Even if the protocol bill is given accelerated status to get it through the House of Commons before recess begins in July, it will still be October before it reaches the House of Lords.
The present reckoning is that it will have enormous difficulties there; so much so that Johnson might have to deploy the Parliament Act to get it onto the statute book in some form or other, taking us into June 2023.
How the bill will look at that point is anybody’s guess. It sailed reasonably comfortably through the second reading stage on Monday, albeit with a few warning shots over its bows from the likes of Theresa May and quite a few abstentions from Conservative backbenchers during the formal vote. The committee stage, where it can be deconstructed paragraph by paragraph and subjected to amendments, will be the first indication of the scale and nature of any potential rebellion. And it will be at that point when the DUP will have to make an important decision about what to do re its participation in the assembly.
If the damage is less than expected—in other words any Conservative rebellion isn’t big enough to defeat the bits that matter most to the DUP—then Jeffrey Donaldson might be prepared to give the nod of approval to the appointment of a Speaker (although that could be complicated if the assembly has moved into summer recess). By doing so he would be indicating a willingness to be flexible and cooperative in return for unionist interests being taken seriously. But that’s as far as he’d go at that point.
If, on the other hand, the bill takes a hammering during committee stage—the rebellion robbing Johnson of his majority—then the DUP has an enormous problem. While I’ve no doubt that Donaldson is prepared to be more flexible than most people think when it comes to preserving devolution, he cannot move an inch if he doesn’t have something to sell his assembly and parliamentary teams. I know there’s an argument that he’s holding on for a second election: but a second election won’t work for the DUP if the bill it had demanded for returning to the executive is mauled by MPs and peers. Indeed, a second election would be the clearest possible signal of the DUP’s failure to deliver.
Matters are further complicated for Donaldson by the brooding presence of Jim Allister, who has been firing his own shots over the DUP’s bows: “Herein could lie danger for any section of unionism tempted to accept this bill as a settlement, particularly in succumbing to the pressure to jump first before the bill in all its parts is fully implemented. This taken with the reality that the bill does not remove the Irish Sea border—but both confirms and ameliorates it by the introduction of green and red lanes—should cause unionists to be wary of being double crossed again by the government that brought us the Union-dismantling protocol in the first place.”
Donaldson also knows that most TUV supporters (including the thousands who shifted to it a few weeks ago), quite a few still restless DUP voters, a significant section of younger, new-generation loyalism and elements of the Orange Order, quite like the prospect of the assembly’s final collapse. There’s a complicated logic to their thinking because they seem to be suggesting that direct rule by those (both Labour and Conservative) who have serially ‘betrayed’ unionism for 50 years is preferable to having direct input into their own future. Or maybe they believe an unstable Northern Ireland makes it a less attractive option for the south in the event of a border poll?
Anyway, whatever happens, the chance of an executive this year seems very slim. Worth noting, too, that something big enough to persuade the DUP to say yes would probably be big enough to prompt Sinn Féin’s own lack of interest in a reboot.
I’d like to close with a comment about Jim Fitzpatrick. I first met him over thirty years ago when I served him in a garage in Belfast. He didn’t know me from a hole in the wall and yet he treated me with enormous courtesy. I spoke to him a number of times over the next couple of years and he was always ready for a chat—about anything. When I joined the paper as a columnist he sent me a lovely note of welcome. That’s the man I’ll always remember; courteous, funny, interested, interesting and just plain likeable. One of the very best.
