Stormont’s honeymoon ends as Brexit pulls parties apart

Hello and good afternoon from Dublin, which is still processing Leo Varadkar’s surprising news that he will step down next month as Taoiseach.

Changing a prime minister — especially one involved in Brexit — without holding a general election has come to be something we associate with the UK Conservative party. Now Ireland is following suit.

Varadkar, who clinched a deal on the Northern Ireland Protocol governing post-Brexit trade with Northern Ireland with Boris Johnson in a tête-à-tête on the Wirral back in 2019, made the shock announcement yesterday.

Instead of what was already set to be a (mercifully) shorter hustings period than we saw between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, rising star Simon Harris, the current higher education minister, looks set to succeed Varadkar after he emerged as the only candidate. He is expected to be installed as Taoiseach on April 9.

The ruling coalition of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green party insist that Ireland’s general election — due by March 2025 — is winnable and with a new Taoiseach, the government is now likely to want it to run its full term. Opposition parties — led by Sinn Féin, the largest on both sides of the Irish border — want an election immediately.

Brexit loomed large in the premiership of Varadkar: he highlighted having helped ensure no hard border on the island among his top achievements in office. In his resignation speech, he lauded a return to “settled and stable” trade relations with the UK and praised last month’s restoration of the Stormont executive in Northern Ireland.

That saw Michelle O’Neill of pro-Irish unity party Sinn Féin become first minister — making history as the first nationalist to hold the post in a region created for unionists in 1921 in a move whose symbolism is impossible to overstate.

The restoration of Stormont ended two years of paralysis after the biggest pro-UK group, the Democratic Unionist Party, pulled out in a row over Brexit trading rules. The DUP’s Emma Little-Pengelly became deputy first minister and she and O’Neill have been on best behaviour since, projecting a united, can-do image in a region open for business.

There have been some early tensions but the two leaders have been at pains to be visibly constructive: Little-Pengelly tried her hand at hurling — a traditionally nationalist sport. O’Neill stood for the UK national anthem at a football match.

Still, two months is a long time in the turbulent world of Northern Irish politics, so it was perhaps no surprise that divisions have already surfaced at Stormont — over Brexit.

Unionists in favour of keeping the region in the UK this week opposed the application of a new EU law that they said would create a significant trade barrier within the UK. The region remains subject to some EU law because of its continued access to the EU single market for goods.

Tuesday’s vote in the Stormont Assembly was the first test of mechanisms introduced under the Windsor framework, last year’s Brexit deal that revamped the protocol, to give the region’s politicians the chance to object or consent to the local application of new or amended EU legislation. (To be clear, the so-called applicability motion allows Northern Irish legislators to have their say on new EU laws and is not the same as the much touted Stormont Brake, which applies to updates of EU legislation.)

The vote, on a new EU law to give craft industries the ability to have protected geographical status like that enjoyed by foods including parmesan cheese and champagne, needed the approval of both of the region’s traditional nationalist and unionist communities. Without unionist support, it could not pass.

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, DUP leader, immediately hailed it as a unionist “veto”, secured by his party’s dogged push for improvements to the Windsor framework that culminated in the UK’s Safeguarding the Union command paper in January that paved the way for the DUP’s return to Stormont.

The truth is more nuanced: the UK should normally act in accordance with the outcome of such a consent vote. However, it can allow the law to take effect on the grounds that exceptional circumstances would allow its application, or that it would not constitute a significant regulatory border.

The ultimate consequence of not applying the new EU law in Northern Ireland is “remedial measures” by Brussels — but only after both the UK and EU make all efforts to resolve the issue. That is a long way off any whiff of a trade war, which neither side wants.

The UK government said in a statement that it would “follow the legal framework” but declined to say which option it would choose — upholding the Stormont vote or applying the law anyway. It is keen to maintain co-operative relations with Brussels.

The DUP argued that supply chains from Britain could be strained under the EU law but even some hardline unionists decried the DUP’s move. “It’s a pantomime . . . it’s not binding, it’s not a veto, it’s utter nonsense . . . the DUP now trying to play the hard man on EU law is quite frankly ridiculous,” said Jamie Bryson, a loyalist activist who says the DUP’s deal on the Windsor framework falls well short of what Donaldson promised.

Nevertheless, the DUP will probably now try to test the application of new or amended EU law as far, and as often, as it can, given hardline unionists’ objections to the Windsor framework — and the upcoming general election in which support for the DUP will be tested publicly.

Eliminating “unnecessary checks” on goods moving from Britain into the region had been a key DUP complaint. The UK government today published legislation to enforce aspects of the Safeguarding the Union deal, including a requirement to scrap physical checks on goods within the UK internal market system, which will come into force on April 12.

Whatever happens, this is not the last we’ve heard on “democratic consent”. Stormont gets to vote at the end of this year on the continued application in Northern Ireland of the protocol provisions relating to customs and the movement of goods, VAT and excise, the single electricity market and state aid (Articles 5-10).

There are good explainers here and here but the bottom line is that if that democratic consent vote fails to secure majority support, the core of the Brexit trade deal will be neutered and it will be back to the drawing board.

For now, however, Northern Ireland’s day-to-day concerns should be a priority, argues the Alliance party’s Sorcha Eastwood, who told Stormont she would like to see legislators tackle the region’s healthcare and other problems with the same “vim and vigour” as Tuesday’s debate.

The irony is inescapable that divisions are being exposed at Stormont as soon as local politicians return from selling the benefits of Northern Ireland to US investors during St Patrick’s Day celebrations. Exploiting the region’s unique dual EU-UK market access to unlock trade and investment will require stable politics.

Brexit in numbers

Next week, the new East-West council promised in the Safeguarding the Union deal will meet for the first time. The March 26 meeting will “discuss a range of proposals to boost investment and skills,” the UK says.

It’s too early to say if it will be a useful body or just another talking shop. But as this week’s chart highlights, Northern Ireland’s goods trade is moving away from the UK and towards the EU.

It’s by Anton Spisak, a policy analyst and former UK government official, who notes in a new paper for the Centre for European Reform that Britain’s trade with Northern Ireland has been stagnant since 2016 while Ireland’s share has surged by 66 per cent. In other words: “Northern Ireland’s trade matters in both directions — east-west and north-south — and needs to be prioritised equally by present and future British governments.”

With booming trade ties across the border, Varadkar’s successor will get an early chance to make his mark, with a meeting of the North-South ministerial council due on April 8 — the first time the body has met since 2021.

Varadkar got a bad name among hardline unionists for suggesting that a Brexit hard border could threaten a return to violence — Jim Allister, leader of the fringe Traditional Unionist Voice party, welcomed his resignation, calling him a “venomous interloper in NI internal affairs”.

Allister will this week be rejoicing in his recent decision to tie up with Reform UK in a general election partnership. The TUV only has one seat in Stormont but a new YouGov poll out today in the UK put Reform UK four points behind the Conservative party. That will not necessarily translate into more seats for the TUV — but it will ensure hardline unionism remains difficult to placate.

Britain after Brexit is edited by Gordon Smith. Premium subscribers can sign up here to have it delivered straight to their inbox every Thursday afternoon. Or you can take out a Premium subscription here. Read earlier editions of the newsletter here.