Owen Polley: Unionists face dilemma - protocol deal is progress against the Irish Sea border but is not a comprehensive solution to it

On Tuesday, the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, visited the Coca Cola bottling plant in Lisburn to promote the ‘Windsor Framework’ agreement that he reached the previous day with the EU.

The government has depicted this deal as a comprehensive solution to the Northern Ireland Protocol, but it already seems to be losing some of its fizz.

The important thing to remember is that the original Irish Sea border was an unworkable outrage. It not only grabbed authority over Northern Ireland’s economy for the EU, but it applied an over-the-top regime designed to punish the UK for Brexit.

If the government document that unveiled the framework is anywhere close to accurate, then it softens many of the protocol’s most shocking features. Some of these – preventing groceries from arriving here from GB, requiring customs forms for private parcels and stopping our access to British medicines – were so transparently vindictive that Westminster never implemented them.

Through the Windsor Framework, it seems now that the EU has at least accepted that the protocol cannot be applied ‘rigorously’. That is, you will recall, what nationalists and the Alliance Party demanded, so vehement was their loyalty to Brussels.

The new deal replaces unilateral ‘grace periods’ with formal and permanent arrangements. Ultimately, though, they are designed to entrench the protocol and make it workable, rather than remove it altogether.

The framework was unveiled through a government command paper that made many claims, but the EU also published a text and there were legal ‘implementation’ documents, where the language was not so clear cut. We think that Rishi Sunak made notable gains, like persuading Brussels to drop the ban on certain British foods, ensuring that Northern Ireland can avail of UK medicines and determining that pets can travel to and from the mainland without ‘passports’.

That these things had to be remedied, though, showed what an extraordinarily spiteful arrangement had previously been imposed upon us.

The government focussed particularly on the framework’s effects on businesses, claiming that a green lane between Great Britain and NI would deliver ‘free-flowing trade’ and remove ‘any sense of a border in the Irish Sea’. It quickly became clear, though, that checks and paperwork were being reduced rather than eliminated. In this newspaper, the haulier, Peter Summerton, explained that a simplified customs declaration was still required, as well as changes in labelling.

Northern Ireland will remain effectively in the single market for goods, and while there are potential checks on new EU regulations, via the ‘Stormont Brake’, there is still potential for our laws to diverge further from the rest of the UK.

The framework document certainly contains interesting and positive sections. It is acknowledged, for instance, that Northern Ireland’s rules may differ from those in the Republic. Significantly, as well, it is up to the EU, rather than the UK, to manage these differences, if the government’s text can be believed.

The unionist parties in Northern Ireland, and particularly the DUP, now have an unenviable decision to make. We think, at least, that the Windsor Framework represents progress. It provides a way of alleviating the worst excesses of the protocol and sets out to establish a less confrontational relationship between the UK and the EU.

Equally, though, we know from bitter experience that deals will always be oversold, and relying on Brussels’ goodwill is futile, as that bloc’s culture is legalistic and unbending. Any changes to the Irish Sea border need to be on the firmest legal footing, if they are not to disintegrate in the future.

The protocol was particularly harmful to the Union because it threatened to make aspects of everyday life here – the products available, our tax regime, our political preoccupations – ever more different from those of the rest of the UK. It was easy to pour scorn on these worries, but any serious person understood how they could gradually erode our constitutional position.

It’s already become apparent that the Windsor Framework is not a comprehensive solution to these problems. The pressing question for unionists is whether it dilutes the protocol enough to make it worth accepting its flaws.

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