The EU (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill will address the great unresolved issue of Brexit and in-so-doing it will not only help the people of Northern Ireland but the people of the United Kingdom as a whole.

The Protocol/Windsor Framework humiliates the whole UK, sapping both national confidence and national “integrity” in every sense of the word, because it disrespects the territorial integrity of the UK through the imposition of an international customs and phytosanitary border cutting our country into two. Not only that — the EU then claims the right to treat the western side of their border (they regulate it) as what is effectively a colony of the EU, disenfranchising 1.9 million UK citizens. The people that particularly suffer from this arrangement are the people of Northern Ireland but in a context where certain interests are only too willing to rubbish our history as a nation, the Protocol is a useful tool because it serves to try to unbundle who we are.

The Protocol is also an issue for the whole UK because it is actually undermining Brexit, not just in Northern Ireland but also in England, Wales and Scotland. The truth is that Great Britain cannot exploit the benefits of Brexit without diverging from the EU, and it cannot diverge from the EU without diverging from Northern Ireland, and it cannot diverge very much from Northern Ireland because Northern Ireland is part of the UK. We have seen particularly clear evidence of this EU strategy of controlling the whole UK through Northern Ireland since the summer with the Windsor Framework (Retail Movement Scheme: Plant and Animal Health) (Amendment etc.) Regulations 2024 which apply EU standards to some rest of the world goods entering GB so that the same standards are applied in relation to goods entering NI and the rest of the UK. Then when introducing the Radio Equipment (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2024 in order to bring NI law into line with EU law in November, the Government explained that this would not be the occasion of divergence because it intends to introduce the same legislation to Great Britain. Perhaps most importantly, though, the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill looks set to bring us into line with the new EU General Product Safety Regulations which come into effect in Northern Ireland on 13 December.

Finally, the Protocol keeps the whole UK in the orbit of the EU, with which we have a trade deficit, which makes it impossible for us to negotiate a serious trade deal with the United States, with which we have a trade surplus. This is crazy.

Anyone who thinks we can have Brexit and the Windsor Framework needs to think again.

In response to this some might say, but what else could we do? The Good Friday Agreement means there can be no hard border across the island of Ireland and so the border had to move to the Irish Sea. This logic might sound compelling but it depends on believing that the only way to protect the integrity of the EU single market is through a hard border but that is not true. The power of the EU (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill which has its Second Reading on Friday is that it makes provision for protecting the integrity of both the EU single market for goods and the UK single market without customs or SPS border infrastructure. The Bill makes provision for mutual enforcement whereby two countries use their own sovereignty to make laws requiring companies producing goods for the other to do so to its standards and making provision for the transfer of customs duties. This is all enforced by the state in which the goods are produced not at the border.

Any option that involves partly disenfranchising 1.9 million people should never have been on the table of a self-respecting people

The Bill presents both the EU and the UK Government with a challenge. It demonstrates that we live in a world where there are two ways of protecting the integrity of the EU single market — one that involves disenfranchising 1.9 million people and disrespecting the territorial integrity of the UK, and one that does not. Maybe there are some technical reasons why the EU prefers a border in the Irish Sea but in the context of 2024, where democracy is a basic civil minimum across the world, and especially so in Northern Ireland where the Good Friday Agreement sought to restore confidence in the ballot box by conferring on the people of Northern Ireland the right to “pursue democratically national and political aspirations”, there should be no debate about the appropriate way to manage the border. Any option that involves partly disenfranchising 1.9 million people should never have been on the table of a self-respecting people. Neither should there be any debate about the need to respect the territorial integrity of the UK unless and until the unfortunate event that any part of the union votes to leave and if this happens it must not be the result of the outside interference of others. 

To this end, the EU would do well to dwell on the “UN Declaration on Principles on International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations” which holds “Every State shall refrain from any action aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and territorial integrity of any State or country.” The EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill brings us back into alignment with these basic principles of international relations and of self-respecting peoples and charts a cause that reunites the 17 million people who voted for Brexit with the object for which they voted and those who did not with the knowledge that they live in a democracy that respects the will of the people, with all that promises every citizen of the UK going forward. The leaders of all UK parties and the EU should take note that whatever happens on Friday, this is a Bill that is not going to go away.