Wrestling With Realignment

Labour will use the Irish Sea border as an excuse to realign with the EU’s rules

OWEN POLLEY

Unless you live in Northern Ireland, you might not have heard much about the Windsor Framework lately. In Ulster, the post-Brexit agreement caused many British goods to become unavailable, while businesses wrestled with onerous trade restrictions. Even there, though, the political parties at Stormont have been increasingly muted about its effects. This could be about to change. The Labour party hopes to realign the whole UK with most of the EU’s regulations, as early as this summer, while sidestepping inconvenient votes in parliament, and the Irish Sea border will be used as an excuse.

As part of its so-called “reset” of relationships with the EU, the government is currently in negotiations over a Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) deal, which would involve Britain effectively accepting the bloc’s rules on food and agriculture. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and other senior ministers, though, have implied that their intention is to go much further. In a lecture at the Bayes Business School in London last month, Rachel Reeves said that the UK should re-adopt most of Brussels’ single market regulations and “regulatory autonomy” must become “the exception, not the norm.”

This was the scenario that many Brexiteers feared, during the various Brexit negotiations over Northern Ireland. Boris Johnson’s Northern Ireland Protocol and Rishi Sunak’s Windsor Framework were both passed comfortably in the House of Commons, but sceptics argued that, if they were not abandoned or changed, they could eventually provide a backdoor for EU law to be reapplied across the whole country.

In Northern Ireland, though, the government’s plans have raised some unionists’ expectations that the Irish Sea border could become increasingly irrelevant. The Ulster Unionist Party’s south Antrim MLA and Windsor Framework spokesman, Steve Aiken, recently told the BBC that if the rest of the UK is “going for full alignment because it makes sense for business, let’s just do it.” He claimed the policy potentially “solves the (sea border) problems.”

It is easy to see why this way of thinking is so appealing. Many unionists instinctively supported leaving the EU during the referendum campaign and trusted the Tory government’s commitment to “get Brexit done.” Eventually, though, after repeated promises that no Conservative prime minister would ever accept a trade border in the Irish Sea, the province was effectively left in the single market and cut off from the rest of the British economy.

The DUP and the UUP have both expressed hopes that Labour’s plans to improve relationships with the EU would ease problems with the Windsor Framework. Unfortunately, rather than persuading Brussels to drop unreasonable checks and paperwork, Sir Keir Starmer’s “reset” has so far mainly involved capitulating to the bloc’s demands.

The government has been bullish, though, about the prospects of an SPS agreement, advising businesses in Northern Ireland to prepare for “smoother trade” and fewer “fees, forms and frustrating delays”.

The evidence for this is not convincing. Talks over agriculture are ongoing, but Brussels has already introduced various new demands as negotiations have progressed. When the sea border was first implemented, the EU was adamant that Northern Ireland’s inclusion in the UK’s market for food posed the greatest threat to its market. Eventually, though, the Windsor Framework introduced a form of dual regulation in the province for food products, albeit one that imposed costly labelling requirements. There were no similar concessions for other types of goods.

Another ominous sign is that the Labour government seems to intend to legislate to adopt the EU’s agriculture rules before the final SPS deal is published. The website Politico quoted a government source, who said that its EU Reset Bill, planned for the summer, would include a “legal framework for UK-EU alignment,” ranging far beyond agriculture. According to the TUV leader and North Antrim MLA, Jim Allister, this suggests parliamentary accountability will suffer a “double whammy”: “dynamic alignment” with EU law in a wide range of areas, and ministers gaining powers to realign more sectors of the economy through secondary legislation (avoiding votes at Westminster).

This plan certainly seems in line both with what Keir Starmer has been saying in interviews, and his unusual negotiating techniques. Effectively, these involve giving his opponents whatever they want without securing any concessions in return. The expectation is presumably that the UK will be showered with gratitude and goodwill as a result. In fact, it is more likely that Britain will end up conforming with rules that it did not make and cannot change, while the EU continues to insist that checks and expensive paperwork are required for goods moving to the continent or Northern Ireland, supposedly to protect its precious market.

The lesson of every negotiation after Brexit, is that the UK should not rely on Brussels to be fair and reasonable, if it wants to get a favourable deal.

For unionists in Northern Ireland, this raises some uncomfortable issues. The fact is, that, if the UK accepts most EU rules on goods, then there should at least be fewer examples of British products disappearing from the province’s shops. Most UK goods would be forced to meet EU standards, which also apply in Northern Ireland. At the same time, many of the worst problems with the Windsor Framework, like checks and paperwork, would persist. It seems vanishingly unlikely that Starmer can persuade Brussels that they are no longer necessary, if he even survives as prime minister long enough to complete the negotiations.

Labour’s proposals are unlikely to make the Irish Sea border go away

Many of Northern Ireland’s laws, ranging far beyond the economy, would remain effectively under the authority of the EU, which its politicians have no means to hold to account. The only comfort would be that, for aspects of trade at least, the rest of the UK would be increasingly in the same situation.

These developments present pro-Union politicians in Northern Ireland with a potential dilemma. Understandably, even some of the most adamant “leavers” are reluctant to defend Brexit wholeheartedly, as their part of the country was effectively excluded from that project. At the same time, unionists should be wary about Northern Ireland being used to justify unpicking the referendum result, particularly when Labour’s proposals are unlikely to make the Irish Sea border go away.

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This article (Wrestling with realignment) was created and published by The Critic and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Owen Polley

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