True context of protocol negotiations should not be misrepresented

The early months of 2023 offer a window of opportunity for solving the remaining problems with the Northern Ireland protocol. Although substantive progress in the negotiations is not yet apparent, there are three reasons for optimism.

First, the mood around the negotiations, reflected in the conciliatory language of EU and British negotiators, has improved significantly. Leo Varadkar’s recent acknowledgment that mistakes were made by both sides was helpful. Rishi Sunak has abandoned the confrontational rhetoric of the Johnson years.

Second, there has been a real advance in the overall approach of both sides to the negotiations. On the one hand Brussels has come to accept the need for much greater flexibility in the application of the protocol than was initially envisaged. On the other hand London now has a prime minister who appears to take Britain’s international friendships and legally-binding commitments seriously.

Third, it is becoming ever more evident that the last thing that the EU and UK need – especially against the background of Russia’s sustained and brutal assault on Ukrainian civilians – is discord and division between European countries that share basic values. A breakdown in negotiations on the protocol or an endless stalemate would not freeze the status quo. It would lead to a further sharp deterioration in EU/UK relations and, in due course, to some form of trade confrontation.

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In recent weeks there has been welcome silence, from both sides, regarding the detail of contacts on the protocol. Confidentiality helps to create a platform for serious progress.

Moreover, those who are now seriously engaged in trying to reach agreement on the protocol – the two parties that negotiated it – seem, reasonably enough, to have put on hold the challenge of making the case for it publicly. The DUP leadership and other mainstream unionists, while maintaining their dislike of the protocol, seem, to an extent at least, to be taking a wait-and-see attitude to whatever may emerge from the negotiations.

[ Renewed push for deal on Northern Ireland protocol before Stormont election deadline ]

However, this has not prevented more extreme opponents of the protocol, in Northern Ireland and Britain, from trying to whip up opposition to it and calling for its complete repudiation. Twitter, boosted by the new algorithms of the Elon Musk era, is awash with trenchant and tendentious nonsense about the subject.

It would be tempting to ignore this off-stage blather, to recognise that what really matters is that the governments of the EU and the UK, supported by their friends around the world, including the US, are committed to exploring practical solutions to the profound and sensitive challenges that Brexit poses to Northern Ireland.

However, it seems important, at the same time, not to leave unanswered the most blatant falsehoods that are being put about. It is asserted, for example, that the motivation of the EU and the Irish Government was to detach Northern Ireland from the UK or to punish the UK for Brexit. There is not a shred of truth in such assertions.

It is claimed by some that the effect of the protocol is to undermine Northern Ireland’s position as part of the UK. Apart from the fact that Northern Ireland’s position in the UK is explicitly confirmed by the text of the protocol itself, the net effect of Brexit and the protocol, taken together, is to strengthen the east-west relationship between Britain and Northern Ireland at least as much as it does the north-south relationship on the island of Ireland.

The most preposterous untruth, promulgated through social media, is that Varadkar “threatened” IRA violence if the protocol was not implemented. There is a world of difference between warning of the “risk” of violence, as the police both north and south of the Border had done before any comments by Varadkar, and “threatening” violence. I might reasonably warn you of the risk of being knocked down if you were to cross a six-lane motorway at rush hour. If I were to threaten you with that outcome I would be arrested.

Like it or not, the shared aim of both the EU and the UK in negotiating the protocol was to minimise damage to the Belfast Agreement by preserving the balances of that agreement insofar as Brexit would allow. It is understandable that many reasonable unionists would prefer that the protocol had never existed. However, even more people in Northern Ireland would prefer that Brexit itself had never taken place.

Negotiators in Brussels and London must prioritise the understandable sensitivities of those, on both sides of the argument, who – to borrow the words of Queen Elizabeth in Dublin Castle in 2011 – see things they “wish had been done differently or not at all”. As British and EU negotiators take forward their important work, the true context should not be misrepresented.