Letter: Are we making Northern Ireland work or are we making a form of joint authority work?
A letter from R G McDowell:
The secretary of state’s recent decision to ignore the assurance given to unionists in the Safeguarding the Union document that UK-wide legislation would be introduced around ‘not for EU’ labelling is another example of why it was unwise for unionists to return to government before getting an agreement they were happy with.
It is also evidence of why it is unwise for unionists to have ruled out collapsing the Northern Ireland Executive again.
If there is no consequence for disrespecting unionists then every time there is a tension between these odd arrangements that Northern Ireland has been placed in then the solution will always be for unionism to pay the price.
Business didn’t want the expense or hassle of labelling. Unionists wanted the agreed mitigation so the government reneged on its deal with unionists.
Even if you thought the Safeguarding the Union document was a good deal, surely it made sense to have the government implement their bits first before returning to government.
Are we really saying that not only would we return to government on the basis of a deal that we said wasn’t good enough and needed more progress that would be pursued through the various elected bodies, not only would we remain in government after acknowledging the deal wasn’t anywhere near as good as originally suggested but we would actually be content to go backwards and still cooperate either by allowing the government to go back on agreed mitigations or simply by seeing aspects of the Irish Sea border implemented which hadn’t been implemented at the time of the agreement?
Surely there can’t be any realistic prospect of unionism making further progress on Northern Ireland’s restoration to the Union in this context.
I understand the rationale of those who say we need to make Northern Ireland work.
My concern is that in circumstances whereby the laws of two separate jurisdictions are applied to NI and we are being treated like a foreign country to Britain in various aspects, are we making NI work or are we making a form of joint authority work?
R G McDowell, Belfast BT5