Category: Northern Ireland

Not all Brexit Deals are alike

On balance, I supported Theresa May’s Deal. I can’t support Boris Johnson’s

The United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union just over three years ago. I did not. Those three years feel like many long, weary lifetimes in politics. Throughout that time, I’ve felt we should accept the result and work with it. I was open to a variety of different moderate Brexit outcomes and I never wanted to embitter our politics even further with a second referendum.

I made the argument for Theresa May’s Deal with a heavy heart. I feel grimly vindicated in making it. May was succeeded by Johnson, contemptuous of constitutionalism and unfit for high office. A deal which essentially included a customs union and a fairly high level of alignment with the EU was replaced with a Brexiteers’ Brexit. We now face a far worse choice than before, having badly damaged our democratic norms in the process.

But when I supported May’s Brexit, I made a judgment on a particular package. And as someone who takes the Union seriously, as a social democrat, and as someone willing to accept a reasonable but not brutal Brexit, Johnson’s goes too far. I confess I didn’t expect him to strike a deal by now. I also thought he would only agree one if he had the DUP on board. And I knew the EU would happily adopt a Northern Ireland-only backstop, but I didn’t think they would make so many concessions on its details. But almost all the changes are greatly for the worse and the balance of risks has changed.

The new Northern Ireland backstop: consent without convergence

The reasons for a backstop are well-rehearsed. Brexit forces a series of hard choices upon Northern Ireland — soon, by default, to have a land border with the EU. That border is historically contested, logistically impossible and politically fraught. Border communities have been abundantly clear they will not accept checks and controls. And regulatory and customs divergence means checks and controls.

The EU proposed that Northern Ireland align with Border-relevant parts of EU law and that controls be carried out between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That cut across unionists’ links to the rest of the United Kingdom, with significant (and likely to grow) barriers to most of its trade. Northern Ireland would also take rules shared with Ireland with no say in them. This differed fundamentally from North/South cooperation by agreement between the two jurisdictions.

Theresa May fought hard to secure a limited UK element to the backstop. Great Britain would have been in a customs union with Northern Ireland and the EU. She also accepted that to keep Great Britain and Northern Ireland close, Great Britain would have to stay close to the EU. Faced with a choice between regulatory freedom and the economic cohesion of the Union, she chose the Union. Boris Johnson chose the opposite. He returned to the Commission’s original backstop, changed its provisions on customs and secured new ones on consent.

Theresa May’s customs partnership has been reborn for Northern Ireland alone. Northern Ireland would legally be outside the EU customs union and in the UK’s customs territory. However, the EU’s customs border would be administered at Northern Ireland’s ports. Some goods bound for Northern Ireland would be exempted from EU tariffs from the start. Others would either need to pay tariffs and claim rebates or have tariffs effectively waived by the UK Government up to a limit. This means Northern Ireland can benefit from such trade deals as the UK negotiates.

Meanwhile, the new consent provisions mean the backstop stands or falls through votes by members of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The backstop would come into force at the end of the UK transition period. After four years, the Assembly would vote. Support from a simple majority of MLAs would keep the backstop in place, with another vote four years later. With a cross-community majority, the next vote would be after eight years. If the backstop is rejected, we would have two years to identify alternative arrangements for the land border. Whether the Assembly ever rejects it probably depends on the Alliance Party’s electoral fortunes. It is unlikely, but not impossible.

May’s backstop, in my view, made it likely that Great Britain would remain aligned to Northern Ireland and major new barriers between the two would not arise while protecting goods trade with Ireland and avoiding a hard land Border. Because Great Britain couldn’t lower tariffs below the EU’s, a radically different trade policy wasn’t on offer. That removed the point of rules on goods which differed from the EU and Northern Ireland. The hard choices Brexit forces on Northern Ireland would have been, more or less, avoided. Nationalist alienation would have been reduced and Border communities’ way of life would have been preserved. And even unionists should recognise that without acquiescence from people of a nationalist background, the prospects for the Union would be poor indeed.

I judge that Johnson’s backstop poses a far starker, potentially destabilising choice for Northern Ireland. Great Britain will, over time, move away from the EU if he gets his way: that is the whole point of the exercise. I do not believe that can happen without growing barriers to trade between the two. We should remember that most of Northern Ireland’s trade is with Great Britain. Clearly this backstop also gives Northern Ireland a competitive advantage over Great Britain in EU trade. I have yet to see hard economic evidence that this outweighs major divergence from its largest market. The likelihood is a significant economic realignment over time, to which most unionists do not consent and which has major political implications.

The institutional provisions are deeply worrying too. I welcome a consent mechanism in principle. But I fear an Assembly vote every four years (not even in line with the Assembly’s five-year electoral cycle) will polarise Northern Ireland’s politics still further and make it even harder for its institutions to work. Do we want every Assembly election to be overshadowed by whether the the region will align with Great Britain or Ireland? Every Border constituency voting on whether MLAs risk bringing back a hard Border? Every core unionist constituency voting on whether they remain aligned with Ireland?

From a unionist perspective, Johnson’s backstop trades the substance of close alignment with both Great Britain and Ireland for the formality of consent which is unlikely to be withdrawn — and which could only be withdrawn at an enormous price. At least as importantly, from a cross-community perspective it raises the temperature of Northern Ireland’s politics indefinitely and undermines its institutions. May’s backstop was, especially if combined with alignment by Great Britain and mechanisms for input in the longer term, liveable. Johnson’s is better than No Deal, given how disastrous that would be for Northern Ireland. But Northern Ireland deserves better than either Johnson’s Deal or No Deal.

The UK’s new Brexit destination: no compromise, no safety net

The new backstop doesn’t just let Great Britain diverge from Northern Ireland. It removes the elements which nudged the whole UK towards a closer relationship with the EU. Those elements made Theresa May’s concessions to Labour MPs more credible. The backstop also included a level playing field, to prevent a race to the bottom between the UK and the EU. This covered aspects of tax, social and labour standards, the environment, competition and state aid.

I’ve called the Political Declaration on the Future Relationship a very solemn press release before. I broadly stand by that: it’s the EU’s starting point for negotiations, and assuming our government stays the same it will also be the UK’s. Given recent history, it is entirely possible that the UK will again find itself in political paralysis, in which case the Political Declaration’s default may be more influential than we think. First drafts often shape outcomes: look at the Commission’s original backstop.

Still, it’s not binding. The level playing field is still in Johnson’s Political Declaration and name-checks the same categories as in May’s backstop. But while it makes clear that how far the UK agrees not to try to undercut the EU and how much market access it gains are linked, it can do no more than that. I accept that, while the UK legally needed EU agreement for Great Britain to exit the backstop, such agreement would not have ultimately been refused. But it makes at least some core protections ‘stickier’ and it nudged us towards a more moderate Brexit.

Ultimately, the whole structure of Johnson’s Deal points to a much harder Brexit than May’s. Whether you described May’s Deal as Jersey Minus or a cross between Turkey and Ukraine, its logic pointed to a fairly high level of alignment in goods. May believed arrangements would be found to let the UK out of a customs union. In reality, I am sceptical the new customs arrangements for Northern Ireland would have been on offer any time soon.

But where May most likely offered a Brexit which was neither soft nor hard, Johnson offers a very hard Brexit indeed. Disruption aside (obviously a huge ‘aside’), it’s probably not all that much better than No Deal in the long run. May’s Deal was a compromise — from a Leave starting point (they did, after all, win), but a compromise. Johnson’s Deal is a compromise with the EU, but it effectively tells Remainers to knuckle under and be grateful they don’t have to eat turnips.

Johnson is riding roughshod over a country which only voted narrowly for Brexit, where two out of four constituent countries voted Remain. He also risks fuelling the cause of Scottish secession from the UK. As a matter of policy, a harder Brexit makes for a far sharper choice for a separate Scotland. Realigning away from the UK and towards the EU would be an immensely painful undertaking. And few would relish checks and controls on the Tweed or Solway.

But as Brexit makes very clear, people don’t always vote on economics. I am British. I am the child of a Scottish father and an English mother. I am not going to risk throwing my country away willingly just so Boris Johnson can ‘get Brexit done’ on his terms alone.

What are the risks?

I am not willing, if I have a viable choice, to see this passed without further reference to the people. But not being a fan of turnips or gambles, the question follows: what are the risks of voting the deal on the table down in the absence of a referendum?

I take a different view to the one I took in March. Unlike then, if a deal is not approved by MPs by the end of today, the Prime Minister is legally obliged to seek an extension under Article 50. Even if we wish to pass this Deal, that is self-evidently in our interests. The idea of trying to pass something as significant and complex as a Withdrawal Agreement Bill in 10 days, with trench warfare in Parliament, is farcical. Legislating for Maastricht took over a year. In the interests of basic democratic scrutiny, we should want an extension now.

No Deal on 31 October is therefore not a legal option as a UK policy choice. In my view, the courts will make short work of attempts to claim otherwise. Of course, no UK Act can prevent the EU from refusing an extension. But though our colleagues’ exasperation is evident and readily explicable, I think outright refusal is a very unlikely scenario.

The choreographed warnings from Juncker, Macron and Varadkar make political sense. And if Brussels forces our hand by refusing an extension, then clearly we will have to accept the Deal as it is. The warnings are not, however, categorical. And revealed preference indicates that while the EU will want any extension to be for a reason, it does not wish to force a No Deal exit. The election which would inevitably follow gives a chance of breaking any political deadlock, which gives the EU an incentive to facilitate one if it becomes clear this Deal will not pass.

Johnson has thrown himself behind his Deal. It now seems overwhelmingly likely that if blocked, he would seek an election on a platform of passing it. He may very well win a clear majority on that basis. If so, there is at least an electoral mandate for the government to proceed. I doubt his odds of outright victory are higher than they’d be after ‘getting Brexit done’. Given these scenarios, it seems to me that there is little to lose.

There is a line

I backed May’s Deal with a heavy heart. Perhaps oddly, I oppose this Deal with a heavy heart too. Politically, I am exhausted by the last few years. I am tired of the polarising ferocity of the Brexit process. I fear what we have done to ourselves and to each other in this country and I fear what we will carry on doing. I wish MPs had compromised when there was a real compromise on the table.

But if this is now the only Brexit on offer, then — having wished for, argued for and supported compromise — I feel forced into preferring a second referendum to see if Johnson’s Brexit is a price people are truly willing to pay. I am far from sure Remain can get one and I am far from confident Remain would win one. Frankly, my gut instinct is that the campaign would go against them. But it is clear to me that not enough people are willing to compromise on a reasonable Brexit.

And if there is a second referendum and if Remain wins, I am under no illusions. At best, we will have restored the threadbare legitimacy of EU membership to which David Cameron referred in 2013. There will be a heavy price to pay and a daunting task ahead in patching that legitimacy up over years. I am far from sure we would succeed.

But there has to be a line. And for peace process, unionist, social democratic and Remain-voting reasons, I have reached mine. So be it. One way or another, let the people choose.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 19 October 2019.

Special cases

Northern Ireland is a post-conflict region with a unique border challenge. Don’t use it as a grievance or a rhetorical trick

As discussions about a revised Northern Ireland backstop in all but name intensify, calls for other parts of the UK to get a look-in have unsurprisingly resurfaced. In fairness, this time round it’s come from commentators more than politicians. But the line resurfaces far too often and deserves to be called out properly.

Three parts of the UK voted to remain in the EU: Scotland, London and Northern Ireland. But the EU is not willing to treat Northern Ireland differently because of its referendum vote. It is willing to treat Northern Ireland differently because Ireland, a continuing EU member state, deems it a vital interest. Ireland regards a backstop as crucial to its view of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, its full place in the EU and its strategic autonomy vis-à-vis the UK.

Others, notably most Northern Ireland unionists and the current UK Government, dispute Dublin’s view of the 1998 Agreement. The competing merits aren’t my point here. However, it is hard to dispute that a clear majority in Northern Ireland want to avoid a hard border. And opposition to a visible land border, checks and controls is overwhelming among border communities. This border raises challenges rooted in lived experience, logistics and deep-rooted ties which don’t exist anywhere else in the UK.

The economics of different backstops vary. May’s probably would have minimised barriers between Great Britain and Northern Ireland in practice as well as protecting North/South goods trade. It might even have provided an advantageous niche for Northern Ireland with access to EU and UK markets, though claims of a bonanza have been more asserted than evidenced. A Northern Ireland-only backstop — meant to allow Great Britain to go its own way — is much more likely to raise barriers to trade as divergence grows.

There is, however, no serious case for a different Scottish EU relationship within the UK. 60% of Scotland’s external sales went to the rest of the UK in 2017, compared to 18% which went to the EU27. Exports to Ireland weigh in at somewhat under 2%. There is no equivalent to the challenges of Northern Ireland’s trade with Ireland. The economics of Scottish independence are dire — but diverging from the rest of the UK without leaving causes a lot of the economic damage and offers less democratic say in the relevant rules.

The backstop is, furthermore, designed to prevent a visible land border. Treating Scotland (or Wales, or London) differently would create one. The Anglo-Scottish border does at least make some geographical sense — hammered into shape through wars between kingdoms. Unlike the Anglo-Welsh border, it wasn’t finalised when creating 13 counties in an act of administrative incorporation. Unlike the border on the island of Ireland, it didn’t spring from a bitterly-contested hiving-off of six counties. Far fewer people live beside it than the other two.

Nonetheless, creating checks on the Tweed and barriers to most of Scotland’s trade in return for fewer checks in the North Sea and less than a fifth of its trade is the kind of thing you want because of ideology, not practicality. It’s also moot. The EU is obviously not especially enamoured of the UK at present. Its members are, however, considerably less enamoured of giving other separatist movements ideas. Spain (including Catalonia and the Basque Country), Belgium (Flanders) and others have no proactive interest in setting precedents.

Further, Brussels has no reason to make special arrangements outside Northern Ireland. The EU is a membership club, and the interaction between its rules and Ireland’s stated interests, modified a bit to try to get it past the UK, is the source of the backstop. No EU member has a vital national interest in helping tweak EU rules for Scotland, whether via a ‘Scottish backstop’ or the kind of Liechtenstein solution the Scottish Government mooted in 2016.

So ‘If Northern Ireland, then what about Scotland?’ fails on logistics, economics and geopolitics. The same applies elsewhere in Great Britain. I’ve focused on Scotland in this piece, largely because its case is the one most fleshed out since 2016. But that isn’t entirely fair, partly because the other cases are even weaker and partly because ‘If Northern Ireland, then what about us?’ has spread a bit. We’ve seen it as a rhetorical trick from some in London. We saw it when Adam Price said any deal for Bangor, Northern Ireland must apply in Bangor, Wales.

And that, for the most part, is what all this is: a rhetorical trick. It’s using Northern Ireland as leverage in other political battles — Remain vs Leave and Yes vs No. It may well often be thoughtless rather than calculated. Either way, Northern Ireland’s case deserves to be considered on its own merits. The region is not an excuse for Scottish (or Welsh) nationalists to whip up grievance against Westminster. Nor it is a chance for Remainers to claim unfairness to Great Britain.

Northern Ireland is uniquely harmed by leaving the EU. There is a powerful argument for trying to stop Brexit on that specific basis. But too many people died in conflict, and the settlement built to resolve it is too important, for it to be used as a grievance or a tool. Politicians and commentators elsewhere should stop doing it.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 14 October 2019.

Brexit and a balanced backstop

Anyone who thought about Brexit should have known the border between the UK and Ireland would be a knotty and crucial issue to solve.

The common travel area allows British and Irish citizens to cross borders freely. We also share a customs union, regulatory framework and VAT/excise arrangements. These remove the need for sea or land border checks between the UK and Ireland. Brexit puts an end to the customs, regulatory, VAT and excise arrangements, with huge social, economic, political and constitutional implications. Ireland has made the land border its priority, and the EU26 back them to the hilt.

A combination of its red lines and hubris, Northern Ireland’s needs, Ireland’s strength of feeling and the EU27 position on the single market presents the UK with a huge problem. We have to have an agreement, and so we have to agree a backstop. But an economic border with Great Britain violates the spirit of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement at least as much as checks on the land border. I am not sure Brussels understands what undercutting unionists like that might mean. I’m not even sure Dublin (very much alive to nationalists’ concerns) fully grasps the implications. (And you don’t have to let London, which remains primarily responsible, off the hook to say so.)

The main practical elements of the border problem are:

  • the EU customs union
  • the EU VAT area
  • EU arrangements for excise duties
  • the EU acquis in goods — including agricultural and fisheries products, together with sanitary and phytosanitary rules (but not the CAP or CFP).

Is there any way to square the circle? Below I suggest a possible way through. I’m not saying it’s foolproof, or necessarily right. But it might help us pick our way through.

Customs, VAT and excise: the UK follows the EU

The first step would be to agree an all-UK customs union, as well as the UK adopting the EU’s rules on VAT and excise duties. These aren’t seen as part of the single market and so don’t breach the EU’s ‘four freedoms’ red line.

The EU doesn’t object to an EU-UK customs union in principle. The UK would need to accept the common external tariff for all goods and the full Union Customs Code. That’s fine: we’ve basically conceded it for backstop purposes anyway. The Commission claims Article 50 cannot extend it to Great Britain, but the EU would probably agree to it via some legal means.

The harder question is whether the EU27 would be willing to treat VAT and excise similarly. No non-EU state has secured this except Monaco (thanks to its special relationship with France). The role of the CJEU (note that the EFTA Court doesn’t deal with the acquis in VAT or excise) would need clear protection. But it doesn’t breach the EU’s position on the four freedoms.

Goods regulation, part one: Northern Ireland follows the EU, but what about Great Britain?

The toughest issue is regulatory alignment in goods. So far, the EU27 have said the single market cannot be cherry-picked for goods and the four freedoms cannot be split.

The first concern is that the UK could deregulate its services, produce goods more cheaply and then exploit its single market access. But this is essentially a question of getting ‘level playing field’ issues right. These are mainly state aid, employment, health and safety and environmental standards, and they can also be addressed in any backstop. Indeed, the Commission’s draft backstop does cover them for Northern Ireland.

That leaves the divisibility of the four freedoms. For the final deal, the UK hopes to end free movement of persons by forgoing free movement of services. Its position implies something similar for the backstop. In public, the EU27 have consistently rejected the idea. Whether, and to what extent, public pronouncements match private reality remains hotly disputed. In any event, banking on such a climbdown to square the backstop is quite the risk.

Goods regulation, part 2: Great Britain follows Northern Ireland, and checks are selective

Still, we might be able to pick our way through the Commission’s Northern Ireland-only backstop and the Government’s view that it should be UK-wide. The Commission says alignment between Great Britain and Northern Ireland is for the UK to deal with. Now, I think that’s pretty disingenuous in the context of a Northern Ireland-only backstop. Both sides need to agree that standards, customs, VAT and excise are similar enough to avoid border checks.

The Commission’s choice of words offers a possible clue. A couple of stories have suggested the UK is exploring whether ‘parallel marketability’ might help solve this problem. Parallel marketability has already entered the Brexit debate (for Scotland and Northern Ireland). It’s how Liechtenstein squares EEA membership with its customs union with Switzerland. Goods made to either EEA or Swiss standards can circulate there. Liechtenstein then has to take steps to keep goods which attract Swiss tariffs or don’t meet Swiss standards out of Switzerland.

This system works for a principality of 38,000 with one open border. (The Austrian border is checked.) Major divergence would probably test it to destruction if Northern Ireland accepted goods made to both EU and UK standards. There’s a land and a sea border, both politically fraught and one with a long tradition of smuggling. But if the whole UK forms a customs union with the EU and adopts EU rules for goods, VAT and excise, many concerns fall away. There would be no divergence in goods standards to monitor. The UK would apply the common external tariff, so tariff differences wouldn’t be an issue.

So if Great Britain aligns in full, could parallel marketability avoid systematic checks on the land and sea border? We would still have checks between Great Britain and the EU26. (Whether we’d have them between Great Britain and Ireland or between Northern Ireland and the EU26 is an open question.) The risk would now be one of principle, not practical impact.

Could we make it work?

The volume of trade between Great Britain and the EU26 would make major trade diversion via Northern Ireland fairly obvious. (That holds, to a lesser extent, for trade between Great Britain and Ireland.) The current draft protocol includes a specialised EU-UK committee to oversee it. In this model it could monitor reported traffic flows, receive reports from UK and EU/Irish authorities, and require action. Spot checks could be carried out within Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Ireland, and on a intelligence-led basis at ports and on land. VAT records could also help track some re-routing of goods.

Legally, the Commission claims Article 50 can be used for a Northern Ireland backstop, but not a UK-wide version. I think that’s dubious. EU-UK relations cover more than the contents of a backstop, so I don’t think it pre-empts the conversation about those relations. The idea that the EU’s Article 50 competence is geographically limited also seems weak. (The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement argument that Northern Ireland can be covered, but not the whole UK, rests on a one-sided assessment of that accord in my view.)

But the EU27 can’t be persuaded on the law, is there another option available? Could the backstop in the Withdrawal Agreement could include a commitment to amend it via Article 218? This is the legal basis the Commission cites for UK-wide elements. We could publish those amendments with the Withdrawal Agreement and ratify them during the transition.

Why should anyone do this?

For the UK, this option beats the current backstop. It addresses the Northern Ireland issue. We’ve already accepted a customs union for any fall-back arrangements, so we don’t lose much from a global trade point of view. In practice we’d adopt most EU goods standards anyway. Border checks would still exist for Great Britain unless a wider deal scraps them, but shared standards and no rules of origin helps business.

For the EU, this squares a tricky circle, delivers for Ireland and upholds its stated principles on the single market pending a wider deal. The UK aligning in goods, not services, works nicely for a union which is a net exporter of goods and a net importer of services vis-à-vis the UK, so long as level playing field rules are robust. The UK will be seen to pay a price. And it forestalls a regulatory competitor in goods, where the single market is most developed.

And overall?

We’d have a UK-wide backstop framed to fit the language of the Joint Report. The whole UK would align with the EU on customs, VAT and excise. Northern Ireland would align with the EU on goods. Great Britain would align with Northern Ireland on goods. And the EU27 would do the minimum required to avoid borders between Northern Ireland and either Great Britain or Ireland.

It’s not ideal for anyone. But the backstop is supposed to be a last-ditch solution. We’re seeking tolerable imperfection. This might fit the bill.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 6 September 2018.

Consent and conciliation: Brexit and the Border

Given the ambiguity in December’s Joint Report between the UK and the EU, the UK’s reaction to the EU’s draft Withdrawal Agreement is unsurprising. Equally unsurprisingly, anger focused most on the protocol for Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The Irish Border is Brexit’s most fraught question. People can cross it without checks due to the Common Travel Area. Military checkpoints closed over time: the last came down in the last decade. Goods cross unchecked, thanks to a customs union and shared regulatory standards. And thanks to common EU systems, VAT and excise duties don’t need to be checked either. Brexit puts this at risk.

Border protocol

The protocol clarifies that the UK and Ireland can continue to make provision for the free movement of persons without checks. This is crucial: controlling travel between Ireland and Northern Ireland would prove unworkable. The symbolic and human implications of trying would be appalling. Checkpoints would likely become targets. In 1939–52, we had controls between Great Britain and the island of Ireland instead.

More contentiously, the protocol lists areas where Northern Ireland would apply EU law to avoid checks on goods or customs. The ‘common regulatory area’ would cover:

  • EU law on the free movement of goods
  • EU customs legislation, with Northern Ireland considered part of the EU’s customs territory
  • bans on restricting imports/exports, both upfront and by the back door
  • EU law on VAT and excise duties.

EU sanitary and phytosanitary rules and standards for agriculture and fisheries would apply. The same goes for wholesale electricity markets, much environmental protection, and state aid as it affects EU-Northern Ireland trade.

You can argue about whether every aspect of this protocol represents the ‘bare minimum’ to avoid a hard Border. Ukraine’s Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement provides a precedent for internal market treatment on the basis of ‘approximating’ legislation. (I suspect ‘approximation’ will look very much like ‘adoption’.) Other approaches which recognise the Court of Justice of the European Union’s jurisdiction could also be found.

Still, I can’t see how you avoid any border checks without regulatory alignment in goods, a full customs union and shared law on VAT and excise duties. And paragraph 49 of the Joint Report was wide-ranging:

The United Kingdom remains committed to protecting North-South cooperation and to its guarantee of avoiding a hard border. Any future arrangements must be compatible with these overarching requirements. … In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement.

Both sides have defined a hard border to mean no physical infrastructure. I read this to mean UK, and not only Northern Ireland, alignment. And there are fundamental problems with a full economic border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

Border economics

Obviously, the economics don’t explain why borders in these islands are so contentious. But Northern Ireland stands to lose more than most of the UK from Brexit. So we should scrutinise claims about the economics of the Border.

Northern Ireland’s exports are more EU-focused, and dramatically more Irish-focused, than Great Britain’s. 35% of its exports go to Ireland alone. But ‘exports’ don’t cover trade within the UK — and 59% of Northern Ireland’s external sales go to Great Britain.

Data: Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency

That holds across the vast majority of sectors. For instance, 61% of Northern Ireland’s external sales are of manufactured goods, and mainly go to Great Britain.

Data: Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency

Some reply that a sea or air crossing is inherently more onerous than a land one and so can better accommodate checks. This carries some weight. But economically, it’s hard to argue it makes up for the impact on nearly four times the sales. ‘You’ve got to cross water anyway’ doesn’t work for UK manufacturing trade with Germany. It can’t logically work for trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland either.

There are some exceptions. No one sensible should break up the all-Ireland single electricity market or have different rail gauges on the island. But absent very compelling evidence, the economics of an regulatory and customs border in the Irish Sea don’t stack up.

The Belfast Agreement and the Border

More fundamentally, unionists’ case rests on the Belfast Agreement’s principle of consent. Many have argued that principle requires special status if a choice must be made. They claim border checks should reflect Northern Ireland’s Remain vote.

It’s superficially plausible, but I think it falls on reading the Agreement. The parties agreed to ‘recognise the legitimacy of whatever choice is freely exercised by a majority of the people of Northern Ireland with regard to its status, whether they prefer to continue to support the Union with Great Britain or a sovereign united Ireland’.

Brexit makes it harder for nationalists to accommodate themselves to the UK. That’s one reason voting Leave was such a mistake. But the principle of consent clearly relates to the choice between the Union and a united Ireland. It cannot be cited in and of itself to argue for particular relationships with the EU.

Special arrangements for Northern Ireland don’t breach the principle of consent in a literal sense. And all sides accept Northern Ireland is unique. Other parts of the UK do not have the right to join another state guaranteed by international treaty. And the world’s most lopsided liberal democracy can hardly insist on total internal symmetry.

But there is a principled difference between more autonomy for Northern Ireland and differentiation aligning it with another state. That’s particularly true when Northern Ireland has no direct say in the arrangement. Being in the UK entails more than MPs at Westminster. Beyond a certain point, the spirit of the principle of consent must be given its due. I believe an state-like economic and regulatory border within the UK passes that point.

Precedents exist for excluding parts of the EU from its customs union, and indeed for excluding parts of EU member states from the EU itself. But Northern Ireland is neither small and uncontested nor distant and geographically isolated. It is reasonable and just for unionists to expect to remain meaningfully integrated into the economy of their state.

The Border is deeply sensitive for nationalists — London’s insensitivity on that point stands as an indictment. We should avoid forcing a choice on borders if we possibly can. But constitutional status, in spirit and letter, is just as sensitive for unionists. On this, the DUP is quite as firm as it claims. So is the UUP. Liberal unionists such as Sylvia Hermon expect alignment to be UK-wide.

The EU27 side is making a fundamental mistake if it thinks the Agreement means an unmarked border with Ireland trumps avoiding an economic border with Great Britain. Strand Two of the Agreement does indeed provide for a North-South dimension. But it’s carefully defined, far more so than in the Sunningdale Agreement which preceded it.

In fact, it’s crucially important and insufficiently understood that the Belfast Agreement is far clearer on constitutional status than Sunningdale. There are reasons for that. It is quite as dangerous to ignore unionists’ concerns on status as to dismiss nationalists’ fears about borders.

Consistency cuts both ways

On Brexit, I normally criticise our government for wishful thinking, denialism and contradictory commitments. And there’s plenty of fault to lay at London’s door. Casually dismissing the Border problem, blithely assuming Dublin would give ground and pretending technology could fix a fundamental policy problem stand testament to that. But the EU27 side’s position on the Border has contradictions too.

Paragraph 50 of the Joint Report is crucial:

In the absence of agreed solutions, as set out in the previous paragraph, the United Kingdom will ensure that no new regulatory barriers develop between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, unless, consistent with the 1998 Agreement, the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly agree that distinct arrangements are appropriate for Northern Ireland. In all circumstances, the United Kingdom will continue to ensure the same unfettered access for Northern Ireland’s businesses to the whole of the United Kingdom internal market.

Barnier has said that how the UK delivers on paragraph 50 is a purely UK affair. That’s rather disingenuous. The EU has rightly pushed back on UK hints about turning a blind eye or exempting most businesses from customs controls — they’d create a smugglers’ paradise and break WTO law to boot. By the same token, the UK can’t turn a blind eye either.

So London can’t unilaterally prevent any barriers within the UK and deliver on paragraph 49. The EU and UK would have to extend arrangements to prevent barriers on the island of Ireland to Great Britain to do that. And having signed up to paragraph 50, the EU should surely allow it to be deliverable.

So the EU has a choice too, not just the UK. It’s currently saying something along Canadian lines (or perhaps a bit more like the now-abortive TTIP) is the only realistic option for Great Britain. Combined with the draft protocol, that clearly means an economic border in the Irish Sea — and a fallback option which doesn’t really deliver on the Joint Report.

Compromise works both ways

To be clear: I believe the UK Government is far more at fault in the Brexit negotiations than its EU counterparts. It has failed to make the effort to understand its partners — worse, it indulged in self-indulgent nationalist rhetoric at the price of alienating them. It has failed to prepare its people to face the gulf between Vote Leave’s fantasies and Brexit’s reality — May’s speech on Friday was a belated, partial start. And it has spent far too long effectively seeking to gain the economic benefits of the EU without the institutional obligations.

But the EU’s ‘Norway or Canada’ mantra (though it shouldn’t be taken wholly literally) carries its own problems. A balance of rights and obligations is fair and reasonable. A binary approach makes it politically impossible to solve the very question the EU labels a sine qua non. (And of course, ‘Norway’ wouldn’t solve the Border issue anyway.)

If the UK can move further towards realism and away from its needlessly hardline Brexit policy, and if the EU can define avoiding cherrypicking as a balance of rights and obligations and not a binary split, there might be a way to give everyone something. It would probably include something close to the Withdrawal Treaty protocol for the whole UK.

The UK might hope for more input into drawing up regulations, drawing on EEA precedents. It might ask for a little more room for regulatory manoeuvre. It would seek concessions on services, perhaps drawing on Ukraine in both cases. The EU could demand a substantial financial contribution. It could also expect a liberal and preferential UK migration policy short of free movement. And London would need to accept regulatory alignment as binding. (Kevin O’Rourke and Sam Lowe and John Springford have put forward very similar options.)

The UK could then say it had reduced economic disruption while curbing EEA movement; the EU would be able to say there was a real price for leaving; the UK and Ireland could remain borderless. From Great Britain’s perspective, I’ve tended to see an EEA-ish Brexit as the least-worst option, especially for services. However, Northern Ireland’s greater reliance on manufacturing and links with Ireland make it different. And given the stakes, I’d be willing to put Northern Ireland first.

I accept this is asking a lot of the EU. But I hope the EU might consider its origins as a peace project for our continent. And so I’d argue it, too, should prioritise protecting the peace project on these islands.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 4 March 2018.

Northern Ireland at Westminster: confidence, supply and the principle of consent

Northern Ireland’s MPs rarely play a big role in Commons arithmetic. With only 18 out of 650 seats, they’re rarely decisive in the United Kingdom’s elections. Furthermore, none of the UK-wide parties win seats there.

So we’re not very used to Northern Ireland’s politicians having much say in the government of the UK. The current maths shocked us all. And as a Labour member, I clearly hold no brief for a Conservative confidence and supply deal with the Democratic Unionist Party. But the way the legitimacy, as opposed to the wisdom and policy content, of such a deal has been attacked has often been problematic at best. And at worst it’s ignored Northern Ireland’s right to a say in the UK altogether.

Who are the DUP anyway?

Much commentary on the DUP has been rooted in an ignorance of their nature. DUP politicians are indeed socially conservative in a way those in Great Britain rarely are these days. Greater scrutiny of that conservatism would be thoroughly justified. They show no sign of trying to export those norms to Great Britain — they will probably mainly want more money for Northern Ireland. But it would be a thoroughly good thing if we heard more about the impact of DUP attitudes on women and LGBT people in Northern Ireland. It is striking that Westminster never tried to equalise its abortion laws with Great Britain’s through all the years of direct rule. (We should also note this isn’t just the DUP’s prerogative in Northern Ireland. Our own sister party, the SDLP, is just as opposed.)

There are valid points to make about the history of several DUP politicians. The rhetoric and behaviour of the late Ian Paisley deserved excoriation — though in the end he formed a joint Executive, which we should remember too. It’s fair to say that it did at times display a worrying level of equivocation over loyalist terrorism. Recently, the RHI scandal and Arlene Foster’s stubbornness speak ill of DUP attitudes to good governance.

But conflating the DUP’s periodic failure to keep its nose clean with the role of the IRA mistakes the case. Conflating deeply conservative religiosity with having been inextricably bound up with terrorism won’t get you very far in understanding Northern Ireland. And DUP flirtations with Ulster Resistance were very different from the IRA’s responsibility for nearly half of deaths during the Troubles and its inherent connection with Sinn Féin. I’m not saying there aren’t a great many charges to lay at the DUP’s door over many years. But I am saying it’s a different set of arguments. The DUP is not the PUP.

Confidence, supply and the peace process

It is wholly fair to worry about the impact on the impartiality of the UK Government, perceived or actual, in the Northern Ireland peace process. The key part of the Good Friday Agreement cited here reads as follows:

The two Governments:

… affirm that whatever choice is freely exercised by a majority of the people of Northern Ireland, the power of the sovereign government with jurisdiction there shall be exercised with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all the people in the diversity of their identities and traditions …

It doesn’t constrain government formation in either the United Kingdom or a united Ireland. (Imagine the reaction were a united Ireland banned from giving Sinn Féin a role in government in Dublin and you’ll see why not.)

But it would be wholly unacceptable for the UK Government to be parti pris on either side in the peace process. A full coalition, with collective responsibility across government policy including the Northern Ireland Office, currently would make the UK Government’s position impossible in practice. But that’s not on the cards. A full coalition would serve neither the DUP’s interest nor the Conservatives’. The DUP wouldn’t want that level of responsibility; the Conservatives will have to reach beyond the DUP to make this House of Commons function anyway.

The main issue, from a Tory point of view, is guaranteed support for its Budgets — supply. And with a confidence and supply deal, there is no need for matters relating to the NIO to be included. It is completely fair to be worried about the quality of those assurances and to scrutinise the substance of a confidence and supply deal. Obviously, there would need to be assurances about impartiality, which the Irish Government states it has been given. And as the SDLP’s leader has very sensibly said, “We have to judge it on its merits and see what the deal looks like.”

A confidence and supply deal may well be a bad idea. It may very well be politically unwise. But it’s not constitutionally or politically illegitimate in and of itself, any more than it was when Labour toyed with similar deals in 2010.

The principle of consent

Above all, too many in Great Britain have seemed hostile to the very notion that Northern Ireland’s MPs might affect the balance of power at Westminster. It feels a bit like the concerns in the 1950s that integrating Malta into the UK might allow its MPs to do the same in close elections. But unlike Malta, Northern Ireland already forms part of the UK. Its MPs have every right to a say in its governance, as do MPs from England, Scotland and Wales.

This is a basic principle of fair treatment of the UK’s constituent countries. It also goes to the heart of the principle of consent in the Good Friday Agreement. That Agreement recognises that Northern Ireland’s membership of the UK is based on the will of its people and can only be changed by that same will. Membership of the UK confers certain rights, including a voice in the House of Commons. If you don’t grant the region the right to its say in excepted and reserved matters and its voice in Parliament — and if your view is essentially that it can only have that voice so long as it never decides anything, you’re only granting that right in the narrowest possible way, if at all — you’ve got a pretty shallow understanding of the principle of consent.

It’s natural that, say, Sinn Féin’s leadership would argue Northern Ireland politicians should have no role in helping form a UK Government. They’re an abstentionist party and they seek a united Ireland. And of course they have every right to that position. If Northern Ireland and the Republic ever wish to form a united Ireland, the UK should give effect to it without demur.

But in the meantime, there’s no need for the rest of us to take a very specific view of legitimacy at face value. Northern Ireland’s rights within the UK extend further than simply not expelling it from the body politic. Whatever you think of the DUP, we should all remember that.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 20 June 2017.