It’s a pyrrhic victory for the party but it guarantees Northern Ireland’s place in the UK, a key factor in the return to Stormont
Source - Daily Telegraph - 30/01/24
It’s been almost eight years since the UK voted to leave the EU and nearly two years since the DUP began its boycott of power-sharing over the Irish Sea border.
Brexit could now soon finally be “done” in Northern Ireland after Sir Jeffrey Donaldson announced the DUP was backing the deal.
The announcement in the early hours of Tuesday came after a supposedly secret meeting, lasting more than five hours, descended into chaos as Sir Jeffrey faced down his critics.
So deep are the divides in the Brexit-supporting party, that someone leaked details of Sir Jeffrey’s speech to a loyalist activist who live-tweeted his remarks about the so-called “surrender deal”.
Hardline unionist and loyalist opposition won’t be going away anytime soon.
Neither now will the Irish Sea border, the customs barrier between Britain and Northern Ireland created by Brexit.
What does that mean for the United Kingdom, which left one of its four nations behind when it left the EU?
Northern Ireland continues to follow hundreds of EU rules and remains subject to the European Court of Justice.
British goods will face fewer checks when they enter Northern Ireland but border controls still exist. It is effectively part of the Single Market, like the Republic.
For many unionists, this amounts to being trapped inside an economic united Ireland.
Brexit - and frustration with the lengthy mothballing of Stormont - has put fresh impetus behind the debate over Irish reunification in a region that voted to Remain in the EU in 2016.
Sinn Fein, which wants a united Ireland, toppled the DUP as the region’s largest political party for the first time in 2022’s Assembly elections and repeated the trick in local elections a year later.
The restoration of Stormont will mean Michelle O’Neill becomes the first Sinn Fein First Minister of Northern Ireland in the region’s history of more than 100 years.
The Republic of Ireland is expected to hold elections this year and poll-leading Sinn Fein has a real chance at government.
Sinn Fein in power in the North and South will strengthen calls for a border call. The nationalist party has predicted a unity referendum by as early as 2030.
But more than half of voters in Northern Ireland would vote to remain in the UK if there was a referendum, which can only be called if there is thought to be a majority in favour of unity.
And the Irish Sea border could ultimately anchor Northern Ireland in the Union.
The Windsor Framework treaty gives the region unique and lucrative dual access to both the UK and EU internal markets, which should make it a magnet for foreign investment.
Leaving the Union, re-uniting the island of Ireland and rejoining the EU would cost the UK’s poorest region this dual access.
It would mean the same trade barriers between GB and NI as any other EU member state; undoing all the years of work to remove them in a kind of a “mini Brexit”.
The details of the Government’s deal with the DUP have not been made public.
But it is clear it falls short of any renegotiation of the Windsor Framework with Brussels and the DUP’s seven tests for any agreement.
It includes £3.3bn for Stormont, a patriotic rebrand of the border and Westminster legislation guaranteeing Northern Ireland’s place in the UK.
Northern Ireland is one of the anchors, along with the war in Ukraine, the cost of living crisis and the heft of the bloc’s Single Market, slowly pulling the UK back into the EU’s orbit.
A future Labour government has pledged to do a veterinary deal with the EU, which will diminish the border further, albeit at the cost of closer alignment with Brussels regulations.
As The Telegraph revealed last week, the Government has promised the DUP it will screen all new UK laws to ensure they don’t create extra trade barriers in the Irish Sea.
Brexiteers fear this sacrifices hard-won Brexit freedoms to regulate independently of Brussels and will tie the Government’s hands in diverging from EU rules.
For the Brexit-backing DUP, it’s a pyrrhic victory and a key factor in the return to Stormont.
They would rather betray the spirit of Brexit than the spirit of the Union.
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