Owen Polley: Murphy review revealed insulting double standards on the sea border
The main unionist parties in Northern Ireland have by now all been dismissive of the recent ‘Independent Review of the Windsor Framework’, written by Lord Murphy.
This was, after all, a report that even its author acknowledged was hampered by its restrictive ‘terms of reference’, which were set in January by the government. The former secretary of state was permitted only to make recommendations that commanded, “the support of both communities in Northern Ireland.” For that reason, while it mentioned some of the issues with the Irish Sea border, it made no meaningful attempts to resolve them.
The central difficulty with the Northern Ireland Protocol, which later became the Windsor Framework, was that it diluted our place in the Union in favour of closer links with the Republic. It was inevitable, then, that, regardless of the damage that the sea border inflicted on law, politics and the economy here, nationalists were never going to agree willingly to reduce its effects.
In truth, the review process was never supposed to achieve very much. It was just a sop to unionists, that was included in the original protocol only because they had otherwise been so thoroughly shafted.
The signatories to that deal wanted to give the appearance of acquiring Northern Ireland’s ‘democratic consent’, but ensure that their agreement remained in place for the foreseeable future. Those aims seemed contradictory, so a ruse was needed to achieve them both.
To that end, Stormont was granted a vote in late 2024 on whether it wanted to maintain the Irish Sea border. However, for the first time in the Assembly’s history, cross-community safeguards were set aside, so that nationalists and pro-EU parties were guaranteed to win.
This manoeuvre was so shameless that Boris Johnsons’ government committed to publish an ‘independent review’, if the motion failed to gain the support of both communities. The promise was supposed to take the sting out of a piece of blatant gerrymandering (and perhaps it also salved Conservative ministers’ guilty consciences).
If the idea of a review ever had any value, though, it disappeared when the Labour government published its ‘terms of reference’ at the start of the year.
Cross-community consent was not apparently needed to impose the Windsor Framework and erect a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Under the terms of reference, though, it was suddenly important again, when it came to Lord Murphy making entirely non-binding proposals to mitigate the framework.
The double-standard was so obvious that it was insulting. Still, was this not what unionists in Ulster had come to expect during the entire post-Brexit period?
The sea border was designed and forced on them against their protests, and its main intention was to appease nationalists and the Dublin government. After that, the agreements to supposedly solve protocol problems were revealed either to be meaningless (the DUP’s deal with Rishi Sunak), or furtive plans to make the frontier even more permanent (the Windsor Framework itself).
The Conservatives at least felt uncomfortable with the idea of a sea border and usually tried to hide their intentions, or wriggle out of the most damaging commitments. In contrast, the current Labour administration is positively enthused by the idea, describing the framework as a result of our “distinctive history”. It claims the arrangements are necessary to maintain “a hard won peace in Northern Ireland”, to quote trade minister, Douglas Alexander.
The fact, then, that Labour appointed the author of this review and set its parameters, meant it was even less likely to address problems with the framework than if the Tories were still in power.
In Lord Murphy’s defence, he did at least acknowledge some of the defects of the sea border with relative openness. He said it placed ‘obvious burdens’ on businesses and small and medium companies in particular were often ‘bewildered by the processes’.
He admitted too that many firms that move goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland “find the process so burdensome that they give up dealing with NI altogether.”
Murphy also urged the government to be more transparent about the limitations of the ‘Stormont brake’ and applicability motions. This was a tacit acceptance that ministers have not been open about the full ‘impacts of EU legislation’ on Northern Ireland.
There were allusions to the benefits of ‘dual market access’, but, as Dr Esmond Birnie explained diplomatically in Friday’s News Letter, there is almost no evidence that these actually exist.
The emphasis in the report was on balancing different political perspectives, rather than analysing what the framework has actually inflicted on Northern Ireland and what it has failed to deliver.
Where there were recommendations, if they were implemented, many would have the effect only of further entrenching the sea border and forcing us to live with it.
The report was not even a particularly enlightening piece of research, unlike some of the papers produced by the Brexit committee in the House of Lords, or the survey recently published by the Federation of Small Businesses.
Then again, as even its author hinted, it was never supposed to be. It was simply another exercise in managing unhappiness about the Windsor Framework, rather than dealing with it.
At its heart was the idea that the Irish Sea border could be imposed on unionists, while nationalists’ permission is required to remove or mitigate it. This double-standard remains as illogical as it is insulting.
ENDS