In Northern Ireland, a difficult Brexit issue is about to be resolved
Nearly two years of political stalemate. Decision-making is paralyzed. Growing tension in a place where peace remains fragile even after the end of decades of sectarian strife.
There are few places where the impact of Britain's departure from the European Union has been felt more acutely than in Northern Ireland.
But hopes grew on Wednesday that one of Brexit's most poisoned legacies will be soothed – at least for now – by a new plan that would bring the area's political parties back into government.
In a dry 76-page document published on Wednesday – coincidentally to mark the four-year anniversary of Brexit coming into force – the British government set out the details of the deal it struck with the Democratic Unionist Partyor DUP, to end boycott of Belfast power-sharing meeting.
Crucially, the government said it would reduce checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Britain, tackling the biggest source of tension within the DUP, whose mainly Protestant supporters want to remain part of the United Kingdom .
Unionists had argued that the post-Brexit imposition of customs checks on goods arriving from Britain by sea had driven a wedge between Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain.
On Wednesday, the British government addressed these fears head-on, calling the document in which it unveiled the deal:Protecting the Unionand said the package of measures it had agreed with the DUP – including guarantees of the territory's constitutional place within Britain and £3.3 billion in financial sweeteners – “will undermine Northern Ireland's place in the United Kingdom and its would reaffirm and strengthen the internal market. .”
After months of talks and an overnight meeting of the DUP's executive committee that culminated on Tuesday morning, the combined proposals, along with mounting public pressure within Northern Ireland, appeared to have been enough to convince the party to return to the government after almost two years.
Assuming there are no last-minute delays, the Northern Ireland meeting at Stormont, just outside Belfast, could be up and running by the weekend, paving the way for a seismic moment in which the territory's top leadership will emerge for the first time will be filled by Sinn Fein, after it emerged as the largest party in The 2022 Northern Ireland elections.
“It's a really big moment,” said Katy Hayward, professor of political sociology at Queen's University Belfast, noting that the DUP has agreed to re-share power with Sinn Fein, which represents mainly nationalist voters and is committed to that one thing: is anathema to all unionists: a united Ireland.
The British government had, Professor Hayward said, offered some relaxation of the trade arrangements that the DUP had campaigned so hard against. But because Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland, which remains a member of the European Union, challenges would remain, she said, adding: “Navigating the implications of Brexit will always be challenging for Northern Ireland be more difficult.”
The sight of elected representatives back in Stormont will bring relief to many voters after two years of civil servants keeping the basic functions of government running but unable to make bigger decisions.
Wait times for health care procedures in the area are long, public sector workers have been denied pay increases they would otherwise have received and strikers recently took to the streets in a major protest.
Yet the origins of the political crisis underline the destabilizing effect of Brexit on the territory and the extent to which even prosaic issues such as terms of trade can have enormous symbolic importance in a place that still reckons with a history of bloody sectarian strife.
There were profound reasons for not reviving a visible land border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. During the years of violence known as the Troubles, border checkpoints were targeted by paramilitary groups. Those border points melted away after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended most violence – and no one wanted them back.
So after Brexit, the solution was to keep Northern Ireland within the European Union's economic goods market, allowing trucks to flow freely across the land border with Ireland.
But since Britain left the European bloc, checks on freight had to happen somewhere, and to the fury of the unionist community, that meant checks on British goods arriving in Northern Ireland, creating an invisible border in the Irish Sea.
Last year, Rishi Sunak, the British Prime Minister, struck a new deal with the European Union, known as the Windsor Framework Agreement. That resulted in some concessions from Brussels to reduce those controls, but these were insufficient for the DUP and its leader Jeffrey Donaldson.
Mr Donaldson's change of heart may reflect the deteriorating situation in Northern Ireland caused by political deadlock and the threat of a general election in Britain, which Mr Sunak says is likely to take place in the autumn are held.
“I think the motivation is electoral, and the DUP needs some window dressing and something to climb out of this situation,” said Anand Menon, professor of European politics and foreign affairs at King's College London. He said the party “would have lost support if there had been strikes of the scale of recent weeks and if it became common for nurses to leave their jobs to work in supermarkets because they could not get a pay rise.”
Professor Hayward's theory is that the DUP wanted some time in government to help spend the extra £3.3 billion from London before the election, in order to maximize votes.
The soft-spoken and pragmatic Mr Donaldson has taken a risk by returning to the meeting as some leading members of his party oppose the move. The issue was so divisive that during a five-hour internal meeting to discuss it on Monday evening, details of the conversation were leaked and posted live on social media.
Mr Donaldson on Wednesday defended the deal, saying it achieved his objectives while admitting he had compromised. “Is it perfect? No that's not true. Have we delivered everything we would have wanted at this stage? No, we didn't do that,” he said.
His critics will now delve into the details of the published document to see if it delivers on what he promised.
To some extent the DUP is caught in a trap of its own making. In the run-up to the 2016 Brexit referendum, the country campaigned to leave the European Union, although a majority of voters in Northern Ireland ultimately voted to remain.
The return of a functioning government to Northern Ireland will be a welcome success for Mr Sunak, who has been fighting to control his troubled Conservative Party against a backdrop of persistently poor election results.
“Thank you to Rishi Sunak, he has delivered where others have not,” Mr Donaldson said on Wednesday. But while the Prime Minister may have finally cut one of the Gordian knots created by Brexit, he recalled that some of its wider consequences are only now beginning to be felt, with new controls on imports of food, plants and animals into Great Britain from the European Union The Union came into force on Wednesday.
Cut flowers, fruit, vegetables and meat from the EU now require health certificates, with further physical checks required from April. The introduction of border controls has already been postponed five times by the government, and industry bodies warn they could cause delays and drive up costs.