Cakeism and sabre-rattling: Johnson and Truss tag-team on the NI Protocol

Are we any further forward on the Northern Ireland Protocol following Boris Johnson’s visit this week to “Royal” Hillsborough? 

Probably not, is the answer. All we know is that, in Johnson’s absence, Liz Truss has talked up legislation – we know not what it is, only that it shall be the terror of the EU – that would remove from the Protocol all the provisions Unionists don’t like, leaving it as pale and lifeless as a private members bill on the last afternoon before the summer recess. 

The Prime Minister’s Ulster visit was conducted at lightning speed. He turned up on Monday morning, raced to Hillsborough Castle (official residence of the NI Secretary), where he spoke for 20 minutes each to the leaders of the five main political parties. Later, he stopped by Thales International in East Belfast, manufacturers of the deadly NLAW anti-tank weapon that has cut a swathe through Russia’s armoured columns, before scuttling back to London. 

Boiled down to its essence, his message was this: 

• All political parties elected last week to the Stormont Assembly, including the DUP, should get back to work immediately. 

• Any Assembly members who refuse to take their seats will be denied a portion of their £55,000 salaries – though how big a portion he didn’t say. 

• The DUP should nominate one of its own to be Deputy First Minister, working alongside Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Fein as (first) First Minister. 

• The Conservatives will continue to support the Union, but they recognise the right of the people of Northern Ireland to seek unity with the Republic if that’s what they want, which he doesn’t think they do (although they might). 

• As for the Protocol, it remains a problem that has to be tackled, and the government will tackle it, if not this month or next month, then later in the year, or next year, or in 2024. In the meantime, a Bill cutting the Protocol down to size would be put on ice, to be used only if no other solution turns up. 

And that was about it. Michelle O’Neill was angry, as she always is when forced to talk to Johnson. Any messing about with the Protocol would leave Northern Ireland in a “very dangerous place,” she said – and she should know. 

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, who this week confirmed that he would rather stay on as an MP than play deputy first fiddle to O’Neill, was characteristically gloomy about everything. Northern Ireland was suffering badly from the effects of the Protocol, he said, and he and his colleagues were not going to be bounced into doing the job they were elected to do unless Westminster took effective unilateral action. 

Alas for Sir Jeffrey, the PM takes a slightly different view. In fact, he takes almost the opposite view. The province was doing nicely, he told journalists on Tuesday during the opening of the Queen Elizabeth cross-London rail link. Unemployment was down, exports were up. “Northern Ireland has got amazing opportunities now. Parts of the economy are going really, really well.”  

All that remained, he said, was to get rid of some “relatively minor barriers to trade,” which he hoped would be achieved over time through continuing negotiations with “our EU friends”. 

Whether or not the PM was on the same page as Liz Truss, his most ambitious cabinet colleague, is hard to say. Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday afternoon, the foreign secretary said that the government planned to bring forward a new law that would allow the UK to suspend parts of the Protocol without consulting the EU. 

She didn’t say precisely when the relevant Bill would be published or what it would contain, but it was clear that she wished to hang it, like the Sword of Damocles, above the front door of the Berlaymont Building in Brussels. 

Given that the Protocol is part and parcel of the UK-EU withdrawal agreement, signed by Johnson in 2020, it might be supposed that Truss would at least acknowledge that her announcement was a bold, if not reckless, step. But not a bit of it. On the contrary, her proposal, she said, would serve to protect peace and stability. 

Given further that Sinn Fein – formerly the political wing of the Provisional IRA – regards upending the Protocol as a serious risk to peace in Northern Ireland, it might further be supposed that she might have sensibly left her Bill in the realm of political speculation, or at least a little longer in the oven until it was more completely baked. But again, no. What was needed was action this day, or at any rate the threat of action, or, failing that, the appearance of the threat of action. 

Donaldson was encouraged. But actions spoke louder than words and what was needed was an immediate Bill, aimed at skewering the Protocol, that could be passed into law “in days and weeks, not months”. 

It is probably safe to say that during his Ulster trip Johnson was attempting to be all things to all men, and all women, too. He was firmly on the side of the DUP in its determination to protect the Union. But he also respected the rights and aspirations of Sinn Fein and, above all, stood with all those who just wanted Stormont to get on with the work it was elected to do, regardless of the Protocol. 

Moving from party leader to party leader, the PM was cakeism incarnate – as indeed he always is. But the icing on the cake was without doubt his half-hour spent at Thales, the French-owned company whose product has done more than anything else to sweeten the relationship between himself and Volodomyr Zalensky. The Ukrainian President would surely rejoice if the fallout from the NI peace process, rather than tank shells and guided missiles, were all he had to worry about. What he would make of Jeffrey Donaldson and Michelle O’Neill as they endlessly parse the presumptions of the Protocol can only be imagined.