Opinion

Newton Emerson: Boris plan is a mess that will strand us in limbo between two borders

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.

Newton Emerson
Newton Emerson Newton Emerson

Few believe the Brexit plan Boris Johnson unveiled this week is intended as a serious offer, at least in its initial form. However, the DUP appears to truly believe it has hammered out a genuine deal. All the compromises it hinted at in recent months are there, including a sea border and Irish government oversight. Look at any one part of the plan in isolation and you can see the how the DUP might think it has used its influence to strike a clever bargain. Alas, it all adds up to an impractical mess that would strand Northern Ireland in limbo between two borders. Our politics may be familiar with such arcane solutions but business and industry are another matter.

Worse still, if the EU ends up accepting anything like this, the DUP’s endorsement means Westminster would probably vote for it.

After all the predictions of Johnson throwing the DUP under a bus, the real risk is of him letting the DUP throw itself under a bus - and taking the rest of us with it.

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There is a decisive role for Stormont in the prime minister’s plan and it is likely a fig leaf of this nature will appear in any deal, which puts the petition of concern at the heart of the matter. The original Stormont lock, proposed by Theresa May, would have given nationalists a veto over diverging from the EU. The DUP has had that turned around to give unionists a veto over aligning with the EU. Sinn Féin cannot restore devolution under such circumstances - to get a Stormont lock, the DUP must surrender its key through reform of the petition of concern.

Government sources have already hinted that if Stormont is not restored, consent for a deal will be obtained through a Northern Ireland referendum, which is the last thing the DUP wants, as it would lose what would be seen as a proxy border poll. How telling that this Boris bus was revved towards the DUP within hours of the Brexit plan being unveiled.

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One aspect of Johnson’s proposal that might deserve to survive is the “new deal for Northern Ireland”, which would see extra spending on economic growth, competitiveness and infrastructure “particularly with a cross-border focus”. No figure has been put on this but it is assumed to be in the billions.

Similar bungs must be there for the asking from Dublin and Brussels, if only we could find a common voice to ask for them.

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Four new bidders have reportedly been lined up for Wrightbus in Ballymena. Among the many, many issues that will need to be addressed is the future of the William Wright Technology Centre at Queen’s University Belfast.

Founded with great fanfare in 2016, Wrightbus committed only £300,000 to what was meant to be a £6 million facility, with 30 staff and PhD students developing research in collaboration with the firm.

Most of the initial intake of students left within a year, only one doctorate has since been awarded and the UK’s science research council has had to pick up the slack. While this is an apparently minor matter in terms of the Wrightbus disaster, it reveals a great deal about the company’s failings and how they were indulged by others. Blind faith was not restricted to Green Pastures.

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The rescue of the former Harland and Wolff shipyard raises more questions than it answers. New owner InfraStrata is behind the controversial Larne gas storage project, which has yet to receive planning permission. The company says its plans for the yard are not dependent on the storage project but their futures are now certainly connected.

A further puzzle is that the yard is not meant to have a future. The 2030 master plan for the site, first produced in 2005, shows it being replaced with apartments and a marina.

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Sinn Féin is not exactly selling the joys of an Irish language act with its conduct at Belfast City Council. When the party proposed bilingual signage for two new leisure centres in west Belfast, Alliance and the Greens joined unionists to refer it for discussion on a general policy for all leisure centres. Sinn Féin then attacked them for “denying” Irish signs to west Belfast and escalating the row by demanding an emergency council debate.

What Alliance and the Greens want is for Irish to be more than a single-identity territorial marker, which appears to be the beginning and end of Sinn Féin’s vision.