May’s deal is the beginning of the end for the United Kingdom

The smirk, as President Macron met Angela Merkel yesterday in Berlin, said it all. The EU has successfully humiliated the UK and our dismal, servile prime minister. Theresa May, in addition to cancelling Brexit, has agreed to partition the UK by capitulating to Brussels’ demands that the super-state take control of Northern Ireland.

The Withdrawal Agreement, make no mistake about it, is a surrender. The more you read the document, the more evident it becomes how disastrous its content is.

I wrote previously in Reaction that unionists in Ulster were fearful that, “because the Irish government and nationalists have consistently thrown the noisiest tantrums over Brexit, eventually London will decide it is easier to accommodate their demands than protect the integrity of the United Kingdom.”

May, at that time, was still ruling out an internal UK border, claiming “no UK prime minister could ever agree to it.” After four further months of negotiations, she’s managed to tie the entire country to the customs union and single market, with checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland into the bargain.

Let’s begin to analyse her ‘achievement’ by exploding a few myths.

Firstly, this ‘backstop’ is not going to be temporary.

In theory, it will operate after the transition period only if a free trade agreement or an alternative arrangement has not been negotiated between with the EU. In reality, if May manages to enact this crazy deal, and the unconvincing prevaricating of her colleagues in the Conservative party suggests she might, then Brussels has achieved most of its aims and it would be crazy to change its position. Even if some states are minded to treat Britain with decency, the chance of 27 agreeing is minute.

The review mechanism that is supposed to provide an escape route from the customs arrangement will assess whether a ‘hard border’ can be avoided under the Future Framework that will establish the relationship between the two parties. We’ve already witnessed the EU’s intractable attitude to the Irish frontier, so it is unlikely that this condition will ever be satisfied.

Secondly, the ‘backstop’ is UK-wide only from the point of view that it is now more or less a fiction that the UK is leaving the EU. The former Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, who was supposed to be negotiating the deal, but resigned soon after it was announced, admitted that the cabinet’s understanding is that “Northern Ireland will be treated like a third country for regulatory purposes.”

Under sweeping provisions contained in Annex 5 of the document, most goods entering the province from the rest of the UK could be subject to checks. The smallest traders will more than likely simply not bother shipping goods across the Irish Sea.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Effectively, we’re staying in the customs union. Effectively, we’re remaining tied to the single market. Yet, despite these concessions, Northern Ireland is to be hived off and placed under the jurisdiction of the EU and, realistically, its conduit to Brussels’ institutions will be the Dublin government.

Raab has been astonishingly candid about the grotesque pantomime that took place behind closed doors, where grown-up diplomacy and pragmatism were supposed to prevail. He says that Martin Selmayr, the mandarin who became Brussels top civil servant despite his appointment breaking the “letter and the spirit” of the EU’s rules, boasted that Northern Ireland would be the “price” Britain paid for Brexit.

It’s difficult to get people exercised about customs and trade regulations, which seem only to have a tangential effect on their lives. It would be understandable too if the public was weary of little Northern Ireland and its problems; first the Troubles and now the Gordian knot that has to be unravelled to allow Brexit to happen. Yet, Brussels’ attack on the integrity of our nation should not be dismissed or underestimated.

The decision to leave the EU was taken through a nationwide referendum, where everyone’s vote was supposed to be equal. The idea that Northern Ireland can be treated differently shows that, fundamentally, the UK is no longer a sovereign, unitary state. That fact has been noted immediately by Nicola Sturgeon and the rest of the Scottish separatists.

The casual way that May and her accomplices have undermined the fundamental integrity of our nation will be regarded in retrospect as a scandal. And British citizenship, In Northern Ireland, is now at best heavily qualified, at worst second class.

Ulster’s place in the UK is supposed to be underpinned by the Belfast Agreement and the principle of consent. That principle is worth nothing if our economy, politics and society are segregated from the rest of Britain. Many unionists, including the DUP, have historically tolerated and even encouraged differences in law and culture, when it suited. They’ve been far too fond of their toy-town parliament at Stormont and the trappings that came with it.

If they don’t do everything in their power to stop this withdrawal agreement coming into force, and if professed unionists across all the parties at Westminster don’t do the same, they will be responsible for the beginning of the end of the UK.