Does May still not grasp the seriousness of the backstop problem?

The prime minister is in Belfast today, speaking to business leaders about her ‘Brexit strategy’; because, apparently, such a thing exists.

On her last visit to Northern Ireland, Theresa May promoted the Draft Withdrawal Agreement that she’d made with the EU, including the infamous backstop (and an Irish Sea border to which she’d previously said no British premier could ever agree). Now, in an extraordinary about-turn, she’s committed to amending that backstop with “alternative arrangements”.

The prime minister’s speech was supposed to reassure her audience that, in the few weeks of negotiations that are left, she will find a solution that “commands broad support across the community in Northern Ireland” and “secures a majority in the Westminster parliament.” Of course, it will be worthless solving even those knotty equations, if the EU rejects her suggestions.

It’s possible that, even at this late stage, May will navigate identity issues in Ireland, shifting alliances in the House of Commons and the byzantine complexities of politics in Brussels, to reach a deal that most people will accept. But there could be few more surprising outcomes, given how she’s conducted negotiations so far.

If Mrs May’s political obituaries revolve around the word ‘backstop’, it will largely be her own fault.

She blundered horribly right at the start of the process, by making a unilateral commitment that there would be no ‘hard border’ in Ireland. By making a promise that the UK couldn’t keep without cooperation from Brussels, she provided the EU with an incentive to raise objections to every government plan, while claiming credibly that the onus was on Britain to avoid checks and other infrastructure.

The obligation to agree an ‘insurance policy’ on the border was created by the ‘Joint Report’ on the progress of negotiations, published in December 2017.

The UK’s pledge in paragraph 49 to “maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which… support North-South cooperation, the all-Island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement,” was supplemented by paragraph 50, which committed to avoiding new regulatory barriers between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

The significance of these paragraphs was disputed practically from the moment they were signed, yet May’s government took over six months to explain how it interpreted the document. It’s not difficult to guess the likely reason.

The text appeared to tie the UK to a chunk of single market and customs union rules, in order to limit differences across the border in Ireland. May was understandably reluctant to have a conversation with some sections of the Conservative Party about what exactly this might entail.

This instinct may have been vindicated, partly, by the angry reaction of many Tory Brexiteers to her Chequers proposals, which set out ideas for alignment with the EU. But her aversion to confronting the problem allowed Brussels and the Dublin government to promote their version of the backstop, which involved Northern Ireland remaining in a “common regulatory area” with the Republic of Ireland.

The idea was established firmly that the backstop meant Northern Ireland would have to stay inside the single market and the customs union, if the rest of the UK left without a trade deal.

When May defended her Chequers proposals in Belfast, in July, she compounded these mistakes by making the entirely unhelpful assertion that anything other than a ‘seamless border’ on the island of Ireland would “breach the spirit of the Belfast Agreement”. This contention echoed Irish nationalists and hard-core remainers, who claimed that Brexit could not apply to Northern Ireland, because it would be incompatible with the 1998 accord.

One of the peace deal’s architects, Lord Bew, published a paper last week, expressing astonishment at “the way in which the British Government has allowed the Irish Government to control the narrative around the Good Friday Agreement unchallenged.” His former boss, Lord Trimble, is now considering a legal case against May’s Brexit deal, on the basis that it threatens key aspects of the 1998 document.

They will be dismayed to hear that May has not altered her language significantly today, insisting that she is seeking changes to the backstop, rather than its removal from the deal. It sounded very much like more of the same and it is unlikely to reassure anybody.

It’s still not too late for Britain and the EU to reach an accommodation that keeps trade moving freely across the Irish border and removes the threat to divide Northern Ireland economically and politically from the rest of the UK. There must surely be enough remaining goodwill and mutual understanding from the two sides, to at least try to make this happen.

The prospects of such a breakthrough won’t be helped though, if May fails to grasp the seriousness of her predicament and continues to pursue the same disastrous tactics.