Recent events in Northern Ireland could mean the end of devolved Government for the foreseeable future. The pro-Union population has grown tired of being fobbed off with empty promises, while their status as full citizens in the United Kingdom continues to be eroded. The Protocol was agreed by a Government which did not take seriously the many warnings about instability resulting from this fracturing of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement.
Sadly, the Government and the EU were influenced by Leo Varadkar, then-Taoiseach, and his cynical claims about the threat of terrorism, should there be the merest hint of a trade border at the frontier between the UK and the Republic of Ireland.
The British Government’s response was to judge where the biggest threat of violence came from and appease it by putting a border down the Irish Sea, splitting the UK instead. Would any other country in the world have offered to divide its sovereign territory and leave part of it under the jurisdiction of a foreign court?
Unionist politicians, including the Nobel Laureate and architect of the Agreement Lord Trimble, no longer feel able to prop up a solemn undertaking that has been bent out of all recognition.
Unionists are invited to swallow the spurious claim that the Protocol is needed to honour the Agreement when it blatantly ignores the cross-community consent principle at its very heart. Many wonder: just how much undermining of Northern Ireland’s place in the UK should they be expected to take?
The decision by DUP agricultural minister Edwin Poots to order checks to stop at the Irish Sea border was no maverick idle action. It was taken following legal advice from the former Northern Ireland Attorney General, John Larkin, after initiation of legal proceedings off the back of court rulings that significant or controversial matters must obtain cross-community approval. The ongoing checks had never been approved by the executive so Poots put forward a paper, which Sinn Féin refused to allow on the agenda.
Poots then ordered the illegal checks to cease. Department officials delayed for more advice and, 24 hours later, an unidentified member of Sinn Fein and another individual were granted leave to seek a judicial review of the minister’s decision.
A High Court judge confirmed that inspections on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain must continue, pending the outcome of a full hearing in March. It is very unusual for a Justice at a preliminary hearing to order a remedy supporting the applicant.
First Minister Paul Givan has since resigned in protest at the failure to resolve the Northern Ireland Protocol.
The latest furore over a Protocol that subjugates the Acts of Union and effectively creates the conditions for an economic united Ireland, has caused untold resentment in the pro-Union community.
They feel abandoned and betrayed by their own UK Government, while the Irish government constantly backs up nationalists. Northern Irish citizens have effectively become second class in their own country. The street protests will be back and the pause on protest rallies lifted.
As one young activist said: “Unionism will never accept the Protocol – we will frustrate it, impede it, undermine it and relentlessly seek to destroy it.”
For months many of us have warned the Government that it cannot have both the Belfast Agreement and the Protocol. The time has now come to choose. Urgent action, not words, will be needed to restore Northern Ireland to its full place in the United Kingdom.
