Owen Polley: ​London still not honest about Windsor Framework debacle

​Like most of the government’s claims about that deal, it soon fell apart under scrutiny.

Now the Horticultural Trade Association, which represents UK garden businesses, says its members on the mainland have witnessed, “an almost complete cessation of trade in their products with Northern Ireland.” Sunak’s claim that the framework will fix this, “does not reflect the reality our members will experience.”

The organisation’s CEO, Fran Barnes, said bluntly last week, “We do not expect a resumption or increase of GB to NI trade (when the new arrangements are implemented) as hoped.” In other words, the Irish Sea border has effectively ended this province’s involvement in the British horticulture trade.

It’s easy for people who do not want Northern Ireland to play a part in the UK or don’t care about horticulture to mock this fact as an irrelevance, because nothing seems important unless it matters to you. It’s also possible to play down or even gloat about nearly every problem the framework creates. After all, the fashionable view is that they are all inevitable consequences of Brexit, so unionists should ‘suck them up’, whether they supported leaving the EU or not.

That has certainly been the attitude of many nationalists, and even many EU fanatics from the so-called ‘middle ground’, as one aspect of the framework after another failed to deliver on the government’s promises.

The artist, Brian-John Spencer, was on the receiving end of their ridicule recently, when he suggested on social media that the sea border was making it difficult to buy certain art supplies for his business.

The government, meanwhile, has simply ignored every piece of evidence that it exaggerated the framework’s effects, or deceived us about its impact. It just repeats its original claims blithely to every new revelation about the deal’s ineffectiveness, alongside regular reminders that ministers have no intention of reopening negotiations with Brussels.

It’s been a display of staggering indifference to an integral part of its territory, from an administration that still, nominally at least, likes to emphasise its unionism. But it fits with the popular mood of denial of what is being imposed on Northern Ireland and reflects the absurd way in which the debate has ignored detail and flattened out the issues.

In the early days of the Northern Ireland Protocol, for example, Naomi Long, whose Alliance Party originally demanded that that deal be ‘rigorously implemented’, said, “Where you get your sausages from doesn’t define your identity.”

It was a silly contribution, but it summed up the nonchalant, facile way that the Irish Sea border was approached by many liberals, never mind nationalists. No unionist ever suggested that sausages defined their identity, but being in the UK involves all kinds of transactions, shared experiences and relationships, and food choices are as much a part of that as anything else.

The Northern Ireland Protocol and now the Windsor Framework have disrupted many of these things, and they threaten to change the feel of daily life here, as well as tilt trade and decision-making toward Dublin and Brussels.

Our place in the UK is not just about identity, but our ability to play a full role in the political, economic and cultural life of the nation, as anyone who wasn’t looking for an easy, populist soundbite would easily grasp.

It was always absurd to claim, as did Alliance and others, that an internal UK border, displaced trade and the promotion of an all-Ireland economy were irrelevant to our constitutional position. It was also dishonest for the government and its brazen NIO ministers to assert that the Windsor Framework stopped any of these things happening, or meaningfully addressed them in any way.

The problem that unionist parties have is that, although their core voters care deeply about being shunted into a constitutional hybrid, halfway between the UK and the EU, without their assent, so far a significant proportion of Northern Ireland’s population seems less exercised about that outcome.

It’s outrageous, it’s unfair and it’s devious - it’s happened without a shred of openness and it certainly makes a nonsense of the principle of consent - but if our government isn’t prepared to stop this process, and many people don’t care, to whom can we turn?

Perhaps the best scenario now is that, when the new arrangements are implemented this autumn and quickly prove impractical, workarounds will be put in place, either with or without the agreement of the EU.

The truth, as we have understood clearly for some time, is that Rishi Sunak did not reach a deal that solved the main problems with the Irish Sea border. Instead, he agreed to implement the protocol in the most rigorous form we have yet experienced, removing the temporary safeguards that previously kept goods moving here from GB.

All he received in return was a misnamed ‘green lane’, that may benefit some larger retailers and disguise the worst effects of the framework for less attentive shoppers.

He did all this to ingratiate himself with the EU, because his team believed that Northern Ireland’s future was not as important as other pressing international issues and improving its relationship with Brussels.

Maybe he was right, but his government should at least have the decency to finally admit what it has done and why.