Owen Polley: The gerrymandered vote in Stormont on the Irish Sea border will ensure more EU pain for Northern Ireland

Usually, controversial policies require cross-community support to pass at Stormont, but that safeguard has been set aside for the so-called ‘democratic consent mechanism’.

In this instance, a simple majority is needed, so that the Assembly appears to have its say, but nationalists and pro-EU fanatics are guaranteed to win. It was scandalous that the most incendiary matter of all, the dilution of our place in the UK, was subjected to such blatant gerrymandering.

Yet it was another imposition that encountered token resistance from the greater part of unionism. Indeed, after its Safeguarding the Union deal with the government, the DUP claimed victory because it had beefed up a mechanism to ‘review’ the framework. This consolation prize will kick in if, as expected, unionists vote ‘no’ tomorrow, but a majority consents to the sea border.

It is certainly worth triggering the review, in case it might expose some of the effects of the framework. Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely to result in the government taking meaningful action.

In a further twist of irony, three days after the vote, the Irish Sea border is set to harden substantially. The Assembly will therefore endorse something that is just about to get worse.

On Friday, Brussels’ onerous new product safety regulations come into force. Thanks to the Windsor Framework, these laws apply in Northern Ireland. In fact, every time the EU adds more red tape, which it does with depressing regularity, it will become harder to trade with the rest of the UK.

These particular General Product Safety Regulations (GPSR) require companies in Great Britain to fill in more paperwork, when they sell products to customers here. In addition, traders will need to nominate a ‘responsible person’ based either in Northern Ireland or the EU, if they want to continue to do business in the province.

The new rules could quickly decimate online sales from GB to NI. This type of business is often carried out by small companies, many of them trading in inexpensive items. They simply cannot justify the extra time and cost involved in sending goods here, still less the palaver of appointing a ‘responsible person’ as a kind of on-the-ground agent. Many have already stated that they will pull out of our market.

The effect could be particularly noticeable on platforms like Amazon and eBay, where third party sellers often sell useful items for relatively low prices. This kind of trade is no longer the preserve of a few hobbyists and can involve firms employing quite a few people.

For customers, this all means a lot of increased frustration, as we find that things we used to buy are no longer available. Ultimately, of course, it also means less choice and higher costs. If you were planning to order some last minute Christmas presents online, that task may have got that bit more complicated.

Not that these new inconveniences will give the EU loyalists at Stormont any pause for thought. If Brussels decided suddenly that every family must sacrifice its first-born son, you suspect it could find a stooge in the Assembly, probably from Alliance, to justify its stance.

When EU laws threatened to prevent Northern Ireland from enacting Westminster’s new anti-smoking measures, an MLA from that party managed to blame Brexit. In fact, Great Britain can implement these policies only because it is no longer bound by Brussels’ diktat. Any bright eleven year old could have spotted the hole in Alliance’s argument.

Meanwhile, the Windsor Framework committee, which is supposed to scrutinise new EU laws coming to Northern Ireland, keeps blocking inquiries into fresh rules. The UUP MLA, Steve Aiken, said recently that it was completely ‘incurious’ about the impact of Brussels’ regulations. But Alliance’s deputy-leader, Eoin Tennyson, thinks it has done “rather a good job.”

This attitude extends to Westminster. On Friday, the House of Commons debated Jim Allister’s private member’s bill on the framework. The North Antrim MP proposed legislation, based on mutual enforcement, that would have removed the Irish Sea border and ended Brussels’ authority over Northern Ireland, while protecting the EU’s single market.

Needless to say, whereas all unionist MPs were in favour, the SDLP leader, Claire Hanna, spoke against the bill. Nationalists and Alliance are not in the business of solving problems with the protocol, because, for them, retaining as much EU law as possible, and keeping us under Brussels’ thumb, was always part of the point.

They were never guided genuinely by Northern Ireland’s economic interests. Yet they were the first to lecture unionists about their ‘ideological’ opposition to the sea border, before the lie that we could enjoy the ‘best of both worlds’ was so thoroughly exposed. The response now, when these issues are raised, is simply to blame them on Brexit. That is despite the very obvious fact that Northern Ireland’s problems have arisen because we were not allowed to leave the EU on the same basis as the rest of the UK.

The people who cheered on our estrangement from the mainland were responsible for demanding that policy, whether they admit it or not. And tomorrow, they will be responsible for voting to impose more pain on Northern Ireland, whether they are driven by all-Ireland fantasies or a fanatical allegiance to the EU.​​​​​​​