at stopping these pay-outs.
On this occasion, at least, this revolting turn of events is not linked directly to the Windsor Framework. The High Court relied on UK laws and the European Convention of Human Rights, rather than Brussels’ legislation, to reach its verdict.
Last year, in another decision, the Court of Appeal struck down parts of the legacy act because judges said they contravened EU laws, which were protected by the protocol/framework. That judgment offered terrorists and their apologists an additional potential route to mock victims and distort history.
It was just one more absurdity brought to you by the framework. And last week, just like every other week, several other insanities like it emerged.
For example, the prime minister, Keir Starmer, announced a plan on Monday to put the UK at the heart of an Artificial Intelligence revolution. Many of Labour’s critics have said that this strategy will not work, or that other policies will hamper Britain’s AI industry.
What we know for certain, though, is that the technology will be regulated differently in Northern Ireland from the rest of the country. That is because we are under the authority of the EU, which routinely subjects businesses to burdensome and unnecessary rules.
Many aspects of our local economy have struggled in recent years, but some of the better performing sectors sell computer software, fintech (ie technology used in finance) and digital services. These are exactly the kind of products that have rapidly introduced AI features and are likely to rely upon them increasingly in the future.
If the UK is going to surge ahead in this area, it is because it won’t have to abide by Brussels’ regulations. Unfortunately, Northern Ireland will most probably be left behind, as we are subjected to EU rules.
We are not likely to benefit fully from any imminent British trade deal with the United States either.
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, the TUV MP, Jim Allister, asked Keir Starmer how he planned to reach an agreement with Donald Trump that benefited the whole country, rather than just Great Britain. Instead of answering this query properly, the PM attacked Mr Allister’s proposals to replace the sea border with a system of ‘mutual enforcement’, claiming that this plan would create a hard border with the Republic.
In other words, the government preferred to repeat discredited falsehoods from the days of the Brexit negotiations, rather than address real, emerging problems with the Windsor Framework.
In his answer, Starmer also rehashed meaningless assertions about goods travelling freely from Northern Ireland to Great Britain.
Even that supposed benefit from the protocol/framework, though, is now in doubt. Last week, the House of Commons voted on regulations that allow goods to be checked as they enter the mainland from Northern Irish ports. This legislation is supposedly intended to prevent EU and RoI products from moving to GB without inspection.
Mr Allister pointed out, though, that, like so many other aspects of the framework, these regulations treat Northern Ireland as if it were a foreign country. They may also affect consignments of goods containing a mixture of products made in this province and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the livestock disease foot-and-mouth has broken out in Germany, causing panic that it will spread to other parts of Europe. While the government has introduced measures to stop the virus reaching Great Britain, these safeguards will not apply in Northern Ireland. This is because – you guessed it – we are under the authority of the EU thanks to the protocol.
This chaotic and nonsensical picture should by rights be reflected in the impending ‘Independent Review of the Windsor Framework’. The government was obliged to commission former Northern Ireland secretary, Lord Murphy, to write this report, after unionists voted unanimously to reject an extension of Irish Sea border arrangements.
Unfortunately, the independence of the review is already in doubt. The website, Guido Fawkes, pointed out that it will be run by the Cabinet Office. And, unlike the framework itself, the report’s recommendations must ‘command the support’ of both communities in Northern Ireland, according to its terms of reference.
The review is therefore unlikely to address any problems with the framework, for fear of offending nationalists. Many of their political representatives clearly see the protocol as part of a route map to an all-island state.
Meanwhile, the Alliance Party has already urged Murphy to highlight the sea border’s benefits. In other words, whatever he uncovers, it better not be that the protocol is the problem.
Alliance is effectively blind to sea border issues and demands the same imperviousness from Labour. Unfortunately, from everything we’ve seen so far from Keir Starmer and his government, it is very likely to take a similar approach.