Owen Polley: We shouldn’t forget the magnitude of what has been imposed on Northern Ireland, or get fooled into the idea that any of it is for our benefit

Sure enough, since polling day, the calls have intensified for sceptical parties to move on from calling for the Windsor Framework to be changed. It’s still unclear whether the DUP, in particular, will comply with these demands. At times, the party’s representatives have sounded firm in their insistence that Stormont will not come back until the protocol is dealt with. At other moments, it seemed like pots of cash, and some vague legislative commitment from the government, could persuade it back into the executive.

There is a heated debate, even among unionists, about whether the DUP should reinstate power-sharing. Ian Paisley recently argued that the boycott was the party’s only source of leverage over decision-makers in London and Brussels. In contrast, the UUP claimed that it only strengthens Sinn Fein and intensifies the debate over Northern Ireland’s constitutional future.

Setting aside the arguments about what is possible or pragmatic, though, what is the position now with the Irish Sea border? What can we expect, given that the government says that the framework is its final plan and will be implemented with or without unionist consent? It’s now fewer than one hundred days until the new arrangements are due to be in place, and the truth is that there has been little clarification from the authorities on how they will work. On Friday, though, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs at Westminster (DEFRA), finally provided information about the new ‘green lane’ for groceries. Previously, the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, had indicated that ‘Not for EU’ labels would be needed for food products across the UK, rather than specifically for Northern Ireland. The DEFRA advice, though, suggested that, for the first year at least, labelling will be required exclusively for goods coming here. Indeed, requirements for ‘box labels and retail premises signage’ will only ever be applied in Northern Ireland. A subtlety that was hardly part of the government’s initial spin.

Last week, the University of Ulster's senior economist, Dr Esmond Birnie, published figures suggesting that, in any case, ‘about £2.6 billion’ of goods bought by Northern Irish manufacturers from Great Britain each year will have to pass through the ‘red lane’ that requires full customs paperwork. That amounts to almost 75 per cent of the total NI purchases from GB for manufacturing and processing. Many of the finished goods will eventually be sold on the mainland or in Northern Ireland, but the EU deems them at risk of entering its market. For businesses here, that means extra costs, difficulties with supply and onerous paperwork, just to trade with the rest of their own country.

We have become so used to these extraordinary facts that they have almost dropped out of public debate. Indeed, it's not an accident that many aspects of how the framework will work remain unclear. The UK/EU deal was presented quite deliberately in a way that obscured its detail. The government published a 24-page paper that made many claims about the new arrangements. It was effectively a sales pitch, but when commentators, journalists and politicians refer to the ‘framework’, this is often the document that they mean.

The EU’s interpretation was shorter and contradicted aspects of the British paper. Meanwhile, there were almost twenty texts, written in dense legalese, that supplemented the main documents and were, in parts, almost impenetrable, even to informed readers. After their publication, representatives of significant industries in Northern Ireland and GB nevertheless began to question many of the government’s claims. The criticism came from hauliers, horticuralists, commercial fishing representatives and even grocery businesses. It also became apparent that, because the framework would do away with temporary ‘grace periods’ that kept trade moving across the Irish Sea, far from solving many problems, it would make some transactions more difficult. Vast swathes of European law would continue to apply to Northern Ireland, while the government’s claim to have removed ‘any sense of an Irish Sea border’ was almost laughable, as 5% of goods would still be checked, even when all the mitigations were in place.

In effect, Northern Ireland’s place in the Union has been downgraded permanently. We have been turned into a hybrid state, halfway between the UK and the EU, though this fact was never openly debated or explained to the public. Now, there is a clear implication that if unionists don’t accept their reduced status gracefully, they will be punished and may even be pushed out of the Union for good.

The former Brexit minister, Lord Frost, told a Spiked podcast earlier this year that the government and the public would have considered the framework unacceptable in any other part of the country. He argued that it could not possibly be an ‘end point’, because it left part of the UK under the jurisdiction of a foreign power. For understandable reasons, the focus on the DUP and its decision to boycott Stormont has remained relentless. There should certainly be a discussion about whether its tactics can achieve anything further. But we shouldn’t for a minute forget the magnitude of what has been imposed on Northern Ireland, or get fooled into the idea that any of it is for our benefit.

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