The DUP wants Great Britain’s rules to stay in line with Northern Ireland’s as part of its price for backing the prime minister’s deal. And it wants this commitment written into primary legislation.
If it gets its way – and hardline Brexit Tories such as Boris Johnson sell out as well – the whole of the UK will be turned into an EU colony. We will be slavishly following not just EU trade rules but its rules on goods and agriculture too.
How could this be the right choice for a proud nation? How could this meet the referendum promise to “take back control”?
If the Brexiters buy this, they are not true patriots. They are merely ideologues who are out of their depth, haven’t a clue what they are doing and are now running scared.
The DUP is negotiating a so-called “Stormont lock” with the government. The basic idea is that, if Northern Ireland has to change its rules to keep them in line with EU rules, so will the rest of the UK. The chancellor, Philip Hammond, outlined the gist of the scheme on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show today – while at the same time refusing to rule out bribing the DUP with cash as well.
The notorious “backstop” forces Northern Ireland to keep its rules in line with the EU’s. If you combine that with the Stormont lock, the whole UK would have to follow what Brussels decides.
The backstop on its own is bad enough. It would keep the whole of the UK in a bare-bones customs union with the EU, without any vote on the bloc’s trade policies. Add in the Stormont lock and we’d be following a whole raft of other rules too.
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DUP should be careful what it wishes
One can see why the DUP is tempted by this scheme. It doesn’t want Northern Ireland to be treated differently from the rest of the UK. But such a scheme isn’t in its long-term interests because there’s no guarantee that it would last.
The combination of the backstop and the Stormont lock wouldn’t even allow goods to flow freely from Great Britain into Northern Ireland. The EU would insist on border checks to ensure that we were following its rules.
On the other hand, the UK government says it would let goods flow from Northern Ireland into Great Britain – and the backstop ensures that goods could come from the EU into Northern Ireland without any checks. So the whole EU could get access to Great Britain for its goods by the back door.
We would end up with a “one-way street”. EU exports could come here freely, but our exports to the EU (and Northern Ireland) would still be gummed up by border checks. And this would happen despite us following EU rules slavishly.
After a few years of such nonsense, the UK government might decide enough was enough. A new prime minister could repeal the Stormont lock. They could decide to get rid of the backstop too – but do so only for Great Britain. Earlier this month, the EU’s chief negotiator made clear this was an option.
Some Brexiters are looking for a way to abandon their principles and support the prime minister’s deal. Their latest wheeze is to sign the treaty and then pull out of it if the EU doesn’t do a trade deal that gets rid of the backstop. The snag is that the EU will only do a deal with us that is, from its perspective, at least as good as the backstop.
Meanwhile, tearing up a treaty with our biggest trading partner would turn us into a pariah state and destroy the economy. If push comes to shove, Great Britain is much more likely to pull out of the backstop on a consensual basis and leave Northern Ireland stuck in it. The DUP should be careful what it wishes.
