Northern Ireland was swept aside in Brexit so we can only now make most of it

The United Kingdom including Northern Ireland has left the European Union.
News Letter editorialNews Letter editorial
News Letter editorial

Such terminology ought not to be necessary, because NI is part of the UK, yet it has become necessary.

The Province will in effect remain in EU trade structures. This is a very bad outcome from an economic perspective, because our biggest external trade by far is with Great Britain, and that now faces barriers. It is all the more bad from a unionist outlook because it divides the UK.

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There is a long story as to how we ended up in this position, much longer than the space of this column allows. The key event, the referendum, happened fast, from David Cameron’s 2015 election win to the In-Out vote a year later.

Even within unionism there was a range of responses from hardcore Brexit to emphatic Remain to undecided to apathy. For months this paper gave space to both sides of the debate, before concluding that the arguments were strong for and against but the case for leaving clinched it.

Thereafter we advocated NI to be treated the same as GB, ideally the Norway option which would have meant no regulatory border east, west, north or south.

But events swept aside Northern Ireland. There will now be a harder Brexit and different treatment for NI.

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We can only now make the most of it. Push to minimise the Irish Sea barrier. Work relentlessly and diplomatically within Stormont to make the case for the full return to UK control, which is theoretically still possible.

It is possible that London will flourish and the EU including Dublin will do too, in which case we make as much as we can of access both ways.