Don't forget: it was her government which first entertained the prospect of cutting NI off from the rest of the UK
Source - Daily Telegraph 29/06/22
On Monday, MPs voted to give the Government’s Northern Ireland Protocol Bill a second reading in the House of Commons. There were some genuine arguments against the legislation from the backbenches, as it cleared its first parliamentary obstacle, but others seemed less sincere and honest.
You can understand why some Conservatives, who are worried about keeping their Westminster seats, allowed exasperation with Boris Johnson to shape their attitudes to the bill; even if, for now, they were not prepared to vote against it. However, its most strident Tory critic was Theresa May and her intervention deserved only contempt. After all, the former prime minister was in office when the government first entertained the notion of cutting Northern Ireland off from the rest of the United Kingdom by erecting a political and economic border down the Irish Sea via the backstop arrangements.
Now a group of Mr Johnson’s critics in the Conservative party, and some of his political opponents, have subsequently claimed that May’s backstop would have avoided economic barriers between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The implication is that he replaced her Brexit deal with something much worse. That argument makes little sense, even in hindsight.
It is true that Mrs May wanted to keep the whole UK aligned with the EU’s single market and customs union. Her chief negotiator, Olly Robbins, described the backstop as a “bridge” to a new relationship with the bloc. In the short-term, “Brexit in Name Only” may even have prevented disruption to trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Yet the backstop would have applied as soon as the rest of the UK diverged from Brussels’ rules. When that happened, Northern Ireland was to remain effectively in the single market and customs union, while practically every barrier eventually created by the protocol would separate it from GB.
In addition, the province was to be removed officially from the UK’s customs regime and placed in the EU’s set-up instead. All the constitutional arguments that have been deployed against Johnson’s Protocol applied to the backstop. Its only conceivable advantage was that it may have taken slightly longer to rupture the Union than Boris’s deal.
May was committed to a close relationship with the EU, but her government was so weak that it depended upon a confidence and supply arrangement with the DUP. Rather than attempt to persuade sceptical Conservatives that Britain should remain tied to Brussels, she used Northern Ireland as a ruse to smuggle her preferred type of Brexit into law. This tactic was poorly conceived and irresponsible, given the sensitivity of Ulster’s constitutional position. Indeed, it showed the kind of political trickery and recklessness that is now associated with Johnson’s administration.
The current government certainly treated Northern Ireland and the Union with careless disregard, even if it is belatedly trying to repair the damage. It signed a protocol that it knew was unworkable because it feared that, otherwise, Brexit might not happen. But it was Mrs May who first conceded the principle that the province should be treated differently to Great Britain after the UK left the EU. She agreed to implement a backstop arrangement to that effect as early as November 2017, refused to make the case for a soft-Brexit candidly and then backed a withdrawal agreement that included a regulatory and customs border in the Irish Sea.
During the debate, Mrs May described herself as a “patriot” and claimed the Protocol Bill would damage Britain’s standing “in the eyes of the world”. And still, with the arguable exception of Boris Johnson, she did more harm to the territorial integrity of the UK than any other modern prime minister. If she’s a genuine patriot, she should reflect on that and show a bit more humility in future.
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