I find Professor Katie Hayward an impressive person. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s that she’s a professor of political sociology at Queens, maybe it’s the quiet way she lays out her thinking. Right now I think we should listen to her very carefully.
On Talkback, she’s given her judgement on the legislation proposed regarding the protocol. If implemented, she says, it would “completely hollow out” the protocol.
If that’s the case, I would expect the EU to begin cancelling out the entire Withdrawal bill, of which the protocol is a key part. Brussels and Dublin and the majority of politicians and business people in NEI are all opposed to the proposed British legislation. So except they change a lot of it, they will be tossing aside an agreement they made, acting against the interests of the south of Ireland as well as the north of Ireland.
However, it’s going to take months for this legislation to get through the House of Commons and the House of Lords and then the Commons a second time. By then you can be sure there’ll be at least some changes to it. How much remains to be seen.
In the meantime, within less than 24 weeks, there needs to be, as I understand it, another Stormont election, since one party appears not to have been aware that after a general election, a government should be created.
The DUP know that another election is on the books. Do they really, really think that unionist voters, including unionist business, is going to be impressed by their insistence on the destruction of the protocol? Do they really, really think that they’ll have attracted more sympathy from politicians and people south of the border? Do they really, really think that their argument about a border in the Irish Sea will outweigh the advantages the protocol offers northern business?
Or are they kicking the protocol can as far down the road as they can manage, in the Micawberish hope that between now and then, “Something will turn up”?
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