The Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland is a bad answer to a question that only has bad answers – that question being: “where should we put this Brexit border that 56 percent of the people of Northern Ireland didn’t want in the first place”?
In a similar vein the news that the Prime Minister is “not ruling out” the possibility of overriding it could be greeted with the question: “is this a bad idea, or an even worse idea”? In fact, it could be greeted with another question altogether: “does the PM mean it, or is this just another vague gesture designed to shore up his shaky support base”?
To take the second question first: remember, we’ve seen not just vague gestures but firm promises overturned by the PM – so much so he reminds me of Yeats’s falcon, turning and turning in the widening gyre.
Promises such as his assurance to unionists that there would be no border in the Irish Sea. Which brings us back to our first question: “where should we put this Brexit border that 56 percent of the people of Northern Ireland didn’t want in the first place”?
Unionists of a certain stripe (DUP or TUV supporters) are adamant that the Brexit border they called for is now the greatest threat to the Union, precisely because the PM put it where they didn’t expect it to go. They wanted a Brexit border, but not there.
Yet the only other real option available was for it to go on the Island of Ireland – ie, reinforcing, even re-inaugurating the current border, between Northern Ireland and the Republic. You can see why, on the surface, this would have seemed an attractive option to some unionists – how better to secure the union than by reinforcing the border? And if this was expressly opposed by 56 percent of people in Northern Ireland, well, too bad; it was the decision of the people of the UK as a whole, and the rest of us (‘Republicans and Remoaners’ perhaps?) would just have to lump it (whatever anybody later said about the consent principle).
Unfortunately(!) though, there’s another factor that has to be considered here. The Northern Ireland Act of 1998, following the principles of the Good Friday Agreement, says that Northern Ireland will remain in the UK as long as “a majority” want it to. It doesn’t say the Union depends on the consent of ‘the majority community’, as if such a thing existed: rather, it depends on the consent of the majority of the people. Plural. That is, over 50 percent of those who turn up and vote in a referendum, whatever their nation or denomination.
Now, my mathematics is not great, but even I can tell you 56 percent is more than 50 percent. So here’s another question: is imposing a Brexit border around Northern Ireland, against the expressed wishes of 56 percent of the people living there, likely to a) increase the proportion of people content with Northern Ireland as it is, or b) increase the proportion unhappy with it?
If it does come to a referendum on the border, you won’t preserve the union, if that is your goal, by intensifying the loyalty of the already loyal, or demanding unionist unity. It won’t be a matter of denomination, ‘The Unionist Community’ versus ‘The Nationalist Community’; it will be a matter of who can form the bigger combination of voters on the day. Which means – and this applies to nationalists just as much as unionists – you’re going to have to win over some of the growing community of Others.
Perhaps, in the end, it is the habit of choosing denomination over combination that has to be overturned. Perhaps if we dial down the rhetoric we’ll be able to learn to hear each other – not so much the falcon hearing the falconer as neighbour in conversation with neighbour, working out together how best to address the problems (and from the cost of living crisis, the waiting list crisis, the housing crisis to the climate crisis we’re not short of them) that we face in common.
MM
23 April 2022
Community of Others 