Brexit: five steps that led to a border in the Irish Sea

When the Brexit transition ends on January 1, there will be a new trade border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

Northern Ireland will remain in the EU single market for goods and will continue to apply EU customs rules in its ports.

This will avoid a tightening of the land border with the Republic of Ireland and create a new “maritime border” with the rest of the United Kingdom.

During the Brexit referendum campaign in 2016, there was no single vision for the UK’s relationship with the EU after Brexit.

And outside of Northern Ireland there was little discussion about what that relationship might mean for the Irish border or Northern Ireland’s place in the UK.

After the referendum, the debate centered on whether the UK should pursue a “soft” or “hard” Brexit.

A soft Brexit meant staying in the single market or the EU customs union or perhaps both.

A hard Brexit meant abandoning both the customs union and the single market and reaching a trade deal like the one the EU has with Canada.

A soft Brexit would mean soft trade borders; a hard Brexit would mean tougher borders.

In her Lancaster House speech, then-Prime Minister Theresa May sought to end the debate and set the course for a hard Brexit.

He said the UK would leave the single market and the customs union.

From that moment it was inevitable that there would have to be a new frontier somewhere.

Just look at the other external borders of the EU with non-single market countries, such as the hard border between Hungary and Ukraine.

Even countries participating in the single market have customs borders with the EU, albeit relatively fluid.

The speech was not really attentive to the implications of this, beyond not wanting to return “to the borders of the past.”

Its main section on Northern Ireland dealt with the maintenance of the Common Travel Area, the special bilateral migration agreement between the UK and Ireland.

There was nothing about how the EU, and therefore the Republic of Ireland, would control UK goods entering its single market and customs union.

Before the first round of Brexit negotiations, EU leaders identified three priority issues that needed to be resolved before beginning to talk about a trade deal.

One of them was Northern Ireland and the border.

This was a priority for the Irish government, which wanted to avoid a situation where the border could later be used as a lever in the heat of a trade negotiation.

The guidelines, signed by EU national leaders, stated: “In view of the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland, flexible and imaginative solutions will be required, including with the aim of avoiding a hard border.”

For the next two and a half years, the Irish government managed to keep this as a strong priority for the EU.

It meant that, from an EU perspective, if there was to be a new border, it shouldn’t be on the island of Ireland.

During the second half of 2017, negotiating teams worked to find a way to reconcile a hard Brexit with a soft Irish border.

It was in an interim agreement called the Joint Report that the UK implicitly admitted that a border in the Irish Sea could be a solution.

The joint report presents three possibilities:

It was that third option, known as the backstop, that put the maritime border firmly on the agenda.

In the days after the Joint Report there was a lack of agreement on what it would mean in practice.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which was supporting Ms May’s government, had introduced language at the last minute that appeared to give them a veto on maritime border arrangements.

But in February 2018, the European Commission tried to remove any ambiguity about what the endorsement meant.

It published a legal interpretation of the Joint Report explaining that it would mean that Northern Ireland would effectively remain in the EU customs union and follow many of the rules of the single market.

Ms. May was clear about what she was up to.

“The draft legal text that the commission has published, if implemented, would undermine the UK common market and threaten the UK’s constitutional integrity by creating a customs and regulatory border in the Irish Sea, and no UK Prime Minister Kingdom could access it, “she said.

For the remainder of his time in office, he tried to change and refine the endorsement in ways that would satisfy the DUP, his own party, and the EU.

Failure to do so ultimately cost him his job.

Boris Johnson replaced Ms May in July 2019, promising to ditch the endorsement.

He had been the star of the previous year’s DUP conference, denouncing the endorsement as a tool to turn Northern Ireland into an “EU economic semi-colony”.

But, by October, he was proposing a “buffer zone for all islands” that would effectively keep Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market for agriculture, food and all manufactured goods.

The DUP agreed with that idea, as it would need the consent of the Northern Ireland Assembly, which would likely have given the party a veto.

However, the Irish government and the EU were not convinced as the plan could have meant a new customs border in Ireland.

They were also concerned that a direct veto on the DUP could prevent the “all-island regulatory zone” from materializing.

But then came a meeting with the then Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar at Thornton Manor in Merseyside.

This would turn out to be the compromise that unlocked a deal that eventually saw a border of the Irish Sea passed by the UK Parliament.

We still don’t know exactly what the two men talked about.

But everything Varadkar said was enough to persuade Johnson to agree to a deal with the EU just a week later.

The agreement Johnson agreed to unambiguously created a border in the Irish Sea.

It included a paper for the Northern Ireland Assembly, which could revoke the agreement four years after its implementation.

But that would be by simple majority, which means that trade unionists would not have the right to veto.

The DUP, which at that stage still supported the Conservative government, was appalled.

There was no way he was going to support Johnson’s deal in Parliament.

But the election ended the party’s influence and gave Johnson a comfortable majority.

Unhindered by the DUP, he was free to pass his deal in Parliament.

Before the end of January, the border of the Irish Sea would be law.