Saturday 18 February 2023

Sunak's shuttle diplomacy: will it pay off?

Rishi Sunak is a busy man.  Yesterday he was in Belfast in an effort to sell the deal he has agreed with the EU on implementing the NIP to the political parties in Northern Ireland, particularly the Democratic Unionists. Today he's in Munich at a global security conference where he's expected to meet Ursula Von der Leyen to try and get her to make last-minute concessions, presumably ones demanded by unionists on Friday. He has a big problem with the DUP. As I know from bitter experience, selling something to someone that they neither want nor need is usually a fruitless task.

Even if the seven tests set by the DUP are met in full (and almost certainly they won’t be) I am not sure they will ever accept the deal. There is speculation that their real issue in refusing to enter the power-sharing executive is that the first minister’s job will go to political rivals Sinn Fein as the largest party.

James Crisp, the Telegraph’s Europe editor, thinks the DUP will prefer to delay things and go for new elections as set by the UK government for this May in the hope they increase their number of seats. Donaldson faces pressure from the hard-line TUV and for him to accept anything less than the total scrapping of the NIP would be quite a humiliating climb down.  Unionists know popularity among their supporters depends on opposing something, anything almost.

Yesterday morning on Radio 4, Sammy Wilson, the DUP’s bruiser-in-chief, seemed to object to the whole idea of EU law applying in Northern Ireland, not just a role for the ECJ. I don’t know how he thought NI can remain in the EU single market under those circumstances and how that would square with no land border.

Much of the recent activity has been driven by the USA readying things for a visit in April by Joe Biden to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the GFA. They will never accept a land border under any circumstances.  Meanwhile, the DUP would like to see the GFA scrapped along with the NIP (sorry!).

It is not as if DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson is desperate and I imagine he and his colleagues will take some convincing. Sunak needs a deal far more than they do. 

The PM apparently met the parties individually and one of the early ones seemed to indicate that details weren’t shared, so I’m not sure exactly what they were asked to agree to.  After the meeting, Donaldson issued a statement that said the deal, “currently falls short of what would be acceptable and required to meet our tests as set out.”

Well, that's a surprise.

Of course, apart from the DUP, Sunak also has the ERG and people on the hard right who think he might have to go too far with concessions to the EU, and some of their red lines are going to get smudged. Lord Frost is one of them. He keeps popping up trying to make himself relevant, sticking his oar in with an article in The Telegraph: A bad Protocol deal will embolden anti-Brexit elites.  Think about the irony in that headline, eh?

He says he is "not in favour of [] agreeing any old thing on Northern Ireland just to get 'better relations' and to make life easier for those who want to start unpicking Brexit."

Adding to that, he says the existing NIP was (and read this carefully) "a huge concession by us – albeit one we had little choice in making – to allow the EU to set the laws and terms of trade in part of our country."

The UK had 'little choice' in agreeing to the NIP which even  Frost himself now recognises was not a good deal. What has changed? If anything we're in a weaker position today than we were in September 2019 when Johnson agreed to it. Everybody can see how Brexit has hit our economy.

His main complaint seems to be that Sunak and foreign secretary Cleverley are using charm to get concessions from the EU, instead of threats and belligerence. Dropping the NI Protocol Bill is seen as ‘disarming’ by the UK government in a warlike reference typical of him.  That and the 'secrecy' surrounding the current talks, which again is a bit rich. 

He says he’ll look “carefully at any deal that emerges” as if his opinion counts for something now.

Frost claims he doesn't want "endless friction with Europe" - who knew that eh? He does want a better deal but not one that results in the UK becoming an "endless supplicant, an economic and political satellite of the EU."  This is precisely what we are but he can't see it. 

He ends with a familiar call and says (no kidding), "If the deal is poor, go back to the Protocol Bill. No deal is still better than a bad one."

On one of the sticking points, the role of the ECJ, Jessica Parker, the BBC's Brussels correspondent tweeted a long thread:

Maros Sefcovic, the VP for international relations at the Commission met EU ambassadors yesterday to forewarn them of an agreement being reached and according to reports, said the EU’s position on the ECJ had not changed, he was apparently, "crystal clear" on that.

This may be crucial. The DUP will either have to swallow it or again refuse to join the power-sharing executive. It’s a high-stakes game.

The question that nobody is asking is this one: What happens if the DUP don’t accept the deal?

It seems to me, there are only two possible options then. Either the government faces down Unionists and the ERG headbangers and forces it through with Labour’s help or it reverses Johnson’s hard Brexit, going for more alignment with the EU.

Personally, I can’t see Sunak or Starmer even trying the first. The risk to peace would be totally unacceptable. This leaves just one……

Given these choices is it any wonder that Sunak is doing his utmost to get the NI parties to accept whatever is on the table?

If he fails, and with the public increasingly turning away from Brexit isn’t the easiest and the most obvious option to go for a soft Brexit?  It would shoot Labour's fox, be a fillip to the British economy, a relief to much of our industries and probably widely welcomed.

There would be an outcry from the ERG and the DUP but the voters might even reward Sunak in a year or two.  It would be an irony for DUP intransigence to trigger a return to the EU, but who knows?

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