Truss and Sunak keep to the script on the NI Protocol. But do they mean it?

The Tory Party is by some distance the least important political institution in Northern Ireland. It has a paid-up membership of some 600, or rather less than 0.05 per cent of the 1.3 million-strong electorate. At the last general election, its share of the vote was 0.7 per cent. In the elections to the Stormont Assembly, held in May, it fared even worse, scoring a mere 0.3 per cent. Out of a total of 462 local councillors, just one is a Conservative, a vet born in Carlisle and raised in Dumfries. 

And yet, in terms of the UK’s relationship with the European Union there is no more pressing issue than that of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Unless the problems surrounding trade, sovereignty and identity thrown up by the Protocol are resolved inside of the next 12 months, a trade war with Europe will become a reality, hitting both exports and imports and miring Britain in a legal wrangle that could last for years. 

It was against this background that Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak took their battle for the Tory leadership to the luxury Culloden hotel yesterday afternoon. The hotel, best known for its lavish wedding receptions, is conveniently located less than a ten-minute drive from Belfast’s City Airport, meaning that the feuding pair were in and out in less than four hours, allowing no time for noises off or unwelcome confrontations.  

Many of the questions put to the candidates by the 200 or so Tories who turned out for the occasion dealt with the Protocol. There were those who saw it first and foremost as a wedge driven between Ulster and the rest of the UK. But there were also those who pointed out that it had done wonders for trade. 

If those attending the Culloden hustings had been drawn from the Democratic Unionist Party, which is refusing to attend Stormont, or even to permit the election of an Assembly Speaker, until the Protocol is dead and buried, the mood would have been darker, with an undertone of menace. Conversely, if the audience, bizarrely, had been comprised of members of Sinn Fein – now the provinces’ largest party – the demand would have been for total acceptance of the Protocol along with the promise of a border poll that would pave the way to a United Ireland. 

But neither the DUP nor Sinn Fein took part in yesterday’s showdown. Instead, polite applause greeted most of the promises given, or not given. For the most part, Truss and Sunak delivered their standard speeches, giving no obvious hostages to fortune. Insofar as they bothered to tailor their responses to the peculiar issues affecting Northern Ireland, they said little more than that they would stand with their fellow unionists in the hard times ahead. 

On the Protocol, Truss gave nothing away. She confirmed her support for the legislation slowly (very slowly) making its way through the parliamentary system aimed at overriding much of the Withdrawal Agreement between the government and the EU signed in January 2020. But the impression she conveyed was that the Protocol might very well slip down the back of the Downing Street sofa if she, as is expected, becomes prime minister on 5 September. 

Yes, she wants the Assembly and its Executive up and running again as soon as possible. Yes, Northern Ireland will always be “a key part of our fantastic Union”. And, yes, she is going to “fix” the Protocol. She would make sure that UK judges, not the European Court of Justice, would be the “ultimate arbiters” in disputes and that trade with Great Britain would in future be “free-flowing”. 

But does that mean she is going to ditch the Protocol entirely, as demanded by Lord Frost and the DUP? Is she going to make the concerns of one tiny section of the UK, half of whose citizens don’t even regard themselves as British, her number one priority in the months ahead? It’s possible. Standing up to Brussels has, after all, been one of her strongest calling cards. But with inflation out of control, fuel shortages looming, the NHS in crisis and the war in Ukraine growing grimmer by the day, it is a little hard to believe that the can of worms that is the Protocol would be the issue on which her government would stand or fall. 

For his part, Sunak couldn’t even pretend to care that much about the Irish Question. He agreed that the Protocol had to be stripped down, but he also indicated his willingness to reopen negotiations rather than reaching for the nuclear option. What was obvious was that his true thoughts lay elsewhere. He wanted to talk about taxation and managing the coming recession. He wanted his audience to understand that he knew what he was about and that his rival was winging it. 

A number of those listening said afterwards that they had been impressed by the former Chancellor’s performance, which was characteristically upbeat and full of energy. But in the end, the bulk of them are expected to vote for the foreign secretary, trusting to luck that, unlike the rapidly outgoing current occupant of Number 10, whom she described as an “excellent” leader, she might actually keep faith with Ulster and prove true to her word. 

Before Belfast, the duellists had visited Perth, where not a word was heard about the Protocol. For Scots, as for the English, the union is the union with England, not Northern Ireland. Next stop, Manchester.