The post-Brexit crisis in Northern Ireland is finally over

Rishi Sunak, with almost daily input from Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the Democratic Unionist Party leader, has just delivered a deal on the Windsor Framework that is notably pro-Unionist. He has managed to do so in the face of EU intransigence, an unhelpful White House, the ‘resistible rise’ of Sinn Fein in the Republic of Ireland, hard-line Loyalist rejectionism, and purist Brexiteer scepticism. 

All this is the antithesis of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of November 1985 – the 40^th anniversary of which falls next year – both in the substance of what has been negotiated and also how it was negotiated. To restore the devolved institutions on these terms represents a memorable achievement, considering the demographic and political decline of Unionism in the intervening period. As such, it constitutes a powerful refutation of the grievance narrative of Windsor Framework rejectionists, who hold that Unionism is always to be destined to be betrayed by British Governments.

Jeffrey Donaldson’s gritty realism is thus worthy of the founding father of Northern Ireland, Sir James Craig, and of David Trimble at the height of his powers – in contrast to the fantasy politics of the wannabe Carsons who could never have delivered a 1912-style mass popular rejection of the Windsor Framework.

The failure of the Northern Ireland Protocol of October 2019 to create a workable set of arrangements for trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland – and the complete collapse of Unionist support for the Protocol – put UK-EU relations into crisis. Northern Ireland was deeply destabilised. This led, in June 2022, to the unilateral Northern Ireland Protocol Bill; with the implosion of Boris Johnson and quick collapse of Liz Truss, the new Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, pushed forward negotiations in late autumn 2022. 

Sunak worked on addressing the EU’s technical demands – providing real-time data sharing on movement of goods. This created the confidence in Brussels to agree the concessions needed to make the Protocol operationally and politically viable. Thus, the Windsor Framework was agreed in February 2023, with its green lane, deals on VAT and human medicines, and enhanced democratic checks on EU regulation for Northern Ireland’s Assembly. The Windsor Framework was both a policy and political success for Rishi Sunak, less than four months into his premiership.

Most popular

Ross Clark

Britain is living beyond its means

Sir Jeffrey acknowledged the gains – but they were not sufficient given the deep-rooted fears that harmonisation of even some parts of Northern Ireland’s economy with that of the Republic would lead to a united Ireland. Nevertheless, with recognition that London couldn’t go back to Brussels, the pressure was on Sir Jeffrey to find a way back to Stormont whilst keeping his party executive and members on board. Those who wanted the removal of EU law, the key issue for them, knew this too. The choice was stay out and see devolution fail, or fight for improvements that could be negotiated in the UK-EU Joint Committee that oversees the withdrawal agreement and gain further concessions and assurances from London. 

Donaldson chose to fight for what could be realised based on his Seven Tests of July 2021 for the reform of the Protocol. These had been designed to be achievable by the Government and were the tests the Government sought to meet. These tests always accepted that EU law would continue to apply in Northern Ireland in ways that didn’t apply in Great Britain. This issue, which became the key point of principle for Sir Jeffrey’s critics, put them on the wrong side of the DUP’s criteria for reform and into a position of making demands that could not be delivered by the Government or any likely successor. 

In practice, EU alignment was always overstated – it never came close to making EU law dominant in Northern Ireland. Alignment with EU regulations largely affects the production sector (manufacturing and agriculture in the main), representing about 18 per cent of Northern Ireland’s economy, and this sector continues to be governed by UK commercial, fiscal, environmental and employment laws, as well as by UK macro-economic policy and Northern Ireland’s own policies and legislation on skills, education and planning. The claim that the Protocol would lead to an all-island economy was vastly exaggerated, but effective. 

The command paper ‘Safeguarding the Union’, published yesterday, is a substantial set of pro-Union measures. With the creation of a new UK East-West Council, Northern Ireland’s institutional engagement with the rest of the UK is strengthened significantly – going beyond what David Trimble achieved in his negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement. 

Further significant reductions in barriers to the movement of goods have been achieved and the position of Northern Ireland in the UK’s internal market strengthened – including the further integration of Northern Ireland’s world-class defence industries into the UK defence industrial framework. It includes a constitutional guarantee for Northern Ireland – much needed, given the challenge to the Union represented by the application of EU law in Northern Ireland. The rejection of the concept of the all-island economy, exposed as a misnomer by Dr Graham Gudgin’s Policy Exchange paper of June 2022, is the most explicit of any official document produced by the British state, thus finally expunging one of the most egregious misrepresentations of the Good Friday Agreement by Dublin. 

There are key cultural measures too: the Castlereagh Foundation will now be established under Arlene Foster to support research on the case for and future of Northern Ireland; better connections will be made between the Northern Ireland Civil Service and Whitehall, as well as twinning schools in Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Lastly, the lesson of the last six years will be institutionalised: a commitment to properly promote the importance of the balance of the Good Friday Agreement – failure of which in the first tranche of the withdrawal negotiations in 2017 contributed much to the crisis of recent years. 

It is now up to Unionists to use this document – the product of a sustained negotiating partnership between the UK Government and the leading Unionist party of today – to entrench the Union still further. The DUP are wise to have done this deal now, under a pro-Union Conservative Government, rather than to have waited for Labour to come in. By forging this deal, on these terms, pre-election, they have forced the current Labour opposition to row in behind it. This is exemplified by the gracious tribute of shadow Northern Ireland secretary Hilary Benn to the Conservative Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris. 

The setting up of the original Stormont parliament in 1921 was itself a compromise: Unionists originally never wanted devolution because they contended that it turned Northern Ireland into an anomalous place within the UK, which had established devolution nowhere else. But they got stuck in and made Stormont work for them. The task today is no different. It is for Unionists now to make this deal work in the interests of the United Kingdom. 

Lord Godson is Director of Policy Exchange. He is a member of the House of Lords Sub-Committee on the Windsor Framework. He is author of ‘Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal of Unionism’ (2004)