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The DUP is under scrutiny for the government agreement between the EU and the UK designed to bring some clarity on how the Irish Sea border will work, a proposal anathema to most trade unionists.
UK Cabinet Minister Michael Gove spent time in the House of Commons on Wednesday seeking to assure trade unionists that the new east-west border created as a result of Brexit was not a threat to the union of Britain and North Ireland.
A summary of the general unionist reaction coincided with what DUP MP Sammy Wilson said in Westminster on Tuesday: “I am 100% British and I want to remain 100% British, and the reason I have taken a position against the withdrawal … is because it diminishes my British character. “
It wasn’t surprising that the response to Wilson and the DUP, the only one of the North’s five major parties to campaign for Brexit, was of the ‘I told you so’ type, or as former leader Ian Paisley snr used to say when you’re in mode. Biblical, you reap what you sow.
DUP MPs like Wilson and Ian Paisley jnr are genuine in their ideological desire to see a strong Brexit. But before and after the EU exit referendum in 2016 there was a real sense that many or possibly most of the other high-level DUP members were acting in a timely manner by taking an exit position.
It was argued that the DUP could take a tough Brexit stance in favor of John Bull’s unions safe with the expectation that Remain’s side would win. That would strengthen his electoral position, especially since his rival, the Ulster Unionist Party, was in favor of Remain (although quite a few Ulster Unionists voted in favor of leaving the EU).
This is not functional.
Another reason for the constitutional anxiety and unionists’ anger against the DUP was that it had placed confidence in British Prime Minister Boris Johnson that he would be a better bet than his predecessor Theresa May in safeguarding the union.
The DUP had reached a trust and supply deal of £ 1.5 billion to keep May’s government in power. But he ruled it out in favor of Johnson because of opposition to May’s Brexit endorsement, which would have involved some controls on products entering Northern Ireland from Britain.
“Throw away the endorsement,” Johnson declared at the DUP annual conference in November 2018, to the delight of hundreds of delegates, although he was also noted as being suspicious of some present.
Discard the DUP
Johnson did just that when he gained power, but when he achieved a large majority in the House of Commons, he also scrapped the DUP because he no longer needed it.
He got rid of the endorsement, but replaced it with the Northern Ireland protocol, and not only that, but this week Downing Street reneged on amendments to that protocol designed to mitigate the creation of a border in the Irish Sea.
The point here is that, under pressure from the EU and Ireland, and probably mindful of US President-elect Joe Biden’s support for the Belfast Accord, Johnson and the UK government acted to ensure that North Trade- South was fluid but east-west trade. I would not do it.
An editorial in the trade unionist Belfast News Letter on Wednesday offered a modern version of the famous saying of the 19th century Prime Minister Lord Palmerston that British governments have perpetual interests rather than perpetual allies.
“There is nothing remotely surprising that Boris Johnson has agreed to withdraw aspects of the Internal Market Act to protect Northern Ireland,” the editorial lamented. “The prime minister will always do what is right for him personally, then for his party, then for England. “
And the lead writer added: “He showed sheer cynicism when he came to Northern Ireland to denounce Theresa May’s endorsement at the border … Within months he held the post of prime minister that he had been coveting his entire life, and a few weeks later to achieve that goal, he was leaving the province adrift. . “
The feeling of betrayal in those words was palpable.
Former Ulster Unionist Party leader Reg Empey also launched a penetrating attack on the DUP and its leader, Arlene Foster.
He reminded the Prime Minister how, in 2018, she said that the “red line” that there could be no Brexit deal dividing Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK was a “blood red” line.
“The ‘blood red line’ of the DUP has been erased,” accused Empey.
In Tuesday’s Assembly, only two unionists, Traditional Union Voice leader Jim Allister and Jim Wells, an MLA unionist who lost the DUP whip, opposed a motion that they said effectively set the structure in motion. legal for the Northern Ireland protocol.
Allister said bitterly: “This is an embarrassing day for our Legislative Assembly. We are asked to renounce the right to legislate according to our own needs and to make that right subordinate to the dictates of the EU rules and directives. Remove all the fancy words, and that’s what this legal instrument is about. “
Gove’s line
In the House of Commons on Wednesday afternoon, Michael Gove held onto the new EU deal while trying to assure the many skeptical trade unionists that the UK government was firmly in favor of the union.
The agreement meant that the protocol would be implemented in a “pragmatic and proportionate manner,” Gove said. As well as taking into account the Belfast Agreement “in all its dimensions”, he added, it protected the interests of the EU single market “but, more importantly, the territorial and constitutional integrity of the whole of the UK”.
And although he also emphasized that the agreement “put beyond any doubt the primacy of the sovereignty of this place when leaving the EU”, many trade unionists remain concerned and upset, and much of that discontent points to the DUP.
DUP deputy Jeffrey Donaldson was sent yesterday to defend his party, which he did with his usual emollient attitude.
However, pressure continues on the party, largely stemming from trade unionism. What the DUP must seriously look forward to now is a soft Brexit.
This deal is a subplot to the larger story of whether Boris Johnson, Ursula von der Leyen and the other EU and UK negotiators can work out a comprehensive trade deal in the short period approaching the 1 March deadline. from January.
Such a deal could in part rescue the DUP from the Leave mess it got into.
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