Vindicated Years Later

Nearly five years ago I predicted that the status of Northern Ireland was being jeopardized by Brexit negotiations — basically, that there was no way to reconcile three priorities:

1) A Brexit from the EU that allowed the U.K. to make its own trading negotiations.

2) No hard border (customs border) on the island of Ireland.

3) Union of Northern Ireland and Great Britain that respects the Good Friday Agreement.

One thing I got wrong was the idea that before Brexit negotiations were up, Ireland would have to face this reality head-on. So far, it hasn’t because what the U.K. government did under Johnson was to take the “unacceptable” customs border on the island of Ireland and simply place it between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

Unionists in Northern Ireland are in a fury and have said they will not return to Northern Ireland’s shared political arrangements until the Northern Ireland protocol is fixed.

I’ve waited five years in vain for someone to just agree with me that in fact it was the Tory government and the Irish government that violated Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement by effecting an ersatz economic union between Northern Ireland and Ireland. I’ve waited for someone to agree that this arrangement mortally effaces democracy in Northern Ireland because it throws the economic regulation of Northern Ireland to Brussels — to the EU — in which Northern Ireland has no part at all.

Finally, someone sees it as clearly as I do. Here is Ben Habib being interviewed by Michael Portillo.

Habib describes the customs border within the U.K., provocatively, as the first time a nation has partitioned itself without a plebiscite or shots fired. Given the noises coming from unionist paramilitary groups, I wouldn’t be so sure that shots won’t be fired.