Despite its problems the Protocol puts opportunity in the hands of NI’s politicians more than ever before

The frequent gracelessness of some DUP MPs (Sammy Wilson’s charmless swipe at Robin Swann this week was typical) means their critics often experience a pleasant frisson when sinking the boot as its many petty failures rise to the surface.

But I don’t really get the party’s (or indeed wider unionism’s) flirtation with nixing the Northern Irish protocol. Even as tactic. I do see there’s a case for arguing that some activity, at the very least, sends a signal to the base that they care.

But the protocol’s substance and outline structure (ably sketched out in dynamic detail in Jim Fitzpatrick’s excellently balanced Spotlight programme earlier this week) isn’t going away, you know…

I get the emotions. And I get (sort of) the concerns about sovereignty (the attempted reset to an earlier idea of what sovereignty means their Brexit fix has somewhat backfired). Except, it’s too late to completely salve either of these.

Contrary to what some callers (presumably deniable proxies in place of Sinn Féin’s continued (undemocratic) refusal to speak on the show) tried to say on Nolan the morning after Spotlight, the present situation is not completely fine.

Secretary of State Brandon Lewis sends a message – the Protocol is here to stay and is going nowhere@MatthewOToole2 | @BeattieDoug | @gordonlyons1 | @mickfealty

🎧 https://t.co/TMaiwfrW0u pic.twitter.com/L6u8U9hG24

— Stephen Nolan (@StephenNolan) February 24, 2021

As Jim showed clearly, the grace period is saving Northern Ireland from the radical effects in inward trade flows. But these are what the ongoing negotiations in the joint committee between the EU and the UK are working on. Boycotts are, at best, an affectation.

In these negotiations, it is Boris Johnson who holds the bag for the whole of Northern Ireland, not just the DUP. Progress there may help with some of the more seemingly ridiculous anomalies and grease the sticky east to west gears.

Reversing past economic decay is already in progress. With access to the domestic UK and the EU‘s 150 million strong market NI has an unprecedented opportunity to switch from a consumer to producer led economy.

With ambitious targets, rapid progress should be possible and expected from a new, younger and more ambitious cadre of politicians like Gordon Lyons (on a good day) and Matthew O’Toole. Wallowing in victimhood oughtn’t be an option.

But as Spotlight also points out, there is also a significant strategic upside to the deal that makes talk of scrapping it, if not entirely ridiculous, then certainly injurious to Northern Ireland’s economic future.

In his Thursday column in the Irish News this week Newton Emerson nails it for me:

“If unionists were clever, a phrase I have become tired of writing they would step back and proclaim they were right the first time: Brexit does not breach the agreement; the agreement is the answer to Brexit….”

All through this Brexit process (much as I argued against it at the time, and wished all through its meandering process that it just wasn’t happening) I have argued that DUP involvement in Brexit was a guarantee we would get a mild version.

In the event, Northern Ireland got one, and if it wants to hold on to its manufacturing base Britain may end up with one too. Ameliorations of the protocol may depend on how much the UK is prepared to bend its own Brexitarian ambitions.

But what unionists of all stripes seem to be missing (off record some sing a very different song) is that despite chatter about the Irish Sea, it is a trade trade not a war border, as Ian Paisley once ostentatiously put it in Wexford a few years ago.

Moreover, it is a changed state of affairs in which remaining within the UK now confers economic privileges that will be hard for northerners of all backgrounds and convictions to give up for a place in a politically united Ireland.

That’s not something that many people in the public gaze anticipated coming down the track. In fact it may be something that’s gone so unremarked upon that it hasn’t yet occurred to the unionist parties themselves.

Back in 2003, in our paper on the future of Unionism we quoted Arthur’s parable of the porcupines, to illustrate how the UK may work best by developing “a comfortable relationship involved maintaining a little distance from one another”.

Margaret Thatcher was right to suggest that Northern Ireland was as British as her own constituency, but not in the sense that the Finchley she represented then (it has changed substantially since then) was some lodestone for Britishness.

But in the sense that my old Orange friend David Brewster once put it to me, that “you have the opportunity to be a Gaelic-playing, Guinness-drinking, Irish-language-speaking Briton”. Whether, I might add, any of us Gaeilgeoirí like it or not.

As the Scots thrash (quite literally at the moment) their way towards a genuinely separate political culture, whether through independence or a more vigorous form of devolved authority, destiny is in the hands of NI’s politicians more than before.

Here’s editor The Business Eye Richard Buckley’s pithy up sum in his newsletter this week…

…work most definitely needs to be done. Modifications are required. But, on the other hand, there is no doubt at all that we’ve been gifted a clear competitive advantage here and it’s one that we really need to grasp… and grasp as soon as possible.

Quite. Or, as the old formulation goes: Luck = Preparation x Opportunity. If there’s no room in your politics for that, is it possible that you’re just doing it a bit wrong?

“Seeking Opportunities” by Andy Morffew is licensed under CC BY