Opinion

Newton Emerson: Protocol fallout shows sham fights are not just for Scarva

Lord Frost delivering proposals to change the NI Protocol this week
Lord Frost delivering proposals to change the NI Protocol this week Lord Frost delivering proposals to change the NI Protocol this week

The government has published proposals to change the Brexit protocol, provoking a balanced crop of political over-reactions. As a rough summary, unionists are delighted the protocol is being abolished and nationalists are angry it is not being fully implemented. Few seem willing to consider the proposals are about implementing as much as possible to make the protocol a permanent arrangement. Unionists should consider how much diplomatic capital London is burning through to make technical tweaks to the sea border, with no sign of planning a land border. The EU says it will not “renegotiate” the protocol, a term the UK has conspicuously avoided. Sham fights are not just for Scarva.

Nationalists should admit some aspects of the protocol are hopelessly impractical, the sea border was meant to be implemented on at ‘at risk’ basis and Northern Ireland’s threat to the EU single market is negligible. Six supermarket chains told London and Brussels this week fewer checks are essential. Why man the barricades to demand more?

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One of the features of pre-Brexit Britain was ministers and mandarins blaming Brussels for red tape that was entirely Whitehall’s fault. The extent to which this caused Brexit and bent the banana of history is sobering to contemplate. Northern Ireland was hardly immune: attempts to impose water charging during the last period of direct rule were accompanied with endless, erroneous claims it was “a European requirement”.

The Republic is not immune either. Failure to extend its digital vaccine certificate to Irish passport holders in Northern Ireland has been blamed on EU rules, which sounds plausible, given the certificate is an EU-wide scheme. However, those rules need not have prevented Dublin ensuring eligibility here from the outset.

This is going to become an extraordinarily difficult issue to keep track of in the protocol era.

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Secretary of state Brandon Lewis has directed the commissioning of abortion services by March next year. The direction has been issued via regulations Westminster passed this March that create a unique form of special-purpose direct rule: everything and everyone at Stormont stays in place but Lewis can order any minister, senior health official or “relevant person” in any department to implement the UK’s treaty obligations on abortion. Orders have now been given to UUP health minister Robin Swann and his officials as well as to the first and deputy first ministers, who have been told to put abortion on the executive agenda.

It would be courageous to assume this untested mechanism will operate smoothly. What if Swann defers to the executive and the DUP vetoes abortion, again? The regulations contain no penalties and no reference to what happens if a ‘relevant person’ ignores an order or fails to deliver it.

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The Northern Ireland Office has firmly denied a report in Private Eye that it is working on a “code of ethics” for the media as part of its amnesty plans, under which journalists would be curtailed from investigating the Troubles “in the interests of the peace process.”

Denial notwithstanding, this extraordinary concept is not a new idea. SDLP MP Claire Hanna says a similar notion was proposed for the 2005 amnesty bill agreed between the government and Sinn Féin.

It is also similar to some definitions of the ‘peace journalism’ advocated by parts of academia and campaign groups here for over two decades, despite its blatant agenda-pushing and obvious absurdity.

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Let us not pretend journalism never stirs the pot.

President Joe Biden has become “a divisive figure in Northern Ireland as Brexit tensions simmer”, according to a lengthy television report aired this week on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’, a widely-watched US news programme.

Reporter Matt Bradley did the full Kevin and Sadie tour: peace walls, bonfires and parades; plus lots of footage of trucks coming off the boat at Larne. Every interviewee was subtitled, making them look like minor characters in an Austin Powers movie.

The headline claim about Biden came primarily from an interview with Orange Order Grand Secretary Mervyn Gibson, yet Gibson was complimentary about Biden and appeared to be fending off a leading question. It would be far more correct to say the president has not proved divisive here, contrary to initial speculation. But where is the fun in that?

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During the last heatwave in June and July 2018, NI Water issued a hosepipe ban that included paddling pools - a surprisingly vast usage of water, with each refill requiring as much as 16 households normally use in a day. It then emerged this was outside the Stormont-owned company’s powers, as the relevant 2006 legislation only permits hosepipe bans for watering gardens and washing cars. There was quite a kerfuffle about it, the attorney general got involved and NI Water initially dug its heels in, before issuing an apology three months later. Although Stormont was suspended at the time, politicians also had their say. So has anything been done to update the law? Of course not. Now NI Water is left begging people not to fill padding pools as a hosepipe ban is needed again.