After death and taxes, a dull inevitability of life is chaos over Brexit. As Britain now overtakes Italy for the world’s second-highest coronavirus death toll, we should perhaps not be surprised by the government’s preternatural incompetence. And yet a row in the last week has highlighted the other issue it has so comprehensively mishandled. While the political and media establishment focuses on the pandemic, Brexit’s most sensitive element still exists and is still unresolved: Northern Ireland.
The specifics of the row focus on the presence of an EU office in Belfast once the transition period ends. Despite the global chaos and obvious priorities elsewhere, this is still slated for 31st December, and thus the issue demands urgent attention. According to the Irish broadcaster RTE, senior EU official Helga Schmid wrote to the UK government in February, requesting a permanent base in Northern Ireland to supervise the implementation of the withdrawal agreement—specifically, the vexed issue of customs checks. After the UK flatly refused, Schmid wrote again, noting that Article 12 of the Northern Ireland Protocol to the WA granted the EU rights, and it was “necessarily within the discretion of the EU to determine the extent to which it wishes to exercise these rights.” She made clear that this required a greater role for technical experts.On 27th April, minister Penny Mordaunt replied that Article 12 simply gave EU officials the right to “be present during the activities of UK authorities related to the implementation and application of the Protocol,” and that did not equate to a permanent delegation. Mordaunt argued that such a base would not only constitute “joint controls” over intra-UK customs, but prove divisive in the context of upholding community relations and the Good Friday Agreement. Certainly, the Democratic Unionist Party is opposed.
But the plot then thickened. RTE journalist Tony Connelly revealed that UK and EU officials had exchanged letters on the subject in February 2019, in which the UK had approved the ideas of offices in Belfast, and also Edinburgh and Cardiff. From the EU’s perspective, the circumstances were unchanged and indeed an office was now backed up in law.
Who, then, is correct? Article 12 permits the presence of EU officials in Northern Ireland but does not explicitly mandate a permanent office. The protocol does, however, make clear the need for checks on goods arriving in NI from Great Britain. The reason for that is plain. While after the transition Northern Ireland will remain formally part of the UK’s customs territory, it will also retain its open and infrastructure-free border with Ireland—which for the first time in decades will form part of a different customs and regulatory regime. Some goods will be deemed to have a low risk of leaving Northern Ireland and so will not need to pay tariffs at all. Other goods, considered at higher risk of slipping into Ireland, will automatically incur EU tariffs which can subsequently be reimbursed. The point is that either way someone needs to check them. The EU has always maintained that like the UK, it too demands control over its economic affairs. The Irish border could become a major crossing for international goods to enter the EU, and the member states have a right to ensure those goods are regulated and taxed. The best people to maintain oversight of EU laws applying to EU territory are, unsurprisingly, EU officials. The UK is effectively asking the bloc to outsource its legal rights and responsibilities to a third country.
The real problem though seems not so much that the UK rejects an EU office, but customs checks altogether. In November, Boris Johnson told a group of Northern Irish businesspeople that there would be “no forms, no checks, no barriers of any kind” on Irish Sea trade, and in January told the Commons “emphatically” that this applied to goods travelling in both directions. This has, understandably, caused both confusion and alarm—mainly because it is either a naked lie or an outright breach of the withdrawal treaty. Over the course of the last six months, it has become increasingly apparent that the UK either did not understand what it signed up to or deliberately plans to renege on it.
This is not just bad faith, but monumental stupidity. If the UK really does plan to defy its obligations, no global partner will negotiate with it seriously in future, and the EU will not entertain a trade deal. That will cripple not only our reputation but also what remains of our economy. The UK is not a sitcom chancer who slyly winks to camera while signing a contract. Countries which expect to be taken seriously do not join international treaties crossing their fingers behind their backs. But of course this row is only really taking place because the UK has so repeatedly demonstrated its faithlessness over four long years. If the EU trusted the British government it would probably not need the office—but it cannot.
It was perhaps inevitable that the Northern Ireland customs issue would be the first to demand attention in this stage of talks. It is both the root and emblem of Brexit’s intractability. The central problem has always been the necessity for Northern Ireland to align economically with the EU while the UK diverges. Theresa May addressed the problem by effectively keeping the whole UK in a customs union. Johnson’s deal imposes a customs border in the Irish Sea while stressing the UK’s economic integrity. Neither of them resolved the issue because you cannot be fully in something while you are also fully out of it.
In truth, this row is not about an office in Belfast. It touches on something much more important: the existence of Brexit in real life rather than in our imaginations.
For the last four years, Brexiters have gloated that nothing has changed. Because the disasters or even differences promised by Remainers never emerged, it became increasingly easy to pretend that they never would. The harder the Brexiters pushed everything to change, the more they insisted it would all stay the same. Now, for the first time, things will actually change and the consequences of Brexit will begin to take place.
In the days of the pandemic, Brexit’s political toxins are less visible, but no less present. The border in Ireland must still remain untouched and Northern Ireland must still be treated differently from the rest of the UK. May once insisted that “no British prime minister could agree to” a border inside the country. For all Johnson’s protests, he has enshrined one in an international agreement, and it is the truth he cannot escape.
