NEARING A BREAK FROM THE UK

John­son’s be­trayal

Dur­ing the Brexit ne­go­ti­a­tions, Brus­sels de­manded that the UK move the bor­der with the EU to the coast that sep­a­rates North­ern Ire­land from Britain and im­pose con­trols on British prod­ucts, which would later be­come known as the pro­to­col. It was the only way to avoid a hard bor­der in Ire­land, one of the terms of the 1998 peace deal be­tween Irish Re­pub­li­can Catholics and British Union­ist Protes­tants that ended thirty years of armed con­flict be­tween the two sides. How­ever, the DUP blocked the pact, until the hard Brex­i­teers – To­ries – ex­pelled May and pushed John­son to pur­sue a rad­i­cal Brexit in 2019.

John­son ac­cepted the pro­to­col, and so be­trayed the union­ists, en­abling him to close a Brexit deal and win the gen­eral elec­tion. “John­son per­son­ally told me that after ac­cept­ing the pro­to­col, he would change it,” said Ian Pais­ley, a DUP MP in Lon­don last year. When Brexit was im­ple­mented on Jan­u­ary 1, 2021, the pro­to­col went into ef­fect, and union­ists and loy­al­ists protested and ri­oted in North­ern Ire­land. The pro-British loy­al­ist para­mil­i­tary groups an­nounced that they were aban­don­ing the peace agree­ments, de­mand­ing that John­son re­move the pro­to­col. Part of the DUP cri­sis is also due to the fact that it is an ultra-re­li­gious party, linked to the Ul­ster Free Pres­by­ter­ian Church, which op­poses abor­tion, gays and di­vorce, and many young vot­ers have opted for the Al­liance, a non-sec­tar­ian, cen­tral force, more in tune with today’s so­ci­ety.

The de­mo­graphic fac­tor

The third fac­tor is de­mo­graph­ics. When North­ern Ire­land was cre­ated in 1921, only 35% of the pop­u­la­tion were Catholic. Harsh dis­crim­i­na­tion then began against this Catholic mi­nor­ity, which led to a se­ries of protests in 1968 to de­mand the right to vote and so­cial hous­ing, and an armed con­flict that lasted thirty years and left 3,200 dead and 50,000 wounded. In re­cent decades, the Catholic pop­u­la­tion has grown, sur­pass­ing the Protes­tant pop­u­la­tion for the first time in 2011, and now only two of the six coun­ties have a Protes­tant ma­jor­ity.

Even though it was on the agenda, Sinn Féin did not talk about the re­uni­fi­ca­tion ref­er­en­dum dur­ing the cam­paign, want­ing to focus on so­cial poli­cies, the food and en­ergy price cri­sis. It was the union­ists who ac­cused the Re­pub­li­cans of want­ing re­uni­fi­ca­tion, in an at­tempt to bring the sec­tar­ian fac­tor to the vote. Sinn Féin says that Brexit has changed so­ci­ety and that a con­sul­ta­tion is the only so­lu­tion, but they do not want to im­pose it. They are con­vinced that it will end up hap­pen­ing nat­u­rally be­cause the so­cial, po­lit­i­cal and de­mo­graphic re­al­ity will lead to it. The 1998 peace ac­cords stip­u­late that if at any time it is felt that a Catholic ma­jor­ity wants to be part of Ire­land again, a con­sul­ta­tion should be al­lowed. Only the British gov­ern­ment can au­tho­rise it though. There would be two con­sul­ta­tions, one in North­ern Ire­land and one in the Re­pub­lic, and both would have to win. Polls say that 62% would vote yes in the south and 66% in the north, but that vot­ers want the con­sul­ta­tion to be done in the next ten years, not im­me­di­ately.

The Eng­lish per­spec­tive

Dur­ing the 2016 Brexit cam­paign, in the most anti-Eu­ro­pean Eng­lish cities, when asked why they sup­ported Brexit, most cit­i­zens ex­plained that they were doing so to re­gain con­trol of bor­ders and in­sti­tu­tions and to re­sume trade re­la­tions with their ex-colonies. And when asked about the risk of the Scots and North­ern Irish leav­ing, they said they did not care. Ac­cord­ing to one poll, 49% of Eng­lish peo­ple would ac­tu­ally like to see the union dis­solved.

The EU has warned of the harsh Brexit con­se­quences for North­ern Ire­land re­sult­ing from John­son’s ne­go­ti­a­tions. Every­one in the UK, and politi­cians in par­tic­u­lar, knew that Brexit would trig­ger na­tion­alisms. Brexit was un­der­stood, in part, as a kind of Eng­lish na­tion­al­ism. The Eng­lish and Welsh voted in favour and the Scots and North­ern Irish voted against. The ef­fects soon emerged. First it was Scot­land, which had just lost an in­de­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum and had set aside the pro-in­de­pen­dence cause for at least 30 years. And then North­ern Ire­land, where there was no talk of a re­uni­fi­ca­tion ref­er­en­dum. What will hap­pen next? To form an ex­ec­u­tive in North­ern Ire­land, ac­cord­ing to the peace agree­ments, the two most-voted par­ties in the two com­mu­ni­ties must share gov­ern­ment. Sinn Féin has ap­pointed Michelle O’Neill as prime min­is­ter, but the DUP re­fuses to ap­point a deputy prime min­is­ter until John­son re­moves the Brexit pro­to­col. The Lon­don gov­ern­ment has leaked its de­sire to uni­lat­er­ally abol­ish the pro­to­col. Even Suella Braver­man, the UK gov­ern­ment’s at­tor­ney gen­eral, said it would be legal to get rid of it. John­son’s strat­egy will be to blame the EU for the North­ern Irish bor­der sit­u­a­tion, while Dublin and Brus­sels re­mind him that it is an in­ter­na­tional agree­ment, signed by him, and that it is il­le­gal to break it uni­lat­er­ally be­cause it would also jeop­ar­dise the peace process. John­son will push the EU to the limit. He be­lieves that if the pro­to­col is re­moved, the sit­u­a­tion in North­ern Ire­land will calm down. It may calm down the Union­ists, but it will strain the Re­pub­li­cans, who have a le­git­i­mate man­date from the peo­ple, and this will only in­crease the de­sire for re­uni­fi­ca­tion, as hap­pened in Scot­land, where John­son’s hard-line ap­proach gave a ma­jor­ity to the na­tion­al­ists. As long as John­son con­tin­ues with this Con­ser­v­a­tive and Brexit line in Scot­land and North­ern Ire­land, the risk of a UK break will be higher.