One of the many slogans Boris Johnson likes to throw around is “Get Brexit done”. Especially now that his future as Prime Minister is uncertain because of all the parties and allegations, Johnson reiterates at every opportunity that his government is the one that “done Brexit”. But the United Kingdom was further away from Brexit being “done” before this Thursday than Johnson and some of his voters want to admit. And then the distance grew even greater.
Paul Givan, First Minister and thus head of the regional government in Northern Ireland, announced his resignation in the evening in protest at the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol, which he believes does not work. This affects the “delicate balance” of peace on the island of Ireland. A few hours earlier Edwin Poots, Northern Ireland’s Agriculture Minister, had ordered all inspections of food coming in from Britain to end – in breach of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
For Boris Johnson, monstrous words like “Northern Ireland Protocol,” as someone familiar with the Westminster scene recently put it, are the excesses of political petty nitpicking. Only, on Thursday it was particularly clear to see that the situation in Northern Ireland is and will remain one of the central problems of Brexit, even more than five years after the referendum. A problem that seems almost impossible to solve. For Johnson’s Brexiteers, on the one hand, a hard border with the EU is a principle without which Brexit would not make much sense. A hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland could, on the other hand, provoke new unrest in the region and that is why the Northern Ireland Protocol was adopted in 2019. It states that goods should not be checked at the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, but between the British mainland and Northern Ireland.
Givans DUP stands for a truly United Kingdom – with no border controls between parts of the country
For the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in particular, however, this is an almost unbearable state of affairs, because it, which currently has a narrow majority in Northern Ireland’s parliament, stands for a truly United Kingdom. Paul Givan, 40, has been First Minister for the DUP since last summer after a turbulent month for the party with three different leaders. Because the parties in Northern Ireland share power and the Republicans of Sinn Féin were only a hair’s breadth behind the DUP in the last election, Sinn Féin made Michelle O’Neill Givan’s deputy. If one of them resigns, it automatically means the end of the other, which is why Parliament is now left without a leader.
Michelle O’Neill called the decision of Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots, who like Givan is a member of the DUP, to stop the controls and thus violate the protocol a “stunt”. Other parties in Northern Ireland also criticize the DUP’s actions. A spokesman for the EU Commission in Brussels called the decision “not helpful” because “it creates further uncertainty for companies and citizens in Northern Ireland”. EU Financial Markets Commissioner Mairead McGuinness, an Irishwoman, told her home broadcaster RTÉ that it was a “clear breach of international law”. And London?
For the government in London, for which the Northern Ireland Protocol is at most a sideshow in public speeches, the new turbulence in Northern Ireland is not so inconvenient. A talk between the two negotiators, the EU Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič and the British Foreign Minister Liz Truss, had been planned for Thursday for some time. It said on Thursday that it would not approve of Northern Ireland’s decision to no longer control food, but would not overrule it either. Truss, currently in isolation after a corona infection, will at the same time use Givan’s resignation to inform the EU again that the protocol is obviously not working and must therefore be renegotiated. On better terms for the UK, of course.
MEPs insist: No duty-free trade without an effective protocol
The dissatisfaction in the European Parliament is correspondingly great. Anna Cavazzini, Chair of the Internal Market Committee, says the lack of controls “calls into question the integrity of the EU’s internal market”. If the British government “de facto throws the exit agreement in the wastepaper basket, there must be consequences”. The Green MEP points out that the Northern Ireland protocol was a “precondition for the trade agreement” with the EU – in other words: no duty-free trade without an effective protocol.
However, the controls were already insufficient from the EU’s point of view before this Thursday. An investigation report The Commission comes to the devastating verdict that the system “is not in line with EU rules” and “cannot provide sufficient assurance” that only food that meets EU standards is imported.
Boris Johnson was in Blackpool on Thursday to survey the expansion of the historic tram network, wearing a neon yellow safety vest over his suit when he stepped in front of a TV camera in the afternoon. Regarding the Northern Ireland Protocol, “which you must have studied in detail,” as he told the reporter with a grin, it should be noted that it is “crazy” to control goods between Northern Ireland and England. Johnson said he was pleased that the talks were continuing.