How a ‘blowing’ blunder has created a dangerous Brexit stalemate

Photographer: Paul Faith / Bloomberg

Thirty years ago, during Northern Ireland’s protracted sectarian conflict, gunmen attempted to assassinate a young academic in Belfast.

Adrian Guelke has survived, is still living in the city and watched last week with astonishment as the European Union raises the tensions that almost cost him his life by part of the Brexit agreement that seeks to protect the fragile peace in the region. threatened.

Guelke, now professor emeritus of politics at Queen’s University in Belfast, described the bloc’s threat to control the flow of coronavirus vaccines to Northern Ireland as a “thought”.

“Pandora’s box has been opened,” he said in a telephone interview.

The EU may have withdrawn, but it has inadvertently allowed Northern Ireland’s trade unionists, who want to remain part of the UK, to revive a separate and much bigger controversy that would settle Brexit forever: the status of the border with mainland Britain. .

The struggle threatens not only to sour the EU’s fragile relationship after Brexit with the UK, but also to become a focal point for the provocative dissatisfaction among union members over the agreement that Boris Johnson endorsed despite their opposition.

Bid warning

Although there are few signs that the crisis immediately rekindles the full-blown conflict between Northern Ireland’s Protestant Unionists, the minority of Catholic nationalists who want to unite with the Republic of Ireland and British troops, history shows how events in the province can quickly gets out of control.

How Johnson, the EU and Northern Ireland’s union members will react in the coming days and months could drop the balance. US President Joe Biden has already warned that the peace process in Northern Ireland must be protected.

“There are undoubtedly people running around to see the opportunity to get paramilitary activities going again,” said Reg Empey, a former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party. “It only takes one fool.”

Read more: How Brexit Deal tries to solve Irish border problem: QuickTake

Unlike the rest of the UK, Northern Ireland remained effective in the EU’s customs union and internal market after Brexit – a key concession Johnson made to the bloc to ensure Britain’s orderly departure.

By keeping the land border with Ireland free of checkpoints, both parties hoped to return to the era of trouble. But it comes at a price: goods arriving from the rest of the UK are subject to checks and extra paperwork as they cross the Irish Sea from mainland Britain.

Border delays

The Democratic Unionist Party, the largest political party in Northern Ireland, was opposed to the so-called Protocol because it treated the province differently from the rest of the United Kingdom. But he had to deal with the consequences: delays and disruption at the border, which seems to be unpopular among voters.

Retailers like John Lewis have halted sales in the region. Marks & Spencer Group Plc withdrew about 300 of its products from Northern Ireland stores, and images of empty food racks flooded social media.

Under increasing pressure from even more hard-line loyalists, the DUP has already pressured the British prime minister to scrap the protocol. Initially, Johnson shook off the DUP and dismissed the delays and shortages as dental problems.

Blind edge

That all changed late on January 29, when Northern Ireland was caught up in the EU’s vaccine crisis. Suddenly the block expressed the chance that the controls would return to the 500-kilometer border from near Derry in the north to Dundalk in the south – however vague -.

“They took out the carpet among the defenders of the Protocol,” Guelke said. He was shot by loyal paramilitary parties who mistakenly believed he had links to the Irish Republican movement.

Officials in London were blinded. A person with knowledge of the situation said they were appalled because the EU did not appreciate the sensitivity around the protocol and the peace it was designed to protect.

The next day, ministers including Michael Gove and Northern Ireland Minister Brandon Lewis held crisis talks with Irish Foreign Secretary Simon Coveney. During the video call, they agreed that they needed an emergency meeting with the EU to increase the dangers of the Commission’s actions. Meanwhile, ministers have downplayed the seriousness of the situation in public.

Johnson threat

Johnson was confronted in parliament on Wednesday by a member of the DUP who demanded that he renounce his commitment to the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister has threatened to suspend parts of the Brexit agreement in the same way as the EU did, if that is what is needed to end the control of goods crossing the Irish Sea.

That evening, Gove, Lewis and the leaders of the DUP, as well as their political opponents Sinn Fein, presented their cases directly to the Vice-President of the Commission, Maros Sefcovic.

The conversation, during another Zoom call, is described as direct by one person familiar with the matter. Gove has demanded that the EU delay the implementation of full controls on food, medicine and parcels until 2023 in order to facilitate delays at the border – but Sefcovic did not accept this.

Based on the meeting, British officials say they doubt the Commission really understands the extent to which it is playing with fire in Northern Ireland.

‘Dangerous place’

Private EU officials, who freely concede to the bloc, chatted badly, suspecting Johnson was using the vaccine crisis as an opportunity to obtain concessions for the operation of the protocol. Few expect him to want to abandon the deal directly.

There is also tension on the British side. While union members want the entire protocol scrapped, Johnson and his team have not given the EU a deadline to meet UK requirements. They simply want the block to address the need for problems with the protocol and hope the vaccine drive will serve as a wake-up call to Brussels. This can disappoint the DUP.

“We are currently in a dangerous place,” said Edward Burke, assistant professor of international relations at Nottingham University, who is examining the effect of Brexit on the British-Irish security relationship.

‘Unionists and loyalists not bird as if London or Dublin were listening to their concerns, ”he said. “And the example in Northern Ireland in recent decades is, unfortunately, that violence or the threat of violence is receiving attention and money from both governments.”

‘Threatening behavior’

Days after the EU’s mistake, local and European authorities withdrew their inspectors from Larne and Belfast ports after the local municipality said ‘a surge in sinister and threatening behavior’.

Police emphasize, however, that there is no evidence that organized loyalist paramilitary groups are behind these threats, and they remain dissatisfied with how serious they should be.

The risk is that events in Northern Ireland have the habit of escalating. In 2013, for example, a decision by Belfast City Hall to stop the British flag fueled unrest which was intensified by the annual protests of Protestant groups. This in turn caused the worst sectarian violence since the 1990s and paralyzed Belfast for much of the summer.

“If it were not for the pandemic, I think we would see big demonstrations here,” Empey said. “The move from Brussels last week – I could not tell you how bad it was.”

– With the help of Kitty Donaldson and Ian Wishart