Owen Polley: Northern Ireland looks short of saviours at Westminster

The agreement with India, for instance, included a controversial clause exempting immigrant workers from three years of UK national insurance. Employees coming here on short-term visas currently enjoy a one-year exemption.

The extension will make it cheaper, for a longer period, for companies to hire Indian migrants rather than British workers. This effect will be more pronounced, because the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, raised the contribution that employers pay towards national insurance.

The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, criticised the government’s deal strongly. When she was trade secretary, she claimed, she refused to sign a similar agreement on the basis that, “no deal is better than a bad deal”.

Indian sources challenged this account.

They said Mrs Badenoch offered India a two-year exemption, rather than the four that Delhi demanded.

The difference between Labour and the Conservatives, according to Indian officials, was therefore not one of principle, but a disagreement over the length of the compromise they would accept.

This spat summed up a recurring problem for the Tories.

Their leader can identify ways in which the new government has failed to tackle Britain’s problems, but often the Conservatives made similar mistakes over a longer period. The debate is over the scale and intent of these blunders, rather than any material difference between the two parties’ approach.

The Tories attack Labour for refusing to clamp down properly on immigration. But the surge of new arrivals started under the Conservatives. Indeed, the UK experienced an unprecedented influx of economic migrants after Brexit, which became known as the Boriswave.

Kemi Badenoch can say she’s sorry, or that she would lead the government differently, but voters are still likely to conclude that the differences between the two parties are superficial.

This problem is not exclusive to the Conservatives.

The Tory peer, Daniel Hannan, recently likened Keir Starmer to a cushion. According to Lord Hannan, the prime minister “bears the imprint of the last person to sit on him”.

This absence of a definite political direction, from either Labour or the Conservatives, has arguably contributed most to the rise of Reform UK.

The irony is that, as Nigel Farage’s party surges, Starmer becomes, if anything, more malleable. Labour has tried to balance left-wing instincts with more traditional messages that will retain voters in its ‘red wall’ of working class, northern constituencies.

For example, the government hiked public spending, but later announced plans to slash benefits, which Labour rebels claim are “the biggest attack on the welfare state since George Osborne” and austerity cuts. The party started its term with pro-migrant policies, like scrapping the scheme to send unsuccessful asylum seekers to Rwanda, but it is about to unveil an ‘immigration masterplan’ to supposedly cut numbers and challenge Reform.

Even the news about the US deal highlighted inconsistencies.

The prime minister initially seemed to strike up a good relationship with President Trump, but more recently the government appeared more focused on a ‘reset’ with the EU. Labour distanced itself from the White House. And Rachel Reeves claimed that Britain’s economic links with Europe were more important than trade with America.

The Conservatives have proved unable to challenge these inconsistencies, with the result that their performance in recent local elections in England was almost calamitous. Mrs Badenoch has opposed Starmer’s policies, but she is yet to really explain what her leadership is about.

And if we default to judging them by their time in government, the Tories are no easier to pin down than Labour.

They talked tough about migration, but allowed almost one million extra people per year to enter the country. They posed as a party of lower taxes, while public spending went up and the tax burden increased.

The resulting disillusionment among voters has led to an unpredictable atmosphere in national politics. In Northern Ireland, the lack of certainty makes things more difficult for local parties, particularly if they’re interested in repairing the Union after the damage inflicted by an Irish Sea border.

The Tories have refused under Badenoch to apologise for implementing the Windsor Framework or advocate a replacement. But unfortunately, Labour is even less coy about Northern Ireland’s political estrangement from the rest of the country.

Last week, the TUV MP, Jim Allister, asked the trade minister, Douglas Alexander, why Northern Ireland could not avail fully of the Indian deal.

A Conservative politician would at least have given an abashed answer.

In contrast, Alexander justified our separation from the rest of the UK’s economy, as a result of our “distinctive history, the significance of the Good Friday Agreement” and the imperative of maintaining “a hard won peace in Northern Ireland”.

This was a blatant defence of alienating us from the British mainstream as a sop to potential Irish republican violence. It again exposed as nonsense the idea that we have a potential friend or saviour in Labour.

The government that would best secure Northern Ireland’s place in the Union would be firm, patriotic and broadly centre-right. Unfortunately, we did not come close to getting that during 14 years of Tory prime ministers. It looks increasingly unlikely that Kemi Badenoch will deliver it either.