I am not convinced that Sunak is out of the woods yet on the Northern Ireland Protocol, although his new Windsor Framework is getting a lot of support most of it is not from the unionist side. There is an opinion piece in The Belfast Newsletter from Sammy Morrison, who is I believe a candidate from the TUV - Traditional Unionist Voice, a party consisting of the hardest of hard-line loyalists led up by Jim Allister. It hits the nail on the head of the WF.
The piece is titled: If unionists accept this deal we will be accepting that we will never again be treated as a full and equal part of the UK. He writes:
"All unionists need to ask themselves is this – does the deal deliver equal citizenship in the United Kingdom? The answer to that is obvious and emphatic. We alone within the UK remain subject to foreign laws we do not make and cannot change overseen by a foreign court.
"You can dress the protocol up as the ‘Windsor Framework’ on the day Ursula von der Leyen has tea with His Majesty the King if you wish. That will not change the reality that, as von der Leyen reminded us, the European Court, not His Majesty's courts, remains "the sole and ultimate arbiter of EU law" in Northern Ireland."
This is undeniable. EU law may not cover everything in NI but it covers most of the laws pertaining to the trade in goods, and that's quite a bit. The TUV, like the DUP, strongly supported Brexit - on the grounds that it would see "the subordination of local labour market, trade and other laws to the supremacy of EU law."
Having supported a policy of getting the UK out of the EU, they now find themselves left behind. It's like pushing car with a dead battery for hundreds of metres only to find when it starts the driver leaves you on the road and accelerates away. Morrison says this:
"Let there be no doubt about this – if unionists accept this deal we will be accepting a situation where we will never again be treated as a full and equal part of the United Kingdom.
"And for what?
"So that we can have Michelle O'Neill [Sinn Fein] as First Minister?"
In the meantime, two academics from Newcastle University's Law School have published a paper reviewing the WF. They say:
"It takes a long time for the fury and animosity generated by an upheaval like Brexit to subside, and especially after seven years of repeatedly traversing the reasons why imposing a customs and regulatory border across the island of Ireland is unworkable, and attempting multiple variations of an alternative to doing so. The announcement of the Windsor Framework, to general aplomb at Westminster and amid evident bonhomie between Rishi Sunak and Ursula von der Leyen, could nonetheless mark the point at which we move into a genuinely post-Brexit phase of EU-UK relations.
"Which leaves the question, beyond the prominent rebranding, of whether Sunak’s Windsor Framework be any more successful than the May Backstop and the Johnson Protocol before it."
The paper acknowledges progress but doesn't come to any firm conclusion. About the DUP it says:
"Any effort by the DUP leadership to set aside these concerns [Article VI of the Act of Union had been undermined] and back the deal nonetheless risks exacerbating the party’s internal divisions over the shape of Brexit, and could enable some of the forces that they have promoted within Loyalism to bolster their opposition to the Protocol to achieve further prominence within Unionist discourse."
You can say that again.
To make matters worse, Chris Heaton-Harris (a man so far out of his depth he should be wearing a life jacket) has raised Unionist hopes by suggesting on the Stormont Brake that the British government would be "bound" to veto any new EU if 30 unionist MLA's voted for it:
Highly significant comments from NI Secretary of State if the words mean what they seem to mean: Heaton-Harris says the Government would be "bound" to veto EU law if the Assembly requests, meaning a de facto unionist (or, less likely, nationalist) veto.https://t.co/iRHbosOCRe
— Sam McBride (@SJAMcBride) March 9, 2023
Sunak and his government are doing exactly the same as Johnson did three years ago. Agree on a deal in secret without consulting the DUP, present it as a 'fantastic' deal, hide the practical details in complex documents, oversell the whole thing, and now lie about what the deal actually contains or suggest it has more in it than it really has.
The academics casually mention the labeling of products just once in passing but in my opinion, this will be among the most powerful arguments against the WF. Imagine unionists shopping every week and picking up chilled meat and plant-based products with a prominent label "Not for EU" on it. What would you think?
We will see these labels in GB too, but in Northern Ireland, there will also be large posters and signs in shops alongside these products saying they cannot be taken into the EU, as if they are second-class goods. What else are they supposed to think?
Another article in The Irish Times by Etain Tannam, an associate professor in international peace studies and fellow, at Trinity College Dublin, thinks it is as good as it gets for the DUP and she may be right, but she does admit the stakes are high.
"However, the framework is as good as it gets and almost certainly represents the end of the negotiating process. It is here to stay regardless of the DUP’s decision."
But Morrison is also right, for unionists, accepting the WF does mean NI being treated differently in perpetuity. No doubt they will look back on the Brexit vote of 23 June 2016 as the day the Union was broken. Unfortunately, neither side of the NI divide has a great history of pragmatism.
I think the penny has finally dropped for unionists in Northern Ireland. The WF may be as good as it gets, but what we had before was better. That is also undeniable.
