A late evening in London this week, Mark Logan looks at his watch, already half past nine, he’s going home now, he says, and then he’ll check his e-mail. But he already knows the result: “Again, not a single email about the Northern Ireland Protocol.” Constituents for 39-year-old Tory MP Mark Logan live in the Bolton North-East constituency near Manchester, and he has been in the House of Commons since 2019, but it wouldn’t be far off the mark if voters were asking him what it was because he’s up to this Northern Ireland thing. Mark Logan was Parliamentary Secretary of State in the Northern Ireland Office before resigning along with many others in July last year in protest at Boris Johnson’s style of government, and he is Northern Irish, born and raised near Belfast. When he speaks, you can’t help but hear where his home is.
But, and this is his point, the Northern Ireland issue is an issue made up by politicians for politicians. Not for the people out there, in real life. It’s the same with himself: Mark Logan smiles wryly when asked about the Northern Ireland Protocol and the bitter power struggle that it has now unleashed. In a way, Mark Logan is representative of the general mood in Westminster. The Northern Ireland Protocol sucks. It’s the herpes of the Brexit vote that won’t go away.
“The Northern Ireland Protocol is not one of the top issues on which voters are concerned.”
Pollster James Johnson put it a little more matter-of-factly on the phone on Friday, saying: “The Northern Ireland Protocol is not one of the top issues on which voters are concerned.” But, and this is his point, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. On the contrary, “it is taken as an indication of how politicians are performing,” says Johnson. This means that if Prime Minister Rishi Sunak manages to tick off this longstanding issue, “then it will generate positive headlines for him, showing that he has achieved something”. However, this also works the other way around.
And so the Northern Ireland Protocol is now both pawn and playing field in a match that can be imagined as a football match in England in the 1980s: full of sliding tackle and mud. Tories are fighting against Tories, the word “unacceptable” is used almost every day, the Westminster reporters are in “resignation watch” mode, and there have been internal threats of resignation. Yet again.
The Northern Ireland Protocol is a behemoth created by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson after the ill-fated preparatory work of his predecessor Theresa May. It should ensure that, despite Brexit, there will continue to be no physical border between Northern Ireland and Ireland by treating Northern Ireland as a member of the EU’s internal market. As a result, a customs border was created in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And that bothers Unionists, politically represented most strongly by the DUP’s Northern Ireland Brexiteers, who do not want to stand by and see Northern Ireland move away from Britain by being treated like an EU member on some issues. The situation is further complicated by the fact that the DUP lost the regional elections in Northern Ireland to Sinn Féin in May last year: Sinn Féin has no problem with the Northern Ireland Protocol, because Sinn Féin also has no problem with Northern Ireland moving away from Great Britain. To date, the DUP has blocked the formation of the regional government in Northern Ireland, for nine months now.
In the background discussion, the EU diplomats became a little clearer
In this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson thanked Sunak “for his work on the Northern Ireland Protocol” and stressed that it must be replaced by a different arrangement. Sunak then thanked Donaldson “for the role he’s played over the past few months,” saying he hears him “loud and clear,” Sunak said. It all seemed a bit theatrical. Sunak, it seemed, wanted to demonstrate strength for the powerful right wing in his own party, for the interests of the Unionists. And against Brussels.
Throughout the week, Sunak repeatedly received various right-wing MPs in order to appease them. Like the DUP, the hard-core Brexiteers in the party, including Home Secretary Suella Braverman, have two core demands: They want Sunak to push through Johnson’s proposed law that would allow the UK to unilaterally adopt the Northern Ireland Protocol to ignore. And they do not want the European Court of Justice to be the final arbiter in the event of a dispute – contrary to what is recorded in the protocol. The EU, in turn, considers both of these to be unachievable. Northern Ireland is de facto part of the EU market, therefore the final arbitration board in the EU’s view can only be an EU court. As far as the law is concerned, EU diplomats are a little clearer in the background discussion, in a nutshell: Seriously?
Sunak initially saw the Northern Ireland issue as an opportunity to make a name for himself; to show that he can get things done. There are various theories as to why he is now getting involved in the power struggle with the DUP – the loser in Northern Ireland’s election – and his own right wing, one of which leads back to Mark Logan. If the voters aren’t interested in the Northern Ireland protocol, the resignation of a home secretary and the associated impression that Sunak doesn’t have his business under control, then yes – then there is no reason for Sunak to sign a deal with the EU against the opposition of those groups to pull through.
“We’re being held hostage by people with a really strange worldview,” former Prime Minister Tony Blair said in an interview with the SZ in December. As it turns out, nothing has changed.