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With just 42 days (and counting) to go before Boris Johnson puts Brexit on the line, the prime minister has to ask himself one question, and one question only: who gave the DUP the right to decide Britain’s future?
It is a question that cries out for an answer. If the Government endorses a Northern Ireland-only Backstop, Britain will almost certainly win support for its exit package at next month’s EU summit. Brussels wants to say yes. Germany and France want to say yes. Ireland is desperate to say yes. The British public, including quite a few Remainers, are ready to say yes, recognising that, in the absence of a second referendum and with Jeremy Corbyn nailing his colours to the fence, the country has to move on and put the last three-and-a-half ghastly years behind us.
Tory opponents of No-Deal would return to the Yes lobby. So would Labour Remainers. Jo Swinson’s Liberal Democrats and the SNP would have the rug pulled from under them. Only the covenanters of Ulster would be left to put a spanner in the works. But their time is up. The prime minister must step up the pressure and convince them – oblige them, if necessary – to accept that the only way forward is for them to take one for the team.
It is not as if the DUP speaks for the people of Northern Ireland, let alone the UK. Its leaders don’t even speak for a third at least of their own Protestant and Unionist tribe. Led by Arlene Foster, who last year confessed that she would abandon her native province in the event of Irish unity, they won just 36 per cent of the vote in the most recent general election. Since then, polls since have consistently shown that not even all of that 36 per cent support the party line on Europe.
Sinn Fein, the SDLP and the Alliance Party (which between them accounted for 49 per cent of the votes cast in 2017) campaigned for Remain. If it hadn’t been for a late switch by the Ulster Unionists – anxious lest their “British” credentials be seen as flakey – the only significant opposition to staying on in the EU was that offered by the DUP. As it was, 56 per cent of the province’s electorate who took part in the referendum voted Remain, with just 44 per cent opting for Leave.
Yet which party was immediately adopted by the Tories as the Voice of Northern Ireland? The DUP. Why? No prizes for getting this one right. Even the dogs in the street, when they are not barking that Gerry Adams used to lead the IRA, know the answer. The DUP was given the power of veto because, due to the vagaries of the first-past-the post system, combined with the fact that Sinn Fein is abstentionist and refuses to take its seats at Westminster, the Arlene Foster faction was able to offer the ten votes in Parliament that kept Theresa May in office.
But now that Boris Johnson (God help us) is in Downing Street, the logic of a pro-DUP position is gone with the wind. The Tory Party, in its English redoubts, accords low priority to the status of Northern Ireland. A majority of its members have told pollsters over and over again that what matters to them is that England (not the UK) should re-emerge as an independent country. If the Scots and the Northern Irish want to follow the example of the Welsh, fine. Otherwise, it’s cheerio, chin chin, goodbye-ee!
But none of this is any more than a preamble to the bleeding obvious. The real point is that most people in Northern Ireland itself, from business leaders, to the trade unions, to the farming community, the civil service and the police, accept the good sense and practical politics of the backstop.
And why would they not? For in addition to helping secure the peace, it would confer an advantage on NI that no other part of the UK or Ireland – or for that matter, the EU – can claim. The province and its 1.85 million people, 50 per cent Catholic/Nationalist, 50 per cent Protestant/Unionist, would be simultaneously British, Irish and European. The Irish border, largely invisible since the Good Friday Agreement, would continue in remission, acknowledged mainly by mapmakers and the revenue services of London and Dublin.
Citizens of Ulster would continue to enjoy British, Irish and EU citizenship not simply in consequence of the Good Friday Agreement (entitling them to Irish passports), but because their economy, in terms of trade and market regulation, would be governed by the same authority as those of the remaining 27 member states. They could join EU lines at airports and settle freely in the European countries of their choice. Their farmers, uniquely, would not have to fret over tariffs and other export restrictions; their fishermen (all 900 of them) could continue to fish Irish waters and sell their catches into the French, Belgian and Dutch markets. At the same time, NI would elect 18 MPs to the House of Commons and enjoy unfettered access to the NHS and other welfare benefits. Their UK pensions would be guaranteed, as would an annual transfer from London to the NI exchequer of some £11 billion. For what it’s worth, they could even keep the pound.
What’s not to like?
If there is a drawback, it would mainly affect trade with the rest of the UK, which would be subject (by some means as yet undisclosed) to customs checks in the Irish sea – a new business opportunity, perhaps, for the Isle of Man. But if, as the Government insists, there will in future be tariff-free trade between Britain and Europe, based on ongoing regulatory alignment, even this problem would be short-lived.
For the DUP, the risk, potentially, is that the people of Northern Ireland might quickly get used to the idea of being part of an all-Ireland/EU economy, leading to increased support for Irish unity. But that horse has already bolted. Unity – no matter what happens over Brexit – is already back on the political agenda. Unionists who wish to maintain the connection with England will have to come up with a better argument than British is Best, because being Irish is pretty good these days, and the European citizenship it confers is not to be sneezed at either.
To put it bluntly, the people of Northern Ireland have been presented with an opportunity to indulge in a ménage à trois, and, the DUP aside, they see no reason not to got for it. All that is required is for Arlene Foster and her colleagues to speak up and follow the money rather than the flag.
As it happens, there is precedent for such a reversal. From 1998 to 2003, during which it systematically crushed the more moderate Ulster Unionists, led by David Trimble, the DUP, founded by the Rev Ian Paisley, condemned the Good Friday Agreement that set up power-sharing at Stormont as a betrayal of Unionism. Today, quite unabashed, as if its about-turn was no more than a slight shift of the feet, hardly worth mentioning, it hails exactly the same agreement as the ultimate guarantor of NI’s position as a constituent part of the UK. If it could turn 180 degrees on power-sharing, why not a similar pirouette on the Backstop? Brussels is waiting for the UK to give a little, in return for which everything else would become possible. Boris Johnson, holed up in his bunker, has got the message. Is it too much to ask that the DUP might join him?
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Iain Martin and the team make sense of the news, providing commentary and analysis on the stories that matter in politics, geopolitics, economics and culture.