THE Conservative government is back to doing what it does best on the NI Protocol: sowing the seeds of confusion.
Over the weekend The Sunday Times carried a story that the prime minister was prepared to put the protocol bill on ice – fuelling speculation that the UK and EU (almost certainly with a nod of approval from the Irish government) were close to a deal.
The sort of speculation that rattles the DUP, if only because it really doesn’t want to be presented with a fait accompli which forces it to choose between a soggy-deal protocol and rebooting devolution.
On Tuesday, the Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, was sent into bat for the DUP’s side and reassure it that it hadn’t been forgotten.
“The NI Protocol Bill exists for a reason. The commitment that I made to Maros Sefcovic and the conversations that I had with him and with others is that we would not either artificially accelerate that process or artificially hinder or retard that process. We have always said that our preferred option is through negotiations. We speak regularly, the tone is positive and I think that there is now an understanding that the concerns that we have raised and have been raised particularly by the unionist community in Northern Ireland are not confected, that they are real and that any agreement would need to address them."
And just in case the DUP wasn’t feeling enough of the love after these comments, NIO minister Steve Baker told Jeffrey Donaldson on Wednesday, in an exchange in the House of Commons, that the government was still pursuing a deal which was “acceptable to us and acceptable to him”.
That, of course, is precisely the phrase you use when you know that the government (if it has planned a sweet spot landing with the EU) is lining up a compromise.
I’d be very surprised if the government wasn’t – although whisper it softly – committed to a compromise.
There will have to be a couple of very palpable concessions from the EU, because the government knows that Donaldson will need something he can sell to his MLAs, MPs and party officers.
I’ve noted before that Donaldson is a devolutionist, as is the majority of his MLAs and officers. They know that the party would be considerably weakened without a Stormont platform: and they know, too, that the alternative to devolution is a hybrid form of direct rule (including input from the Irish government) which will do no favours whatsoever for unionism.
But it isn’t just to his own teams that Donaldson has to sell any compromise. The LCC, TUV, Orange Order and the new generation loyalism who underpinned the anti-protocol rallies during May’s election will also have to be faced down.
Many of them would welcome the demise of the Assembly, particularly since they don’t like the fact that unionists no longer account for an overall majority of MLAs and can no longer guarantee that a unionist party will be the largest.
Jim Allister has already said that no unionist party should act as ‘bridesmaid’ to a Sinn Fein first minister; while others openly support the downfall of the Good Friday Agreement.
Has Donaldson the numbers to face them down? The last huge test for the DUP was back in May 2007 when it had to sell a deal which included Martin McGuinness as deputy first minister.
Peter Robinson knew it would be a hard sell (one of the consequences of it was the breakaway of Jim Allister, who later formed the TUV) but he also knew he had the numbers to do it inside the assembly and little external pressure from loyalism or the Orange.
That is not the case now. On paper he has the MLA numbers, but he knows there could be defections to the TUV, providing company for Jim. He knows, too, that there could be on-the-street protests from his opponents.
It’s possible – fairly likely, I suspect – the UUP would support his decision to return to the executive, giving him a fairly comfortable majority of unionist MLAs (and there would be no requirement for an assembly election); but a local government election is due next May and a significant anti-DUP vote is possible.
Of course, he may choose not to take that path. Which means no assembly for a long time, maybe even for ever.
Would that be the point at which the two governments, along with a majority of people in NI, conclude that the assembly will never work and that an alternative form of governance must be found?
That’s an outcome which is clearly favoured by some of his opponents: although my own feeling is that they haven’t actually thought through the consequences of bringing devolution to an end.
There’s another calculation both Donaldson and his opponents in loyalism and unionism must make: what are the likely consequences for them of wrecking a UK/EU deal and also destroying a key element of the Good Friday Agreement? Again, there is no evidence that they have game-planned for that outcome.
Which brings me back to the Conservatives and the sowing of confusion.
Rishi Sunak, like Truss, Johnson, May, Cameron et al, has no emotional attachment to what is best described as ‘Ulster’ unionism. Acting in the best interests of the UK is one thing: acting in the best interests of ‘Ulster’ unionism is something else altogether.
And that, in a nutshell, has been and will remain a huge problem for unionism/loyalism in Northern Ireland.
