The EU has got itself into a terrible mess on Northern Ireland and should compromise

In November 1985 Margaret Thatcher signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Today, this development is usually presented as a natural part of a continuum leading logically to greater cross border cooperation and then to the IRA cease-fire and the subsequent Good Friday deal introducing power-sharing.

At the time the treaty signed between the UK and Irish governments was viewed quite differently. It was a thunderbolt. Unionists, the DUP in particular, were furious. They had not been consulted and accused Thatcher in biblical terms of betrayal. In Northern Ireland there were major demonstrations and a campaign of civil disobedience against the agreement. Two Unionist MPs were sent to prison for not paying car tax. The Agreement was hated on the basis that for the first time it gave the Dublin government some say, or consultation, over matters in Northern Ireland, which was and remains part of the UK.

As Charles Moore recounts in his biography of Thatcher, the then Prime Minister was uncomfortable with the idea she had let down or sold out the Unionists. Nonetheless, on balance she concluded that the chance of cooperation with Dublin on improving cross border policing and security was worth it. Ireland, from where many IRA attacks and operations aimed at the North originated, was insufficiently helpful on law enforcement. When her ally Garret Fitzgerald left office in February 1987 it got worse. He was replaced as Taoiseach by the serial scoundrel Charles Haughey. Relations between the London and Dublin governments deteriorated. By mid-1987 the Anglo-Irish Agreement had not delivered what she hoped for in terms of improved help on beating the IRA.

It is an interesting historical quirk, considering everything that has happened since, that one of the main sticking points between Thatcher and Haughey concerned a European document. They fought in their correspondence and in meetings about  the European Convention for the Suppression of Terrorism. This European Council document negotiated in 1977 was designed to ease the extradition of terrorist suspects. By 1987 Ireland had still not ratified the ECST, to the fury of Thatcher. On taking office, Haughey  indicated he might push for Irish ratification then didn’t, blaming long-standing opposition from Irish parliamentarians. It was only ratified in February 1989. By then the IRA had bombed the Remembrance Sunday commemoration in Enniskillen, killing 12, on 8 November 1987. The shock of that atrocity, and the horror it also induced in Ireland, coupled with improved intelligence penetration of the IRA by the British, began the process by which a weakened Republican terrorist movement and the British government looked for a deal.

On one level, Europe, or the European Union, didn’t feature much in the story of what followed. Politicians in London, Belfast, Dublin and Washington negotiated a peace pact built on power-sharing and consent. The EU was not an interlocutor, and for all the EU now says it is protecting the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, it is not a guarantor. The British or the Northern Irish need no lectures from Brussels on the peace process, when a terrorist campaign that killed almost 3,000 people in Northern Ireland and on the streets of England is still fresh in the memory.

But Brexiteers kid themselves if they think the EU is not a major part of the story. The birth of the Single Market and then the European Union (in 1993) blurred borders, diluted sovereignty and in the case of trade swept away restrictions. When the physical border mattered less and there was one single market it made a peace deal easier to contemplate for both sides in Northern Ireland. 

And then came Brexit.

There is a lot of blame to go round, and I’ll accept my share of it. Many Brexiteers were too casual about the Northern Ireland problem during and after the 2016 referendum, when Britain leaving the Single Market put a border back up between Northern Ireland and Ireland. I assumed (won’t do that again) that the EU would see and understand the border was like no other. It had always been fudged. Even after the pain of partition in the 1920s the British and Irish governments, who loathed each other, approved the common travel area between the two countries, on the basis there were so many cross border familial and economic ties. After Brexit, there was bound to be a shared interest, surely, in finding a fudge, in minimal checks and looking the other way, because this was a border over which thousands had died only a generation or two ago?

No, so sacrosanct was the EU Single Market that assorted, farcical British attempts to find a fudge were rejected. 

The end result in October 2019 was the Northern Ireland Protocol, creating a trade border in the Irish Sea. Boris Johnson agreed it and Brexiteers going into a British general election went along with it on the basis that it might be fixed or diluted later. The priority then was getting out of the EU.

My Remainer friends question this slapdash approach, but last night I read back through some of the Westminster horrors of 2019 and the Bercow period in parliament. I still find it stunning – really – that people tried to junk or reverse the 2016 referendum result, but both sides became radicalised and by 2019 Brexiteers were so fearful of losing the whole thing to a parliamentary stitch-up, or some Sir Keir Starmer designed rerun, that we would have gone along with just about anything, within reason, to leave. For me it became a question of democratic legitimacy. And I must say that looking at the disgrace and collapse of supposedly sophisticated Merkelism, the dominant ideology in European politics for at least a decade, and the new security realities following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Britain’s increased autonomy albeit within the vital NATO alliance, I’m glad to be out of the EU.

But on Northern Ireland, the Protocol and Brexit have created a mess. This weekend the British government is engaged in a briefing war. London may scrap elements of the Protocol because the trade border checks required between Britain and Northern Ireland are hated by the DUP, the dominant party on the Unionist side. Though in London there seem to be splits in Whitehall about whether scrapping parts of the Protocol is wise, with the Treasury reluctant to start a trade war with the EU during an actual war. 

Initially, the EU seemed pleased with its work on the Protocol. It must have been fun for a few years boxing in the naughty, disorganised Brits, teaching them a lesson with their own history. Having taken advice from Dublin, which outwitted the Brits diplomatically after 2016, it had got Britain stuck with an internal border in the Irish Sea, forced forever, or until the end of the UK, if that ever comes, to think on how silly it had been to leave the EU.

Now, the Protocol business has got out of control and the EU looks much less sure of itself. It is as though the EU didn’t know quite what it was getting itself into when it put its fingers into the mangle of Northern Ireland politics.

British attempts to get the NIP renegotiated with the EU have failed and on Monday Boris Johnson will meet the leaders of Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the IRA, and the DUP, the largest Unionist party, in an effort to find a way through. The atmosphere has become dangerous.

The DUP absolutely hates the Protocol and says that after the recent devolved elections (where it came second) it will not restart the Good Friday Agreement institutions, essentially blocking the democratic functioning of Stormont, the devolved assembly.

The EU and its allies point out in desperation that a majority of parties and the public in Northern Ireland are in favour of the Protocol and want to implement it and get on with life.

If only it were that simple, but because of history it isn’t, alas. This is Northern Ireland politics. Nothing is straightforward, as London has long known and Brussels is just beginning to find out.

The design of the Good Friday Agreement is built on the principle of consent. The rule-book is long and complex, but in essence the largest Nationalist party and the largest Unionist party each has a veto. They can withdraw consent, collapse the institutions and block, until it triggers another election, and reruns. Annoying? Perhaps, but this is the actual sainted Good Friday Agreement everyone says they are trying to protect.

If there is to be a Northern Ireland administration then the DUP won’t play ball until the Protocol is eliminated or fixed. The EU doesn’t want to do this.

Allies of the European Commission have taken to shouting in exasperation that the DUP cannot hold the Good Friday Agreement and devolution to ransom over the Protocol. Oh, but they can. And so can Sinn Fein from the other end if the Protocol is changed too much or the DUP wins some other concessions the Nationalists don’t like.

The EU also seems to be labouring under the laughable misapprehension that the Tories have some magical influence over the DUP and if they shout loud enough the Unionists will do what they are told. Did Dublin not explain this bit? For a brief period when the Tories had no majority, from 2017 to 2019, they depended on the DUP to prop up the government in London led by Theresa May. That was a blip. Other than that, the default position of the DUP, and the default view of much of the Unionist community down the decades, is deep suspicion of London and the British government founded on a fear Northern Ireland Unionists are about to be sold out by the Brits, or not consulted. For which, see the Anglo-Irish Agreement signed by Margaret Thatcher in 1985. 

What is the answer to this latest  conundrum of the Protocol? I don’t have the answer, and anyone claiming to know definitively beyond all doubt is a fanatic or a fantasist. 

History suggests the best option is maximum fudge all round. That will mean talks, talks, talks leading to a redesigned Protocol with much “easement” and minimal checks. In essence, an organised hypocrisy dressed up in historic rhetoric, to ensure the Good Friday Agreement institutions get going again and the Unionist and Nationalist largest parties are happy, or at least less grumpy.

This will mean the EU having to shift and compromise in the spirit of creativity displayed by the peacemakers who created the Good Friday Agreement in the first place. I have zero confidence on previous form that the EU will now compromise. Brussels is only at the beginning of a long journey of historical understanding now it has, foolishly, put itself right in the middle of Belfast affairs. EU? Welcome to the Good Friday Agreement, welcome to Northern Ireland politics. 

The Defence of Europe conference

Apologies for there being no newsletter last weekend. It was spent in rehearsals  for The Defence of Europe conference we co-hosted with our friends at King’s College London.

The conference took place on Monday at Bush House. The Defence Secretary and his Labour shadow spoke. The Ukrainian ambassador joined as guest of honour. We had a stellar line up of panelists. John Bew interviewed Niall Ferguson. We were joined by ambassadors and representatives from more than 30 countries.

Thank you to the brilliant team at King’s and to Apple Fundraising for their extraordinary logistical work. It was all put together in only six weeks, prompted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Thank you to those supporters of the conference, Reaction readers, who underwrote the event. 

If you missed the conference, it is available to watch in its entirety here on YouTube, and we’ll provide selected highlights at some point.

We’ll be doing more on this vital theme.