Morning View: The Northern Ireland Protocol is an even bigger disaster than we feared, so DUP change of tone is a welcome start

The DUP last night suddenly toughened its position on the Irish Sea border.

The party put out a long statement, which we reproduce in full on page 19 (in the print edition, also see link below), suggesting it would curb North-South activity related to the Northern Ireland Protocol. It also said it would oppose protocol related measures in Stormont.

What this means in practice is unclear. Some DUP suggestions, such as a petition, are tame. But the statement is welcome even so, indeed overdue, from Northern Ireland’s largest unionist party.

Urgent action was needed as the scale of the internal NI-Great Britain frontier continued to emerge, surprising even many unionist observers who knew in October 2019 that Boris Johnson’s deal with Leo Varadkar was a disaster.

The EU’s bullying trigger of Article 16 over vaccines – so ruthless that EU leaders rescinded it – was hypocritical and a snapping point.

Much of the UK establishment, Ulster businesses and three of the five big political parties had since 2016 talked as if Brussels was a rules-based player, which patiently – and helped by a similarly rational Dublin – had to navigate a shambolic London.

Then suddenly the EU revealed its cynicism.

There is a long, and unresolvable, debate as to who is most to blame for the Irish Sea border. EU supporters say Brexit, unionists say UK implementation of it. But the threat of republican violence certainly had a role.

This week disgraceful loyalist threats of violence against border posts were rightly condemned across the political spectrum. Let us hope, as it seems, they were isolated. But let us also remember the restraint there has been since 2016, when the talk of any change to the Irish land border leading to violence was indulged throughout.

When the idea of alternative technological arrangements were mooted at the Irish land border, endorsed by some of the world’s most experienced customs officials, they were furiously dismissed.

We were told that if so much as a camera was installed at the border it would be attacked by terrorists.

A feeble Conservative government under Theresa May signed away its right to so much as CCTV in the 2017 backstop. Boris Johnson, who condemned this capitulation, then instigated a deal that was in some respects worse than hers.

Unionists have, peacefully, accepted an Irish Sea border that was imposed because nationalist Ireland said there could be no such frontier on this island. But what unionists cannot do any more is just pretend that the reverse border arrangment, to please the Irish, is a trivial affair, and advance it.

It might well continue to be imposed by London. If so, then let us expose the prime minister for the jovial conman that he is. Expose his lie of leading a unionist government when he has presided over such a huge victory for separatists.

It is entirely reasonable for unionists to say that having had our unfettered place in the UK shattered by a mixture of trickery and denial (with Brandon Lewis still claiming it is not a border) there is thus good cause to neglect north-south contact. It is not clear what the DUP means by its pledge on the opposite page not to work “as though [North South] relationships are normal”.

Nor what it means when it will “actively oppose at every opportunity any negative measures, laws or bills that continue to flow from the protocol”. Is it admitting it was wrong to pass appalling Stormont legislation such as the plant health regulations that have led to the ban on soil from GB?

Yesterday’s statement does not mean the party can escape such scrutiny, or other questions such as why it did not put safeguards in the January 2020 deal to restore Stormont.

But their shift in tone yesterday is a start.

• DUP statement in full: Working together, unionists can make a difference in challenging the Irish Sea border

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