UK seeks to end N. Ireland impasse with reworked trade plan

The UK unveiled a plan to reduce trade friction on goods flowing from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, a move that is expected to persuade the Democratic Unionist Party to end its two-year boycott of the region’s devolved government even though it falls short of a major overhaul of Brexit rules.

Goods intended for sale in Northern Ireland will no longer face customs or other checks, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government said Wednesday, as it moved to ease unionist objections over the way the Brexit deal with the European Union created an effective trade border in the Irish Sea.

Along with a £3.3 billion ($4.2 billion) funding boost, the measure is central to the UK’s offer to the DUP to end a protest that has left Northern Ireland without a government since February 2022. “I make no apology for standing up for my people,” DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson told reporters on Wednesday.

Donaldson has been talking up the changes since the DUP’s leadership agreed to return to power-sharing during five hours of talks that finally delivered a breakthrough in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The UK House of Commons is due to vote on the new trading rules on Thursday, after which Donaldson is expected to give the go-ahead for Northern Ireland’s assembly to meet and for the executive to re-form.

But while that process is not expected to be derailed at this stage, Donaldson does face intense opposition from within his party and from the wider unionist community in Northern Ireland. The risk for Donaldson is likely to be more in the long-term, if he can’t keep the bulk of his party onside once the assembly and Northern Ireland executive is up and running, and his deal with the UK is tested. Rival unionist parties are also looking to make political gains.

In a sign of the challenge facing him, DUP MPs lined up on Wednesday to criticize the proposals when presented to Parliament by the UK’s Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris. 

Sammy Wilson, who has opposed any compromise on the Brexit rules, said the ongoing possibility of regulatory divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK was the result of a “spineless, weak-kneed Brexit-betraying government refusing to take on the EU and its interference in Northern Ireland.”

“When the Northern Ireland assembly sits, ministers and assembly members will be expected by law to adhere to and implement laws which are made in Brussels, which they had no say over and no ability to amend, and no ability to stop,” he said.

Another DUP MP, Carla Lockhart, said “there remains work to do,” while Paul Girvan said “we very much feel like we’re being bounced on a timetable.”

The DUP withdrew from the power-sharing government in February 2022, arguing Northern Ireland’s hybrid status in the Brexit deal signed by ex-premier Boris Johnson had undermined its place in the UK. Some unionists regard any semblance of an Irish Sea border as a red line, because it means the region is being treated differently to Great Britain.

However, in a sign of the limited scope and impact of the trade changes, the UK government said they didn’t need any sign-off from the EU and the bloc made no public objection or protest. Northern Ireland was one of the trickiest issues in divorce talks between Britain and the EU. 

“I do not anticipate any particular difficulties in respect of the EU side,” Ireland’s deputy premier Micheal Martin told reporters during a visit to Belfast.

Key features of the Brexit settlement are unaffected by the new plan, which will maintain checks on goods intended for Ireland in the EU’s single market.

“This is a lot more about presentation than substantive change, on a first reading,” said Simon Usherwood, professor of politics and international studies at the Open University, adding that he’s surprised the DUP is accepting the plan because it doesn’t alter the basics of the post-Brexit settlement. “But if it gets them out of the hole they dug themselves into, and - more importantly - it restores power-sharing, then that has to be a positive.”

Donaldson’s unionist rivals don’t see things that way, arguing that his negotiations with the UK have not delivered enough. Standing alongside Heaton-Harris at a joint press conference, a defiant Donaldson acknowledged he didn’t get everything he wanted from the UK, but challenged his unionist rivals to show that they could do better.

“Is this really the time for unionism to turn in on itself?” Donaldson said. He accused some critics of not wanting power-sharing at all. “Some of them live in a bygone era.”

There is a wider backdrop to the unionist row. Ending the political impasse would be a significant moment in the history of Northern Ireland, which will get its first nationalist First Minister in Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill. 

Critics of Donaldson and the DUP’s boycott have long argued that played a major part in the party’s decision to boycott the government two years ago. The growing political strength of Sinn Fein in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland has revived talks of reunification, which party leader Mary Lou McDonald did little to play down this week.

Northern Ireland’s “electoral majority for unionism has gone,” she said, adding that a new Ireland is “emerging.”