With every day that passes the DUP and indeed Unionism as a whole (Yes Jamie, I mean you too) damages not only itself but what’s left of the fragile union connection to Great Britain. Every avenue Unionism thought it had to stop the NI Protocol is in fact being blocked off. With increasing haste that proverbial train is thundering down the proverbial track toward what can realistically be claimed now as that inevitable day when the NI Protocol cannot be stopped by lawful means. The only way to stop the NI Protocol now, using the law, is the supreme court and that is looking increasingly doubtful, due to the High Court ruling the NI Protocol is lawful and rejecting Team Union’s challenge on all grounds.
Justice Colton found that the Withdrawal Agreement Act, which includes the NI Protocol, does conflict with the 1800 Acts of Union in respect of free trade between Britain and the North. However, he added that the relevant parts of the Acts of Union are “impliedly repealed” by the Withdrawal Agreement Act. Essentially, the relevant parts of the Acts of Union have been changed by the UK government to the point where they make the relevant points null and void.
Justice Colton also rejected the claim that the protocol had changed the constitutional status of the North as defined in the Good Friday Agreement. Colton also found that the Secretary of State for the North, currently Brandon Lewis, did have the power to change Stormont’s usual cross-community voting mechanism. Normally, Stormont must approve controversial issues by a cross-community vote, but the protocol will be subject to a straight-majority vote, meaning Unionists cannot simply veto the vote or use any cross-community blocks to stop the NI Protocol.
As I said, Unionism, both political and civic, are running out of track on the NI Protocol issue. Sooner or later they will realise that they have come to a point where the train can no longer be stopped by the driver and will simply crash headlong into the first stationary object it comes to. It’s clear the British Government don’t want to trigger Article 16 no matter how much they tell us they may, due to the fact that in reality, the negotiations on-going on the NI Protocol are actually the outworkings of Article 16 in all but name, and those refinements are still not enough for Northern Irish Unionism because they don’t want the Protocol to work, they want it gone. Strangely, Arlene Foster made the biggest mistake of her life when she hinted in a roundabout way that the Protocol was here to stay. Even Jeffrey Donaldson thought it was here to stay until some very angry and not-so-friendly voices told him it wasn’t and he had to change his mind before becoming DUP Leader.
So once again we see a Unionism in turmoil, a Unionism hell-bent on killing off something which is actually making the North an opportunity for major outside investors. One thing Northern Irish Unionism will have to learn, and quickly, is that just because they shout louder, doesn’t always mean everyone is listening now. A recent poll was taken by Queens University and LucidTalk showing that only the most ardent Unionist/Loyalists opposed the NI Protocol with almost all other sectors ranging from nationalist to neither and even to ‘slightly Unionist’ declaring they would rather have the Protocol stay than be scrapped. So hardline Unionism is the outlier in all of this mess. They campaigned for it, lobbied for it, used Russian dark money to take out ads in the Metro, and when the North voted to ‘Remain’ they continued pushing their own agenda of Leave rather than representing ‘we the people’ who voted to Remain.
It’s ironic you know, that this entire mess, this entire NI Protocol debacle is because of a small minority of Northern Irish Unionists. In fact, a tiny number of DUP MPs caused all of this because they thought they were going to get the hardest border possible on this little island. Little did they know eh? Little did they know.
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