British Government to Stick with EU Rules to Avoid Double Irish Trading Border

One year ago, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) returned to power sharing under the pressure of a mounting industrial crisis which culminated in the January 18th public sector strike. This was the biggest strike in a generation in the north and assumed elements of a general strike, as many private sector workers were either unable to get to work or couldn’t find childcare so that they could work that day.

Politically, the DUP justified their volte-face to their grassroots by overselling the Windsor Framework offered by the UK government. In particular, they claimed the ‘Stormont brake’ mechanism at the heart of the deal would prevent any further hardening of the hard sea border in future.

The hard sea border

Two years previously the DUP had walked out of government as riots over a hard sea border engulfed the streets of Belfast. The proximate cause of those riots were the concessions made by the Tory government to the EU in order to obtain continued trade access. They committed themselves to protect a free and frictionless all-Ireland economy by tying Northern Ireland to the rules of the EU market for goods. This would ensure there would be no need for checks on goods on the Irish border but meant such checks would be needed on the Irish sea. Unionism interpreted this a step towards a united Ireland – by breaching the UK single market and creating an economic united Ireland.

Stormont brake

As with most constitutional mechanisms the Stormont brake was in reality a fudge. It applies to new EU regulations or directives which should automatically apply in Northern Ireland but which have the potential to create different regimes for goods in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. To set the process in motion 30 MLAs at Stormont have to vote to identify a new EU regulation as a problem (a figure designed to ensure unionists can do this). Once that occurs the matter goes to the Westminster Secretary of State to consider whether he/she will ‘pull the brake’. If they escalate the matter, it then goes to a joint UK-EU trading committee to agree a resolution.

This scenario is likely to arise almost every time the EU introduces a new directive or regulation on the standards of goods as the UK standards are likely tied to the old EU standards. A situation which bakes in continued political instability within the Stormont Executive.

Chemical packaging and labelling

This time the EU regulation in question is the relatively innocuous issue of the packaging and labelling of chemicals. Unionists claimed that the new rules would dislocate trade and increase costs for Northern Ireland manufacturing or agricultural producers. The vote of unionists to seek the ‘brake’ was taken in December and the issue then went to the table of Secretary of State Hilary Benn.

Unsurprisingly Benn has rejected their case saying the impact of the new directive did not meet the tests to invoke the brake. If he had have decided to pull the brake, it would have halted the adoption of the EU directive in Northern Ireland and led to the region’s market for goods being neither fully aligned to either Great Britain or the Republic of Ireland/EU. This would have opened the prospect of three different standards for goods on these islands.

Hardline unionist reaction

The rejection of the unionist case has been seized upon by hardline unionist critics of the DUP such as the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) as proof of their betrayal by returning to power-sharing in the absence of commitments to restore full UK-wide market integrity.

The DUP leadership has defended itself by highlighting the fact that while the Secretary of State refused to pull the brake he did commit his government to ensure there was no risk of economic dislocation from the new standards. He said the government would do this by ensuring UK-wide rules in relation to the packaging and labelling of chemicals were aligned to the new EU standards.

Labour plans to align Britain with Europe

This is not unexpected but clearly shows the line Keir Starmer’s government will take in relation to Europe and reversing its predecessor’s Brexit deal. It will seek to align the UK goods market to EU standards across the board aiming to not only avoid exacerbating the Irish sea border but ensuring frictionless trade access to the European market.

Taken to its logical limit, this approach commits the UK to permanent alignment to EU goods market. The UK government will uncritically take the lead of the EU on standards for goods across the board. It also will necessarily limit UK free trade deals outside the EU which might result in goods entering the UK market which vary away from the EU standards.

National question unresolved

Such a wider commitment to alignment certainly offers a mechanism to diminish Unionist concerns about dislocation within the internal UK single market. But it is an impermanent solution, a future UK government may decide to take an independent approach raising the prospect of a return to border checks on goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland.

It is yet another area where the unresolved and indeed unresolvable status of the national question is apparent.  Only a revolutionary movement of the working class across these islands has the capacity to sublate the question in a workers’ solution.