Northern Ireland Protocol: how did we get here, and what happens next?

There is probably no one, Lord Frost and Liz Truss included, who truly understands the Northern Ireland Protocol, agreed – if that is the word – between the UK and the EU as the only way to get the post-Brexit withdrawal treaty over the finishing line. 

Britain’s decision to leave the European Union placed Ireland in a quandary. As an EU member state, it was a signatory to the withdrawal agreement that took the entirety of the UK out of the Single Market. At the same time, the restoration of a land border was anathema to national sentiment in both parts of Ireland that would have provoked widespread unrest and, in all likelihood, a recurrence of republican violence. 

In Northern Ireland itself, the Democratic Unionist Party, which lost ground in this month’s Assembly elections but held the balance of power at Westminster in 2017, is determined to recreate the border as a clear marker of the division between British Ulster and the Irish Republic, which it regards as a foreign country. Having lobbied for the hardest possible Brexit, it finds itself at variance with its electorate, which is not only anti-Brexit but increasingly disinclined to vote Unionist. But rather than toning down its rhetoric, the party has dug in its heels.  

DUP leaders like to claim that the Single Market, an EU totem, is a matter of little account. Practical people on both sides will, they say, come up with practical solutions to any problems that arise from dumping the Protocol. As for Sinn Fein – whose armed wing, the Provisional IRA, had fought Britain to a standstill during the 30 years of the Troubles – they will simply have to learn to live with the new reality. 

Sinn Fein, which last week emerged as the largest party in Northern Ireland, begs to differ. So does the nationalist SDLP. But it was the DUP, on which in 2017 it relied for a parliamentary majority, to which the Tory government, led by Theresa May, turned at the crucial moment. Sinn Fein’s seven MPs were abstentionists, who refused to turn up at Westminster. The SDLP was wiped out and the DUP Ten were suddenly the only thing between the rapidly unravelling Conservative party and defeat at the hands of the despised arch-Socialist Jeremy Corbyn. 

May, in spite of her repeated assertion that Brexit meant Brexit, was a less than enthusiastic Remainer. But she stuck to her task and in characteristically dogged fashion worked through a set of agreements with Brussels that would, just about, have allowed the UK to go its own way with the least possible disruption to trade with Europe. 

Michel Barnier, now a forgotten figure even in his native France, didn’t make it easy for her. In his role as the EU’s chief negotiator, he rather prissily insisted that the Single Market was a sacred institution, the integrity of which could never be put at risk. He had logic on his side. Without a land border between NI and the Republic, goods sold into the province post-Brexit, could easily percolate into the southern jurisdiction and even into the rest of the EU. But Barnier probably overplayed his hand, forcing May into a corner in which stood the implacable figure of Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, and her ten praetorian guards. 

The bugbear was Northern Ireland. It was either in the Single Market or it wasn’t. Either there would be a border in Ireland or there wouldn’t. Much would hang on this. 

The compromise, on which May almost choked, was the “Backstop,” an all-embracing fallback that would have maintained an open border in Ireland by keeping the whole of the UK in the EU’s Customs Union. Given that the point of Brexit was to relaunch it as a sovereign power, empowered to negotiate its own terms of trade with the rest of the world, this was a non-starter. Not only the DUP, but the entire eurosceptic wing of the Tory Party, rebelled, forcing a British about-face and paving the way for Boris Johnson as May’s replacement in Downing Street. 

Now, however, it was Johnson’s turn to find an answer to the Northern Ireland Question. 

He did so, in the end, with the help of David Frost, but only by concealing his true intentions. He and Frost negotiated what became the Protocol, under which NI, uniquely, would remain the Single Market, bound, in effect, by the rules of the Customs Union. Goods could flow freely between North and South in Ireland. What could be bought and sold in one could equally be bought and sold in the other. 

All well and good. But there was a catch. To prevent goods, including medicines and foodstuffs, that either failed to meet EU standards or had yet to be approved, from polluting the Single Market, a new border down the Irish Sea had to be established. Goods from GB were now subject to inspection at their point of arrival, obliging manufacturers and truckers to come up with the same paperwork required at Dover and the other Channel ports. 

With one bound, the rest of the UK was free, but Northern Ireland was stuck in limbo. Traditional suppliers, based in England, Scotland and Wales, struggled with the bureaucracy. Some gave up. Some products disappeared from supermarket shelves. 

Over time, business learned to cope. Some products that would normally have been sent from England were replaced by local equivalents. The Sausage War, much in the news in the early days, ended quickly when it was realised the NI had a large and successful cooked meats sector of its own. 

At the same time, the EU came up with schemes that streamlined the inspections procedure and exempted a number of products altogether, including, most recently, British-made medicines. 

On the positive side, Northern Ireland found itself, overnight, in the position of being part of both the EU Single Market and the customs territory of the UK. As things stand, it can sell freely into both markets. Wrightbus of Ballymena, which makes buses for London, this month appointed a new European commercial director to oversee the company’s expansion into the European market. Spirit Aerospacesystems of Kansas, bought out Bombardier’s Belfast operation, employing 3,500 highly-skilled workers, in the knowledge that it could continue to work closely with Airbus. Almac, an Armagh-based pharmaceuticals company, announced that as a direct result of the Protocol, it planned to recruit another 1,000 workers in the province. 

But, in Northern Ireland, politics trumps everything. The DUP says it will not nominate a deputy first minister to work alongside Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill as First Minister in the Stormont Executive unless the Protocol is either emasculated or abandoned entirely. It may not even agree to the election of a Speaker, which would mean the Assembly, more than half of whose newly-elected members support the Protocol, couldn’t even begin to function. 

Conversely, if Liz Truss goes ahead with her promise to unilaterally ditch the agreement (which Johnson and Frost signed and which Brussels regards as legally binding), not only will relations with the EU go through the floor, but Sinn Fein will claim, with good reason, that a deal centred on maintaining an open border in Ireland has been dumped to satisfy the DUP and the far-right of the Tory Party.  What happens after that is anyone’s guess.