A Researcher at the UK in a Changing Europe (UKCE) think tank, Dr Alan Wager, has been looking at when the UK government first realised that the NI border problem was the biggest and perhaps defining issue of Brexit. To find out he looked at interviews given to UKCE last year by some of the leading players, including one by Denzil Davidson, who was Mrs May’s special advisor for three years from September 2016. The result ought to come as a shock but somehow it doesn't.
Davidson told UKCE that Northern Ireland had not been given enough consideration until 2017 – the year after the UK voted to leave the EU.
He has a long Twitter thread about it starting with this one:
When did the UK government realise that resolving the 'Irish Trilemma' (H/T @JohnSpringford) would define the Brexit process?A historical thread🧵 based on our Brexit Witness Archive https://t.co/sl9aywIaW8TL;DR - you'll be surprised at how different the recollections are.— Alan Wager (@DrAlanWager) March 12, 2021
Wager first says Phillip Hammond claimed the NI border started to become the "dominant theme in her [Mrs May's] mind" sometime in late 2017 to early 2018. In other words, perhaps eighteen months after the vote and after she came to power and crucially nearly a year after her Lancaster House speech in January 2017 setting out the government's policy of leaving the single market and the customs union.
Joanna Penn, May's Deputy Chief of Staff from 2016-19 says that - in the autumn of 2017 - issues like money and citizens rights were still key, with Northern Ireland left to resolve but thought unlikely to be a defining issue. When asked when she realised that Northern Ireland was going to be the big issue she said:
"Yes. I think I remember saying to someone, ‘Look, we’re nearly there on the money and the governance. We’ve had these big rows and we think we’ve got to a place that we can sell it. All we have is Northern Ireland, but that will be fine.’ Then, of course, the reverse is true."
The government were worrying about the divorce bill and other technical matters around governance rather than the real issues. David Davis probably didn't help since there isn't a problem going that he can't be nonchalant about.
So, having laid down her policy in early 2017, which inevitably meant a sea border in Ireland, as many commentators pointed out, Theresa then spent the next two years trying to find ways to circumvent the very problem she herself had created.
When she discovered there was no way around it that she and the ERG could accept, she had to go.
In The [Belfast] Newsletter, Denzil Davidson's interview is reported under the heading: Boris Johnson was prepared to cut NI loose, says ex-advisor to Theresa May – but we also failed Northern Ireland over Brexit - One of Theresa May’s key advisors on Europe has said that there was a “collective failure” by her government to understand the implications of Brexit for Northern Ireland.
Several things emerge. Firstly, when Johnson came to office, far from having a solution he didn't even recognise the problem created by the hard Brexit policy. Secondly, when asked if he was surprised by what Mr Johnson eventually agreed to over Northern Ireland, Davidson said: “Kind of yes and no."
"Because I personally am a patriotic unionist, I had wrongly hoped that genuine unionist commitments were held more widely in the Conservative Party than they now are.
"But no, because I knew that Northern Ireland was not a priority for him, and that he was willing to cut them loose. I was surprised that the Conservative Party accepted what he agreed to so readily.”
For Johnson, losing NI was a price he was willing to pay to achieve Brexit and The Conservative and Unionist part was prepared to go along with it.
Davidson thinks there was a collective failure on the part of the government to see the NI issue although he seems to concede they knew quite a lot, but failed to listen to people like David Lidington who were warning about it.
I think both May and Johnson allowed themselves to believe there was some kind of technical or negotiable solution to the border which meant that work on building the Border Control Posts and other infrastructure didn't start until Autumn 2020 and is not likely to be ready until the summer of 2021 about four years after it was obvious they were needed.
Now, five years on, having left the EU the NI problem is only just starting to crank up.
