20 October 2019

Financial Times: Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal brings a united Ireland closer

Jonathan Powell warns that Boris' Trumpian “great new deal” will not just take Britain out of the EU, but may also mark the end of the union, leaving a Little Englander government ruling a Little England.

[...] The prime minister says he has ditched the backstop. On the contrary he has accepted the substance of the original Northern Ireland-only backstop which Mrs May said, “no UK prime minister could ever accept”.

Moreover, he has changed it from being a fallback into the definitive future arrangement for Northern Ireland. He had to abandon his Heath Robinson-esque scheme of two borders, together with all the nonsense we have heard from Brexiters over the past three years about a magic technological answer to the border, and threw in for good measure Northern Ireland remaining in the EU for VAT purposes. Scarcely new, and hardly a triumph.

On consent, Mr Johnson rightly abandoned his initial proposal of giving the Democratic Unionist party a veto. But in the process he has driven a coach and horses through the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement by allowing a simple majority to decide whether the province stays in the single market and customs union. The system of cross-community agreement for major issues was built on the principle of “sufficient consensus” that requires a majority of both communities — nationalists and unionists — for a measure to be agreed, while ensuring a small minority could not block progress. Once you exempt one major issue from this rule, you risk undermining the very notion of power sharing enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement. [...]

The DUP may well be right in their fears. The poll numbers have already begun to move towards greater acceptance of a united Ireland during the Brexit process as Catholic voters who traditionally supported remaining in the UK drift to remaining in the EU. It seems likely, for demographic and other reasons, those numbers will continue to grow. Paradoxically Mr Johnson and Brexit may have done more for a united Ireland than the IRA ever did.

The fact that the Irish government and the EU have managed to prevent Mr Johnson’s proposed hard customs border in Northern Ireland, which would have posed a fundamental threat to the Good Friday Agreement, is welcome and enormously important. But the DUP have a strong case when they argue that he has instead undermined the other aspects of the agreement through his deal. That is the reason why they are supported by the more moderate Ulster Unionist party and even the cross-community Alliance party in this complaint.

The deal we have ended up with means a soft Brexit for Northern Ireland and a hard Brexit for the rest of the UK. In these circumstances it would be understandable if Scotland demanded the same treatment as Northern Ireland, since it had a similar majority for Remain in the referendum. When that is rejected by the Conservative government, and it refuses a further referendum, the support for independence will continue to grow.

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