Two years after the Democratic Unionist Party put the institutions of the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement into suspension by withdrawing from them, those institutions returned, and devolved government exists in Northern Ireland again, headed by a Sinn Féin First Minister.
The history of the dispute has been set out on this blog and a recent Constitution Unit podcast. Briefly, a Protocol to the EU Withdrawal Agreement left Northern Ireland effectively within the EU single market for goods and customs arrangements. This avoided the necessity for a border within the island of Ireland, which would be acutely difficult in both political and practical terms; it gave Northern Ireland rights to trade freely in the EU as well as Great Britain. But potentially it inhibited trade with GB, the symbolism of which antagonised some unionists. Hardline pressure grew. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) responded by withdrawing from the institutions in February 2023, thereby shutting them down.
The Windsor Framework, agreed between the UK and EU in 2023, was intended to respond to the DUP’s demands – but it stayed out. Negotiations went on, in private, between the DUP and London, reportedly involving Julian Smith, who more or less uniquely among recent secretaries of state is widely respected in Northern Ireland. There was also a brief interparty discussion in December in which the government made an offer of relief for Northern Ireland’s desperate public finances. But deadlines came and went.
Finally, a week or so ago, DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson presented the proposals emanating from the negotiations to various party groupings; and securing majorities, albeit not it appears large ones, announced acceptance.
In consequence, the Northern Ireland Assembly met on Saturday, when Sinn Féin had the right to nominate the First Minister, having secured the most seats in the May 2022 Assembly Elections. It put forward its northern party leader Michelle O’Neill, the first non-unionist ever to occupy the position. The symbolism is great. The practical effect should not be overstated: the First Minister and the deputy First Minister (DFM) have precisely joint and equal powers. The DUP nominated Emma Little-Pengelly as DFM (Donaldson remains, for the time being, an MP at Westminster). Three other parties appointed ministers to the Executive (under the d’Hondt procedure, which allocates rights to nominate to posts in rough proportion to party size). But the Social Democratic and Labour Party, for the first time, had too few seats to qualify, and so constitute the Opposition.
The DUP-government deal
The government white paper, Safeguarding the Union, contains a range of measures, aimed, among other things, at reasserting the supposedly challenged constitutional status of Northern Ireland; dealing with barriers to trade across the Irish sea border; and addressing the place of EU legislation in Northern Ireland, including the pipeline of new legislation that is essential to its position in the EU Single Market for goods. All of these are unionist grievances with the Protocol.
London’s room for manoeuvre is extremely limited by agreements with the EU, and the 1998 Agreement. Earlier Conservative governments appeared ready to contemplate resiling from the former, though never did. Rishi Sunak is clearly not interested in violating agreements: the goodwill of Brussels may be stretched in a few places in the white paper, but other parts appear to reflect close negotiation. The essentials of the Protocol and Windsor Framework are not greatly changed. Colin Murray summarises the legal impact well.
The paper also shows signs of embodying various people’s personal credos and pet projects – not uniquely in Northern Ireland political programmes. There is for example a commitment to retrain the Civil Service on the Agreement, and the government’s highly restrictive doctrine on the place of the Irish government in Northern Ireland matters. And, as in previous programmes, there are new quangos, reviews, etc, whose rationale may be largely in the realm of political gesture.
What is unusual about the paper, however, is the process by which it was concluded, the political slant in it and the legislative route taken.
Previous Northern Ireland deals have generally come about after negotiation with all main political parties and have at least nodded to different aspirations. Governments in the past, even if they expressly favoured maintaining the Union, have at times sought to remain even-handed. For decades London has partnered with the Irish government in pursuing political advance.
This deal, though, has been essentially the product of a private discussion between London and one party. And everything about the document, starting with the title and cover, is partisan in tone: as Steve Baker, Minister of State in the Northern Ireland Office, put it: ‘A unionist Conservative Government has agreed unionist things with the Democratic Unionist Party’. Generally, it is presumably calculated to help the DUP against unionist ultras; and perhaps also gratify some on the UK government backbenches.
But the process and especially the tone sit uneasily with the commitment in the Agreement that the government will exercise its power ‘with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all the people in the diversity of their identities and traditions’. A government that was concerned about its future capacity as an honest broker might have conducted itself differently.
The paper’s comment on border polls (page 68) exemplifies these concerns. It says that:
On the basis of all recent polling, the government sees no realistic prospect of a border poll leading to a united Ireland. We believe that… Northern Ireland’s future in the UK will be secure for the decades to come and as such the conditions for a border poll are unlikely to be objectively met’.
It is certainly true that current polls give no indication of a majority in Northern Ireland for Irish unity. It is altogether more questionable to state this will be the case decades hence (not least because there are indicationsthat younger people are more likely to favour Irish unity). The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (currently Chris Heaton-Harris) is the arbiter of this central element of the Agreement, as he alone has the legal power to call a border poll. Some will question whether this passage suggests that judgement will be reached with an open mind.
Curiously, the paper is implicitly rather critical of Conservative governments under the immediately preceding premierships for their failure to take into account unionist perceptions; but it offers no criticism of the DUP for obliging Northern Ireland to do without functioning government for two years – a period which, like the interregnum triggered in 2017 by Sinn Féin, has been extremely damaging to the wellbeing of people in Northern Ireland (see Northern Ireland’s Political Future, Chapter 8).
Everything last week proceeded with remarkable speed. Donaldson announced DUP acceptance of the proposals on 30 January. The paper was published, with a statement from Heaton-Harris, on 31 January, and legislation to give effect to it approved by the Commons the following day. Such urgency has been common in Northern Ireland political negotiation, justified by the necessity to maintain political momentum.
But given that one of the instruments involved was an Order about the constitutional status of Northern Ireland made under Henry VIII powers, inserting text into an Act of Parliament, the propriety is questionable. This is traditionally a matter that would be the subject of a bill, considered in Committee of the Whole House. The fact that the constitutional status provisions appear to amount to little of substance is beside the point: all potential impacts should be carefully considered.
Labour, other Northern Ireland parties, Dublin and Brussels seem to have taken the new package philosophically and perhaps suppressed their feelings on the process and tone, choosing to look forward. But some nationalists, unsurprisingly, did register unhappiness.
On Monday, the Sunak visited Northern Ireland to celebrate. Downing Street is said to be irritated that the Taoiseach did the same; a sign of the government’s restrictive attitude to Irish government involvement in Northern Ireland affairs. In the past, such occasions resulted in joint meetings and press conferences.
There is room for doubt whether this paper, or the agreement it embodies, actually advance the Union, as opposed to the short-term interests of the DUP leadership. Political unionism is now a minority in the Northern Ireland popular vote; the swing constituency as regards Irish unity is the centre ground, essentially Alliance voters, and those soft nationalists who, whatever their long-term aspiration, fear that moves to unity now would be destabilising. Mainstream unionism has done little in recent years to appeal to this constituency; nor have recent British governments, which are distrusted across the board. The approach and content of the white paper are unlikely to do so either.
In summary, it is extremely welcome that agreement has been reached that has permitted devolved government to return. The paper is the product of the politics we have at present, and of much hard work. But the way has been brought about may have negative consequences in the future.
The prospects for the Northern Ireland Executive
Will the new Executive survive and prosper? Events on Saturday were positive. Hardline unionist protest has so far been more muted than promised. But the few months up to the general election at least may be politically fraught. There are suggestions that the DUP will seek an early opportunity to apply the Stormont Brake by which a Unionist minority within the Assembly can seek to prevent the implementation of new EU law in Northern Ireland, potentially making for difficult decisions in London, and conflict with Brussels. Ultimately, this threatens Northern Ireland’s position within the Single Market.
It would be in the interests of the DUP leadership to move the focus on from addressing concerns about the Protocol and attempting to satisfy recalcitrant unionists, towards a positive agenda of working with other parties to enable devolution to deliver – if, politically, it is able to do so. It is also in the interests of London, of the Union itself in the medium term, and the wellbeing of the Northern Ireland population. There is a yawning good government deficit in Northern Ireland (see Northern Ireland’s Political Future, chapter 8). And there is great discontent at the state of public services and the economy, and at the Executive’s efforts in relation to them. Sustained effort is needed from the Executive.
The system is not well placed to address these deficiencies: the Executive is constituted by algorithm, not on the basis of any prior political agreement. The next step is for the parties to agree a Programme for Government (there has not been one in force since 2017). Fortunately the parties have in the last two years been having regular meetings with the Head of the Civil Service, so there may be the foundations of a new agreed programme. The parties working together is something the electorate quite widely seek, and the DUP and Sinn Féin have at times done well through practising it (e.g. in the 2011 Assembly elections).
And for London?
It may be for a new London government to take up the reins. As previously suggested on this blog it needs to start in a completely different manner, in the hopes of recovering some trust across the community. It needs to be even handed; to show understanding of and interest in Northern Ireland at the highest level (Number 10 has not been conspicuous in any recent discussions); to seek to work more effectively with the Irish government.
Indeed, it might set itself its own positive agenda of ensuring that the Agreement settlement was fulfilled and taken forward in all its aspects. It would no doubt want to leave the limelight to the Executive if it was performing effectively; but be prepared for a time when it, and Dublin, might have come to the rescue.
A new government will probably want to adhere to the specifics of the deal with the DUP. But it would sensibly not embrace any of the rhetoric or the extraneous policy commentary in Safeguarding the Union.
It might also make clear that there is no room for any future withdrawal from government by either veto-holding party, and if that happened, temporary steps to overcome the veto would need to be considered. Issues of longer-term institutional reform may now have slipped down the agenda. But they will have to be dealt with at some point, and a more informed debate on them would be helpful.
First published by the Constitution Unit at UCL
Featured image: Sunak in Stormont with Edwin Poots and Chris Heaton-Harris via flickr Main image: Prime Minister visits Stormont (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) via UK Prime Minister
See also: Geoff Martin, Federal Trust, NI can now face the future, YouTube; Various pieces on Slugger O’Neill
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