Perhaps we grew complacent. For months it seemed as though the government had stepped back from the brink. Its threats to trigger Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol, or otherwise unilaterally suspend parts of it, had subsided. Liz Truss, the negotiator replacing the bombastic and hot-headed David Frost, had cultivated a positive working relationship with her EU opposite number. And the small matters of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a generational cost of living crisis had seemed to place European co-operation and smooth relations at a higher value than any time since the Brexit referendum. For once, ministers were putting pragmatism and the national interest above Europhobia—and the people responsible for administering the protocol were allowed to get on with it.
Very quickly, that has changed. The government did not announce any new legislation on the issue in the Queen’s Speech, nor has it triggered Article 16, but it has announced plans to override and disapply a part of the Protocol. In the Commons on Tuesday, Truss did not table the legislation—so we cannot be sure how far it will go—but she made plain the government’s intentions. The UK is threatening, once again, to renege on its international commitments and break a treaty with its largest neighbour.
None of this is rational on any level. As everyone knows, Britain is currently grappling with the worst economic crisis in years. It could prove more damaging to ordinary people’s living standards than the 2008 recession. Much of this is global, with factors as broad as the aftermath of Covid, rising energy prices and multiple shocks from the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia. But economic experts point to the specific factor of Brexit. Even before the crisis took hold, the Office for Budget Responsibility was forecasting a 4 percent long-term hit to GDP as a result of our withdrawal from Europe. A report from the LSE showed that imports from the EU—our largest trade partner—had fallen by 25 percent relative to those from the rest of the world, and that UK businesses have been cut out of EU supply chains to a significant degree.
This matters because—contrary to everything the Brexiters always claimed—Britain does not hold all the cards. In economic as well as geopolitical terms, the UK is the junior partner to a colossus next door. For the last six years, Brussels has been clear that it does not want to “punish” the UK, but also that the UK cannot be given special favours and cannot cross its red lines. Key among those red lines are protecting the integrity of the EU’s single market and abiding by any agreement both sides entered into. The UK’s plans breach both.
The EU will retaliate. Brussels long ago decided that it could withstand economic pain in order to uphold basic principles, and there is no doubt that it will apply measures to the UK if the government breaks its treaty. Not to do so would show the world that any agreement can be unilaterally amended or binned; that the EU can be pushed around by its international partners and needn’t be taken seriously. It would moreover show the EU’s own member states that cakeism and cherry-picking, those dreaded bits of terminology from the negotiations, are alive and well: that you can take the bits you like from membership and scrap the parts that do not suit you.
We do not, of course, know the form that retaliation might take. But it could, in extremis, involve the EU disapplying the entire trade agreement or applying trade sanctions to the UK—that is, beginning a full-on trade war. Every trade expert has warned of the potential implications. Given the Bank of England’s governor has already warned of “apocalyptic” food prices, he may have to scour the dictionary to find something stronger. It would, quite simply, be catastrophic.
Then the reputational damage. What sign does it send if Britain feels free to scrap parts of deals it has supposedly signed in good faith? The rules-based order has been the cornerstone of modern international diplomacy. The west has deployed it as the basis of its sanctions against Russia. All states agree to abide by basic laws and principles, with consequences if they break them. It is difficult for the UK to wring its hands about other countries’ breaches while indulging so freely in its own.
The risk here is not theoretical. It has direct implications for the government’s policies right now. The European response to Ukraine has proved so effective because it is streamlined and united. In contrast to the Covid vaccination process, the UK and EU have acted not as rivals but allies. It defies all logic to sour that relationship while the war is still ongoing and Europe needs to present a united front. The only people to celebrate a rupture would be in the Kremlin.
The government’s tantrum doesn’t even make sense on its own terms. In the Commons, Truss cited the imposition of veterinary checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland as being unacceptable, but the EU offered a veterinary agreement to obviate them. Boris Johnson talks of the need to uphold the Good Friday Agreement, but Sinn Féin, now the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, has furiously condemned the plans. Its president Mary Lou McDonald described the move as “the stuff of a rogue state.” How is it "upholding” the Agreement, as the government solemnly vows, to infuriate one of the two main communities while trying to appease the other? Moreover, the Democratic Unionist Party has only committed to forming an executive in Northern Ireland once legislation has been enacted, not just tabled—a process likely to take several months.
But of course the worst part is that nothing and nobody forced this protocol on the government. It actively negotiated, signed and championed it. Johnson was so pleased that he quite literally based an entire election campaign on it. No other element of the deal was responsible for “getting Brexit done”—only this. The deal for Northern Ireland was what made Brexit “oven-ready.”
Johnson never once told the truth about what that protocol meant. He repeatedly denied that it would involve a border in the Irish Sea. The fact he either lied or failed to understand it offers neither comfort nor excuse—and certainly doesn’t justify an attempt to erase that border now.
The government is in trouble. It needs a new wedge for its culture war; a new way to embarrass the opposition; a new excuse to “save” Northern Ireland; and a new way to satisfy its extremist backbenchers.
With this course of action, it has signalled that it is prepared not simply to bring more economic harm to its people, more bruising to its reputation, more wreckage to its most important geopolitical relationship—but that it is willing, once again, to destabilise a precarious equilibrium in a part of the country that only emerged from civil war in the last 25 years. The protocol may yet be saved, but the government’s honour will never be.
