Owen Polley: The UK government must not crumple again to the Irish grievance machine

The former Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, was only one prominent figure who spoke as if no frontier actually existed prior to Britain leaving the EU. As his government promoted that fiction, unionists pointed out that there already was a significant international border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

That boundary was enforced for the purposes of VAT, it marked a change in currency, it was policed to prevent smuggling and despite the removal of watchtowers and military checkpoints required to combat separatist terrorism during the Troubles, it still occasionally witnessed security operations. In fact, as anyone who took a bus occasionally from Belfast to Dublin knew, the Garda sometimes boarded these vehicles to check travel documents.

The Common Travel Area (CTA), which preceded membership of the EU by half a century, enabled British and Irish citizens to move freely across the British Isles, living and working in each other’s jurisdictions. That never meant that foreign people with British visas, or illegal migrants, could travel between the UK and the Republic without restrictions.

To satisfy the Irish nationalist delusion, though, that the Belfast Agreement removed any meaningful border, our government agreed first to the Brexit backstop and then to the Northern Ireland Protocol. At the insistence of Irish politicians, separatists and vengeful EU officials, a political, legal and economic border was driven through the United Kingdom’s territory.

So, whether or not people commonly misunderstood the scale and meaning of the CTA, it was richly ironic that it was Dublin, last week, trying to firm up its ‘open border’ with this part of the UK. The Republic’s justice minister, Helen McEntee, announced that Garda officers would be redeployed to the frontier, in order to prevent asylum seekers from coming south.

The border, in other words, can be visible, meaningful and less porous – when it suits Dublin.

The whole idea, of course, that immigrants are surging into the Republic from Northern Ireland is disputed. In line with its habit of blaming everything on Britain, the Irish government claimed that its influx of asylum seekers is due to the UK’s plans to send some of them to Rwanda.

Even as anti-immigrant feeling in the Republic rises, then, it’s all the cruel, racist Brits’ fault. It couldn’t possibly be a reaction to the Dublin government’s policies, which have created widespread resentment as people struggle to access services or find an affordable home.

Unfortunately, ministers at Westminster did not discourage the notion that the Rwanda Act caused immigrants to flood into the Republic either.

To support her argument, Ms McEntee had claimed that over 80% of asylum seekers arriving in Dublin were now coming from NI. The foreign minister, Micheal Martin, later clarified that this statistic was not based on data, statistics or indeed an ‘evidence base’.

Rishi Sunak’s government, though, did not want to challenge these assertions. It chose instead to portray the figures as proof that the Rwanda Act was working, by dissuading migrants from staying in Britain.

Unfortunately, while the Republic is in many respects getting what it deserves, Northern Ireland could yet suffer the consequences. Thanks to the protocol and Windsor Framework, the government’s Rwanda legislation is unlikely to operate here on the same basis as the rest of the UK. Asylum seekers are likely to have more legal options, if they choose to challenge their removal. A recent precedent even suggested that the courts could try to strike the Act down here altogether, if they think it is incompatible with the protocol.

In addition, some parties have already suggested that immigration checks should take place in Northern Ireland’s ports, rather than at the border with the Republic. Our government’s weak record in the face of Irish nationalist grievances hardly inspires confidence that it will not eventually capitulate to Dublin. The prime minister’s emphasis in the media on maintaining an open land border, and the idea that the Republic’s checks on people contravene the Belfast Agreement, was a dangerous and flawed argument too. His message should be about Irish hypocrisy.

It cannot be forgotten that the existing trade and political barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK continue to be a constitutional affront. Last week, the DUP’s director of policy and research, Dr Dan Boucher, announced his resignation from that post. In the News Letter, he wrote that, contrary to the party leadership’s claims, the Safeguarding the Union arrangement did not change the fundamentals of the Windsor Framework or remove the so-called ‘green lane’.

Meanwhile, the idea that the deal stopped an ‘automatic pipeline’ of EU law suffered a blow, as the Assembly waved through a regulation from Brussels on organic pet food. This rule, admittedly, brought NI into line with the rest of the UK, but it was Stormont, rather than a foreign legislature, that should have made the change.

The wounds from the protocol and framework, then, are still raw and weeping. In addition, for sceptical unionists, the restoration of power-sharing has produced little evidence so far that devolution is working for them.

If it wants to maintain political stability here, the government cannot allow a further layer to be added to the Irish Sea border. Rishi Sunak must not crumble as Dublin again cranks up its anti-British grievance machine.