For the UK government, there is method behind the apparent madness of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. While so many across Ireland and the rest of the EU are outraged by the content, it is important not to lose sight of that apparent plan. Not least because it isn’t actually very good in so far as it relies on other parties thinking the prime minister of the UK is a man of his word, which is the last way he should be described.
Roughly, as can best be divined from the chaos of UK government operations under Boris Johnson, the intention is that by convincingly threatening to break an international treaty, they will force the Democratic Unionist Party to take their place in the Northern Ireland Executive, and the EU to change its mandate, ultimately accepting everything the UK wants. Problematically, though, close observers may note that this plan already failed last month when the threat alone proved insufficient.
The failure of others to play their role surely comes down to the differing value they would apply to the currency in use: the UK government threat. On the UK side this is seen as of grave importance, almost a command, which the EU and Ireland would be wise to follow, otherwise the consequences will be severe. For so many others this is becoming a running joke: when can we expect Johnson’s annual capitulation in negotiations?
Not that we should really joke about a UK government repeatedly threatening a treaty it signed, blatantly thinking only of one community in Northern Ireland, wanting to give ministers the powers to do anything they like without parliament, and using a legal justification so preposterous it might have come from President Putin. But this is the behaviour of the bluffer with the empty hand at the poker table, raising the stakes to mountainous levels in the hope and expectation others will fold.
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The UK government doesn’t really intend the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill to become law. It may pass a House of Commons where any Conservative even thinking of being nice to the EU is immediately attacked by colleagues, but has no chance in a House of Lords that might be one of the last institutions in the country still taking the UK’s international reputation for fair play seriously.
By that time though, the UK government hopes somehow the pieces will have started to fall into place. If that isn’t the case, then it might pocket what the EU has already offered and call it a victory, though even UK media slavishly loyal to Johnson is starting to call this failure. More likely, Johnson will hope something else turns up as distraction, as the bluffer does, or he might have been dragged out of Downing Street, finally deposed as electoral liability.
Promising the impossible
It is unlikely that any resulting Conservative Party leadership contest would be an edifying spectacle, instead a competition to promise more of the impossible while bashing the EU. Ostensibly sensible potential candidates with military backgrounds such as defence secretary Ben Wallace or parliament foreign affairs committee chairman Tom Tugendhat would not be immune. Even the possibility of such a contest also plays into the current situation, with Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, evidently being set up by the prime minister to take the blame for failure this time.
What none of the candidates will be able to admit is that Brexit is failing because the Conservative Party’s anti-EU position has hardened to become ideological and visceral, even though any UK government wanting economic growth and international relations must deal with the neighbours. The search for Brexit regulatory divergence proceeds in the mistaken belief that the EU is uniquely overregulated, ignoring the failure in six years to find specific examples of how to reduce regulation, other than the widely derided return to imperial measures, and causing business considerable uncertainty as to potential future costs. It is becoming clearer than free trade agreements with distant countries cannot overcome UK businesses facing higher barriers than counterparts in 30 neighbouring countries.
With the protocol Bill raising the possibility of EU retaliation in the form of trade war, the problem is exacerbated. Arguably the UK failing to confirm participation in the Horizon research and innovation programme, and universities starting to worry about a resulting brain drain, shows it has started. Those tempted to invest will find good reason to pause. Meanwhile, the apparent party of business is caught, not able to admit it needs the EU but also not able to walk away, a contradiction upon which all plans are likely to founder until it can be resolved.
None of this discussion has focused on the issues Northern Ireland businesses have faced with the protocol, nor the survival of the Belfast Agreement under pressure from unionists. This is not to downplay them, it is just that the protocol Bill is rather the setting for another UK skirmish with the EU. If the government was serious about resolving issues, it would be convening discussions in Belfast, not proposing legislation in Westminster.
Ultimately, then, the UK government’s plan for the protocol is just the same old madness, the continuation of the Conservative Party’s interminable debate as to what to do about relations with the EU, a flimsy plan to disguise this that is unlikely to survive contact with others, and growing collateral damage to the UK. In other words, the same old pattern seen since the referendum, which shows no sign of quick conclusion.
David Henig is director of the UK Trade Policy Project at the European Centre for International Political Economy