THE ISOLATION OF UNIONISM
The negotiations over the protocol continued into December with little or no progress until Maroš Šefčovič announced a unilateral decision by the EU to change its rules in order to guarantee the supply of medicines to the North from the UK. The move prompted the British government to drop its demand for the removal of the ECJ from any role in the implementation of the protocol.
This progress followed weeks of intensive discussions between Šefčovič and Frost that culminated in an acceptance by British government officials that their EU Commission counterparts had no mandate from the member states to renegotiate the protocol. It was agreed that their negotiations should concentrate on the practical difficulties, including the further reduction of customs checks and procedures, arising from the implementation of the protocol arrangements. Frost’s objection to the ECJ’s ultimate legal responsibility for the operation of the customs and trade agreement through the NI protocol was now removed, allowing for a resumption of talks in the new year.
In late November, Frost conceded that his frequent threats to trigger Article 16 would not ‘affect the standing of the Protocol as a whole’. In a response to a question by former UUP MP Reg Empey, a member of the House of Lords, Frost said, ‘Article 16 is a safeguard provision for addressing serious economic, societal and environmental difficulties. It is part of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Triggering it does not affect the standing of the Protocol as a whole’.
It also emerged that the UK government’s advisers had confirmed that it could face legal action by the EU if it did not clarify what aspects of the protocol it intended to suspend, and why, in order to adhere to the rules surrounding any decision to trigger Article 16.
If Article 16 was triggered, the UK would be able to suspend only some parts of the protocol, temporarily, and in very limited circumstances. It would still be legally obliged to implement the rest of the protocol. Following months of upheaval and tension, it was now apparent that the threat to use Article 16 was more useful as a political bargaining tool than as an actual weapon.
This did not prevent Jeffrey Donaldson warning Boris Johnson that his party would collapse the ‘political institutions’ if the Irish Sea border was not removed. Donaldson was particularly annoyed when the British prime minister said that he believed that the protocol could be worked differently but that the EU had to be convinced of this. With Frost retreating on the wider issue of the ECJ, the DUP leader was now struggling to find willing allies in the British government for his battle against the protocol, and he was quoted in the Irish Times on 12 December as saying,
I have given space for talks. I have been reasonable, but Brussels is being unreasonable. These talks cannot go on for years. The prime minister must realise that if there is no progress then, as I said, on September 9th, our continued participation in political institutions that are being used to impose the protocol is not sustainable.
With his party refusing to operate other elements of the GFA and boycotting meetings of the North South Ministerial Council, Donaldson was subjected to criticism from all parties in Belfast over his threat to bring down the power-sharing government at a time when it was grappling with another, highly infectious variant of Covid-19 that threatened to overwhelm the already struggling health service. The recently created unionist alliance against the protocol was ruptured when UUP leader Doug Beattie asserted, as reported in the Irish Times, that bringing down the executive and assembly at Stormont ‘would be bad for the people of Northern Ireland and for unionism. It will do nothing to address the protocol’.
There was no breach in the collective approach across EU member states on the dispute, and the UK government was clearly reluctant to escalate matters to a potentially self-destructive trade war. After he was elected as German chancellor in early December 2021, Olaf Scholz and his coalition partners, in an explicit criticism of Westminster, confirmed their support for the terms of the GFA and the protocol in their programme for government. Johnson was also subjected to continuing criticism from Emmanuel Macron over post-Brexit fishing rights; in addition, there were differences over the hazardous movement of illegal migrants across the English Channel. In late November 2021, 27 people died attempting to make the 33-kilometre crossing from France to England when their small boat capsized.
Johnson and his colleagues also found it increasingly difficult to persuade the British public that their project for a new, independent and prosperous UK, released from the shackles of Brussels, was about to attract trade deals across the world. However, the apparent change of strategy and tone over the protocol in London was arguably more influenced by the decision of the US government to maintain tariffs on the import of steel from Britain while suspending those imposed on the EU.
According to a report in the Financial Times, the decision by the Biden administration to retain tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from the UK was directly influenced by the British threat to undermine the NI protocol. The newspaper quoted a communication by a US Department of Commerce official who said that the British threats to trigger Article 16 of the protocol had obstructed talks on easing metal tariffs imposed during Donald Trump’s presidency. The UK government downplayed any link between the tariff talks and the protocol, but informed sources in Washington told the newspaper that pressure from powerful figures in the US Congress prevented them from moving ahead.
During a visit to Washington and New York in early December, Mary Lou McDonald met with influential Irish American congressmen and senators, who confirmed that the tariffs had become embroiled in the protocol standoff. Her message to them was to continue to defend the GFA and to encourage the Irish and British governments to prepare for referendums on Irish unity in the next five to ten years.
Ciarán Quinn, the Sinn Féin organiser in the USA, said that ‘no one blinked’ when McDonald informed politicians across the aisle and in the administration that the logical extension to the GFA and Brexit was a united Ireland. On her visit, during which she also addressed the New York Bar Association, the Sinn Féin leader told US politicians and the media that the task was to ‘start preparation now for an orderly, democratic and peaceful transition from a partitioned Ireland to a united Ireland’.
In an interview with the author, Quinn said:
Brexit, the rise of Sinn Féin in the South, and the ending of the perpetual unionist majority in the North has changed the conversation … Previously the discussion on Irish unity had been deemed as aspirational at best and dangerous at worst. This time no one blinked. There was an acceptance that things have moved on. The discussion was on the shape of the next five to ten years, how to manage change, and the constitutional question.
The Good Friday Agreement is a US foreign policy success. Those we spoke to in Congress and the administration are keen to ensure that the peaceful and democratic principles of the Agreement remain the only way forward. It was also clear to them how Brexit has changed the relationship between Britain and the EU concerning Irish unity. Before Brexit, the border was a dispute between two member states. Post Brexit it is a border dispute between the EU and a third country. Irish unity is now in the interest of the European project. Now, the US has to find a balance in its strategic interests with the EU and Britain. The rule of thumb is that the economic and geographic advantage rests with the EU.
The financial cost of Irish unity was the subject of much discussion following an opinion poll for the Irish Times that showed that 62 per cent of people in the South were in favour of unity, but 79 per cent would not accept higher taxes or poorer public services to pay for it. The opinion poll, carried out by Ipsos/MRBI in early December 2021, also showed considerable resistance to the idea of a new flag (77 per cent against) or a new national anthem (72 per cent opposed). The preferred timeline for a referendum, chosen by 42 per cent of respondents, was ‘in the next ten years’.
According to Seamus McGuinness of the ESRI, asking whether people are prepared to pay higher taxes or accept poorer public services to achieve a united Ireland is highly premature given that the appropriate modelling has not been carried out to establish what cost, if any, would be involved. McGuinness is one of the authors of an ESRI project to develop, with their counterparts in the UK, a suite of macroeconomics models that would allow for accurate comparisons to be made on an all-island basis.
In collaboration with the employer group Ibec and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) in the UK, the three-year research project will aim to produce economic forecasts and a framework to analyse the impact of a range of public policies that will affect business over the coming years. While the workplan for the new model has yet to be established, it will likely examine the impact of Brexit on cross-border trade on the island, provide more detailed knowledge of the economy in the North and lead to evidence-based policies that can improve and protect competitiveness in the all-island economy.
McGuinness said that the question posed in the opinion poll for the Irish Times ‘is pre-supposing that there will be a higher cost to unification’. He told the author in an interview:
That is not necessarily true. The need for subvention or additional taxation really rests on the assumption that unification would take place without addressing the low productivity issues that create the need for a subvention in the first place. The whole point of unification would be that it would improve welfare levels for people in the North and for the people in the South, that would provide a framework other than partition and that would allow the North’s economy to meet its full potential. It is clearly under-performing at the moment. If you had a planned pathway that allows you to do that, not only could you reach a scenario where there is no cost to taxpayers in the Republic but there could be net benefits in terms of increased growth in the Republic as well as in the North.
The macro modelling project, led by the ESRI, will allow for accurate comparisons to be made between the two economies, North and South. By 2024, when the continuation of the protocol is due to be debated in the Northern Ireland Assembly, politicians, businesspeople, academics and wider civic society will have a tool that could measure its benefits or otherwise to the all-island economy. It could also help to put numbers around the protocol and what would have happened in its absence, McGuinness said.
In reality, most of the work will be done in the ESRI. We will be doing most of the model building. We’ll look at the mechanisms by which our existing model and the new model can talk to each other so that they can be within a common framework. If there is an increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) or export orientation or an increase in educational participation or achievements in the North, we can examine the implications not only for productivity and income levels in the North, but also for the Republic.
In the UK, NIESR will assist with building the common modelling framework on which real comparisons can be made and, ultimately, the impacts of economic policies analysed on an all-island basis, which will help inform any transition to unification.
Structural macroeconomic models, such as the one being developed by the ESRI and NIESR, would allow you to actually do the analysis and put numbers on that and plan for different sorts of scenarios in terms of how you best achieve the ultimate gains for citizens, North and South, including any transition to unification. That type of analysis needs to be done before a border poll as part of the planning process.
The first year of the protocol saw a significant diversion of trade in just a few months, with exports from the North to the South increasing rapidly while those to Britain declined, McGuinness said.
That diversion of trade happened at a pace in the space of a few months that hasn’t been seen over years. It’s likely to continue on that trajectory because under Tory administration what you will find will be increased divergence away from EU rules and standards which will place an onus on the EU to put further restrictions on any sort of imports from Britain. That will incentivise operators in the North to reorientate supply chains away from Britain and towards EU suppliers. With increased divergence from EU standards by Britain as they pursue trade deals with other countries, there will be increased integration by NI operators with both the Republic and the EU.
Almost a year into Brexit, there was also a significant shift in companies in the South switching their supply lines from Britain to Northern Ireland under the protocol, while there was a sharp decline in trade with Britain.
Researchers in the ESRI and the Department of Finance in Dublin said that an examination of detailed product data showed a sharp decline in trade between the Republic and Britain, while trade with the North ‘has increased considerably’.
CSO figures in late December 2021 showed that firms in the North exported an extra £1 billion of goods to the Republic in the first 10 months of 2021. The ESRI said that the reorientation of supply lines post-Brexit had resulted in the share of Irish imports originating in Northern Ireland rising from six per cent in 2015 to over 40 per cent in 2021, mainly driven by the food and beverage sector.
An unfortunate consequence of Brexit was the new immigration laws introduced by the UK that will force non-Irish EU citizens to apply for pre-travel clearance before crossing the border to the North. The Nationality and Borders Bill will, if enacted, require them to apply online for an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) before entering the UK.
Attempts by MPs from the Alliance Party, the SDLP, Labour and the Liberal Democrats at Westminster to exempt travel on the island of Ireland from the ETA requirement were unsuccessful and the Bill was passed in the House of Commons in early December 2021. Once agreed in the House of Lords, it will come into effect in 2025, adding extra layers of bureaucracy and creating ‘legal risk and jeopardy for people crossing on land journeys into Northern Ireland’, according to Alliance MP Stephen Farry.
The fear of migration into Britain, which was a key motivation for Brexit, will delay and obstruct the movement of EU citizens on the island, particularly those living in border counties and crossing into the North for work, often on a daily basis.