Opinion

Alex Kane: Boris's teasing over the protocol is a problem for DUP

Alex Kane

Alex Kane

Alex Kane is an Irish News columnist and political commentator and a former director of communications for the Ulster Unionist Party.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a visit to Crumlin, Co Antrim last month. Photo: Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a visit to Crumlin, Co Antrim last month. Photo: Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a visit to Crumlin, Co Antrim last month. Photo: Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker.

Boris Johnson is such a tease. For weeks now he’s been telling unionists the conditions required for triggering Article 16 have already been met and that he’s minded to pull the trigger.

He was at it again on Monday evening: “But if we do invoke Article 16—which by the way is a perfectly legitimate part of that protocol—we will do so reasonably and appropriately, because we believe it is the only way left to protect the territorial integrity of our country and meet our obligations to the people of Northern Ireland under the Belfast Good Friday Agreement. (But) let me say—given all the speculation—that we would rather find a negotiated solution to the problems created by the NI Protocol—and that still seems possible.”

There you go, a perfect example of the tease he does so well. It could be done. It might be done. He doesn’t want to do it. It’s the only way to protect the territorial integrity of the UK. But it’s still possible a solution exists which doesn’t require triggering the article. It’s gold standard gobbledegook, of course; and well he knows it. Or maybe he doesn’t. He is so proficient in fork-tongued gibberish he may no longer be capable of distinguishing a fact from a fart: because to him they are both just variations of wind.

Even more ludicrous than the tease is his clumsy, clownish, lumbering attempt to take a political/moral high ground on the protocol. According to Dominic Cummings and Ian Paisley he always intended to shred it anyway, since its only purpose was to allow him to ‘get Brexit done.’ Were either of his grandmothers still alive he would probably have sold them had the occasion required it. Even Lord Frost, his chief negotiator, has admitted that the protocol was only agreed to because there was pressure from the EU for Johnson to seal the deal. Or, putting that less diplomatically, Johnson just flapdoodled his way to an election victory.

I wonder what Jeffrey Donaldson makes of it all. The reopening of negotiations with the UK and the EU bought him some time at the end of October, meaning that he didn’t have to carry through with a perceived threat to crash the assembly and trigger an early election. But he doesn’t want the negotiations to run and run, just to conclude with Johnson nodding through something which is the existing protocol in all but name and with Northern Ireland still occupying the constitutional granny flat located between GB and the EU.

And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want a triggering of Article 16 leading to a collapse of the entire Withdrawal Agreement and endless months of uncertainty for businesses in NI (the majority of whom seem reasonably content to live with the protocol: because, if nothing else, it does provide them with something resembling clarity and certainty). He’s also wise enough to know that an unravelling of the Withdrawal Agreement and the reopening of the entire Brexit debate could fuel the view across English nationalism and Conservative grassroots that ‘safeguarding’ unionist interests wasn’t, in fact, worth the effort.

His other problem is that he doesn’t know who would win if Johnson had to choose between prioritising unionist/loyalist interests and ‘meeting our obligations to the people of Northern Ireland under the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement.’ Johnson has enough other problems on his plate (including slipping poll ratings and a rise in Covid figures) without adding the crashing of the Good Friday Agreement to the mix.

His advisers (assuming he listens to them) will be aware of the latest polling figures from LucidTalk and the University of Liverpool, which suggest considerable numbers of those from the pro-union community are much more flexible on the protocol than the unionist parties, loyalism and the Orange Order may be. In other words, Johnson might conclude the ‘people of Northern Ireland’ is a much bigger and less protocol-hostile base than party political unionism (which is already a minority in the assembly).

But Donaldson’s biggest problem of all is an election—less than six months away—the outcome of which depends on what Johnson decides to do with the protocol. At this point no one has any idea what he’ll do. And I really do mean no one. Not even Johnson himself: who, like the Queen of Hearts, sometimes believes as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Which one he’ll choose and where it lands is impossible to guess, because his entire shtick is now built around a hugely embarrassing impression of an over-the-hill burlesque artiste played by Charles Laughton.