Things are going to get worse. That sentence usually ends with, ‘before they get better’, but not in this case.
The pre-condition for improvement is not a new prime minister but the end of Tory government because the next prime minister will be a hardline Brexiteer. Those are the only contenders for succeeding the awful Johnson.
So far the argument in the contest is about cutting tax and by how much and dealing with the crisis in the cost of living: fuel, heat, power, food. All the other concerns which affect people here are not discussed because all the candidates agree about them. Everyone of them supports ripping up the protocol and remember, no Conservative MP voted against its second reading. The bill giving amnesty for Troubles killings and closing down investigations has sailed through its stages. The only argument about Human Rights among the contenders is whether to leave the European Court of Human Rights or just wreck the Human Rights Act.
In other words, whoever succeeds Johnson will carry on with his policies because none of them objects to his far right policies. They wanted rid of his serial lying, cronyism and lack of moral compass, belatedly, for they’d been complicit with his behaviour for years.
They’ve all also learned to say the opposite of what they do and mask their real motives. Most importantly for this place none of them gives a toss about the Good Friday Agreement; most haven’t read it because it’s about Ireland and besides, it’s twenty-four years ago and Tony Blair’s plan. This government stopped working the GFA in 2020. No sooner did the unlamented Lewis arrive than he started ignoring the Irish government, first by reneging on the Stormont House Agreement. The truth is that Johnson’s government was hostile to devolution – ‘a disaster’ according to Johnson. Conservatives see it as another problem caused by Blair and for the last three years have been working to undermine it.
Already the most centralised government in western Europe, Johnson and Michael Gove have worked to undo what Blair did. They regard the GFA as part of breaking up the UK just like the Scottish parliament and the Welsh Senedd. It’s no coincidence that the British government established a wholly irrelevant Belfast office of its Department of Housing, Community and Local Government last year to allocate infrastructure resources here. Recently they opened an equally irrelevant Belfast NIO office which we’d done perfectly well without for 50 years.
In May Simon Coveney said relations between London and Dublin were “in a really bad place”. The British government treats Dublin with disdain. Their attitude implicitly repudiates the Irish government’s right to offer views and proposals about the north although it’s in black and white in the international treaty that is the GFA. Then again of course the British don’t keep international treaties. So what?
The next prime minister, one of the nonentities bequeathed to us from what Starmer called the “lightweight brigade” that Johnson stuffed his cabinet with, will therefore continue to try to go it alone. This obsession with an archaic notion of sovereignty will inevitable continue to cause conflict with the EU and inflict damage on British-Irish relations. It’s impossible to envisage any improvement before a general election. Even then, there’s no prospect of a majority Labour government given the English electoral arithmetic. The best hope is a hung parliament with the SNP and Lib Dems shoring up Starmer. However, Starmer has moved so far right onto Little Englander Conservative ground to buttress his claims to patriotism – including always having a union jack behind him – it’s debatable whether he’d be able to repeal even the worst of Conservative legislation without losing support in England.
In all this don’t forget no one in the DUP said a word of criticism about Johnson’s behaviour. Rather their MPs voted for all his repressive legislation.
