THE armistice in the Korean war was signed in Panmunjom in 1953, now the so-called ‘peace village’ on the border between North and South Korea. Peace talks later began. They’ve been going on, or not, as the case may be, for 70 years.
A special building was built for ongoing ‘talks’ which sometimes halt for years. No-one knows what they’re talking about any more, but everyone knows nothing of substance will ever emerge. Sound familiar?
The way the ‘talks’ between the British and the DUP are going, they will soon reach the status of Panmunjom. Every couple of weeks we’re told there’ll be a result in, yes, you’ve guessed it, a couple of weeks. “Gaps remain to be closed,” we’re told. This is all hogwash. If they ever conclude it won’t be with a resolution. Here’s why.
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The Windsor Framework is more important to the British than the DUP is; Donaldson has talked himself into a blind alley; the DUP is irrevocably split and has been since it fell apart in the Crowne Plaza in May 2021; the British have told the DUP porkies and have made promises they can’t deliver.
Let’s unpack all that.
The British knocked their brains out for six months to agree the framework with the EU in February. Sunak regarded it as a triumph not because it was designed to placate the DUP, but because it was essential to reset relations with the EU.
The Windsor Framework was the inevitable British surrender to the power of the EU, required to gain access to a range of EU projects, principally the €95 billion Horizon research programme and financial services, from which Britain had been excluded. The terms of the surrender were the full operation of the Irish Protocol.
The Windsor Framework simply modifies the protocol, which remains in force with modifications the EU offered in 2021 – express lanes, labelling, medicine relaxations – but the British rejected. Parliament ratified the framework by one of the largest Commons majority in history, 515-29, another signal to the EU there’s no reneging. Sunak met Macron in March, the first meeting between British and French leaders in five years.
The smart move for Donaldson then was to declare victory, extol the Stormont Brake (remember that?) although it’s smoke and mirrors, and join an executive. Donaldson doesn’t do smart. Instead he doubled down on his stupid seven tests which are impossible to satisfy.
It’s a mistake in politics to promise stuff you can’t control; like Sunak’s stupid promise to ‘stop the boats’. As a result, the DUP die-in-the-ditches brigade hold Donaldson to his impossible demands. Equally stupidly, the British have indulged DUP hardliners by making promises they can’t deliver in the hope they’d be believed. After the protocol? Seriously stupid.
You may think Sammy Wilson is crackers because of his posturing on climate denial, but just because he says something on another matter doesn’t mean it’s wrong. The British have been gaslighting the DUP since March (some would say since March 2016) about the availability of items from Britain and the DUP know it.
Fact: there is an Irish Sea border. Sammy Wilson and Nigel Dodds can read the framework small print and know full well that the framework’s inexorable timetable will tighten its grip until full operation in 2025. The protocol would have been fully operational already if the British hadn’t ratted on it in 2021. No matter any final outcome of the alleged ‘talks’ between the DUP and proconsul, Wilson and Dodds are correct: there will be an Irish Sea border and it’s likely to harden.
There’s a flip side to the border. The British have delayed introducing checks on imports five times because they haven’t the infrastructure or staff and because it’s going to add to the price of imports and increase inflation. It’s a scandalous delay which is unnerving environmentalists and farmers as well as importers because the UK market can be flooded not only with cheap and adulterated goods but invasive species.
Westminster committees have already been alerted about companies from the south and elsewhere opening bases in the north to avail of free access to GB. When import checks are introduced in Liverpool, Holyhead and other western ports they’re going to have to be introduced in Cairnryan too for obvious reasons. London has already been at loggerheads with Edinburgh about who funds customs sheds at Cairnryan.
Oh, you know the Electronic Travel Authorisation the British are bringing in in 2024? There’ll be no border checks here because they don’t give a damn who travels north. The checks will be on people travelling from here to GB. They do care about them.
Still, apparently DUP concerns are misplaced. Last week Cabinet Office Minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe told the Lords concerns about ‘the practical impact of the Windsor Framework have not materialised and cannot be justified for not restoring Stormont’.
So that’s OK. Those ‘talks’ may need a permanent venue like Panmunjom.
