Opinion

Newton Emerson: DUP now desperately pushing a backstop solution they previously rejected

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

DUP Leader Arlene Foster in the stands during Northern Ireland's Euro 2020 qualifier against Germany at Windsor Park. Picture by Liam McBurney/PA Wire
DUP Leader Arlene Foster in the stands during Northern Ireland's Euro 2020 qualifier against Germany at Windsor Park. Picture by Liam McBurney/PA Wire DUP Leader Arlene Foster in the stands during Northern Ireland's Euro 2020 qualifier against Germany at Windsor Park. Picture by Liam McBurney/PA Wire

There is “movement happening on both sides” towards a Brexit deal, according to Fine Gael former minister Phil Hogan, the EU’s new trade commissioner.

That movement is towards democratic oversight of the backstop, or backstop-like arrangements. The UK government has long toyed with giving Stormont such a role. The DUP, having initially rejected that proposal, is now desperately promoting it.

Hogan said the “constitutional issues” the backstop raises for Northern Ireland’s place in the UK can be “improved upon” but he hinted at something extra: oversight of “the north-south dimension in the context of the Good Friday Agreement”.

Of course, the backstop is effectively all about the north-south dimension.

A powerful new cross-border body managing Brexit for Northern Ireland is an idea nationalists might welcome and the DUP is no longer in a position to refuse.

A similar body was proposed in a report last week from the UUP but as an alternative to the backstop, rather than its all-Ireland forum.

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An agrifood sea border is becoming a point of agreement between London, Dublin and Brussels, with the DUP tagging along.

But how much of the border issue would it solve? Predictably, that is a point of disagreement.

The Irish government cites a figure of 30 per cent, which is cross-border trade by value.

The UK government prefers the figure of 70 per cent, which is cross-border trade by volume.

There is no question volume is the relevant measure for assessing border friction.

However, the gap between both figures is an accurate measure of the state of negotiations.

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The Home Office has set out its argument in the case of Emma De Souza, who believes British citizenship has been forced upon her in contravention of the Good Friday Agreement.

The Home Office contends nationality law, which is not addressed in the Agreement, requires British citizenship to be automatically conferred in Northern Ireland. It is difficult to see how this could be avoided, unless we are to be born stateless, in contravention of national and international law.

The practical solution to the De Souza dilemma is to make renunciation of British citizenship free and simple, instead of an expensive bureaucratic nightmare. Paperwork could also refer to the right to citizenship, rather than the fact of it.

But the Home Office is institutionally incapable of such flexibility and so it has foisted a toxic dispute on us all.

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Lady Sylvia Hermon has finally been acknowledged in discussions of an anti-Brexit pact.

The north Down independent unionist, Northern Ireland’s only attending Remain MP, has always been mysteriously overlooked by pact proponents, despite being at risk of losing her seat to the DUP.

Now former SDLP leader Dr Alasdair McDonnell has said other Remain parties should stand aside for her, as well for Alliance in east Belfast and the SDLP in south Belfast, costing the DUP two seats and denying it a third.

While this makes the most sense of any pact proposal to date it is an enormous ask of the Green Party, whose heartland consists almost entirely of the three constituencies in question. In the last general election, the Green votes in south Belfast and north Down would have been big enough to change the outcome.

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Ulster University has received funding to help develop a Mars rover for the European Space Agency. ExoMars will detect underground water then drill deeper into the Martian soil than any rover to date.

Hopefully this will go better than Ulster University’s new Belfast Campus, which has been delayed for years by unexpectedly waterlogged soil.

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Sinn Féin MP Chris Hazzard has asked “what sort of mental gymnastics you have to perform to allow yourself to be bestowed as a Tory nominee in the British House of Lords”, after former SDLP leader Margaret Ritchie accepted a peerage.

Hazzard must not recall the words of Sinn Féin senator Rose Conway-Walsh four months ago, when unionist Ian Marshall accepted a Fine Gael nomination to the Seanad.

“Much has been made of the election of Ian Marshall and the fact that we in Sinn Féin made the decision to support him,” Conway-Walsh said.

“Some even questioned if he was a real unionist, which really made me think ‘what is a real unionist?’

“Indeed what is a real Irish republican and perhaps those that are posing such questions should reflect on what they need to do in order to create an environment of mutual respect and equality.”

newton@irishnews.com