Boris Johnson is not a person who cares about the past, he already has enough to do with the present. In fact, he doesn’t even bother pretending the past never happened. This can be observed again this Monday, when he traveled to Belfast because of the Northern Ireland Protocol. The Northern Ireland Protocol is a behemoth of bureaucracy that Johnson created all by himself a year and a half ago, locked away somewhere in the north and then forgotten. Which is why he is now honestly surprised at how strong it is suddenly. The Northern Ireland protocol has grown into a threat, not least to Johnson himself.
Short review. When Theresa May was still Prime Minister, she repeatedly insisted that no British prime minister should ever sign a deal that would lead to a border in the Irish Sea. Once, in July 2018, she even said that such a contract would be “a fraud on our valuable Union”. At the time, Johnson was still Secretary of State – and a camera recording from Parliament clearly shows him sitting behind May and nodding vigorously.
In November 2019, Johnson, now prime minister himself, stood in a hall in Northern Ireland, surrounded by Northern Irish businessmen and unionists. A guest films the moment with his mobile phone, the video later appears frequently in the British media and recently also on twitter. At one point, a Northern Irishman asked what he should do when he was asked to fill out customs forms to bring goods from Northern Ireland to the UK. Johnson replies, “Tell these people to call the Prime Minister, I’ll tell them to toss the form straight in the bin.” A few people laugh in embarrassment, and the video ends soon after.
Six months later, in August 2020, Johnson is back in Northern Ireland. On television he is asked about possible controls at the border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. A border in the UK, in the Irish Sea? There is something like that “only over my dead body,” says Johnson. In the same year, at Christmas, he announces the result of his negotiations with the EU on the new Northern Ireland Protocol. An essential part is a border in the Irish Sea.
A somewhat idiosyncratic interpretation of reality
The border between Ireland and Northern Ireland remained untouched, but the goods that come from Australia to Great Britain, for example, and from there via Northern Ireland to the EU, have to be checked somewhere. The British Department of Agriculture, which is responsible for such issues, has two months ago of all things, everything that was checked at the Northern Irish ports between January 1, 2021 and March 20, 2022: around 157,000 food deliveries, 7500 live animals, 147 consignments of goods were rejected. Lots of administration at a border that shouldn’t even exist.
Back to the present. Published on Monday Belfast Telegraph a guest post by Johnson. A lot has happened, he writes, pandemic, war in Ukraine, world change, so the protocol no longer fits. Even the BBC’s political reporters, who had recently been extremely neutral, cautiously remarked that this was a somewhat idiosyncratic interpretation of reality – after all, when the protocol was signed, practically everyone involved in London and Belfast warned of the consequences.
But Johnson, and in particular his often loudly aggressive Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, have repeatedly emphasized in recent weeks that the EU is to blame for not being willing to change the protocol. And if the EU does not move, the protocol will be unilaterally terminated. On Tuesday, Truss plans to introduce legislation, with Johnson’s approval, that would allow the British government to circumvent the protocol.
“The rhetoric, especially from Liz Truss, is ridiculous,” Shaun Woodward, the British government’s former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, said on the BBC on Monday. “Completely out of control” is Truss, Johnson must be careful to capture this rhetoric again. To simply cancel a deal after such a short period of time, for the very reasons that were obvious from the outset, would send a devastating signal to any country looking to trade with London in the future.
Johnson has no use for a Northern Ireland without a government
In his guest post, Johnson emphasizes that those who simply want to throw the protocol away instead of improving it are “focusing on the wrong thing”. He wanted to “always leave the door wide open for dialogue”. But: If the EU does not change its position, “then it is necessary for us to act”. Time is short, as a result of his dealings with Northern Ireland over the past year and a half, Johnson now has a problem not only with Brussels, but above all in Belfast.
The formation of the Belfast regional parliament is complex. The Good Friday Agreement once stipulated that the government would only come about if both sides, Unionists and Republicans, worked together. The winner of the election appoints the first minister, the runner-up the deputy. But now that the Republicans from Sinn Féin have won for the first time, the competition from the DUP has so far refused to participate in a government. Both parties see the protocol as a threat to the cohesion of the UK – and that is precisely the rift between them. Sinn Féin thinks protocol can stay calm while the DUP campaigned against it.
So Johnson’s mission in Belfast is also to persuade the DUP to return to parliament. He doesn’t need a Northern Ireland without a government. Not in the present and certainly not in the future.