Last night I voted in a tiny minority (29 versus 515) against the Windsor Framework, the Government’s new plan to settle the unfinished business of Brexit, the Northern Ireland Protocol. I did so with a heavy heart, as the Prime Minister has negotiated some real improvements to the Protocol. I know the whole country, and the Conservative Party in particular, wants to see a united Government put Brexit behind us and move on to the people’s priorities, such as inflation, crime, waiting lists, and illegal migration. The immediate politics of what I did is regrettable; but I believe it was the right thing to do, because the improvements to the Protocol come at too high a price.
The Windsor Framework effectively trades the paramountcy of UK law in Northern Ireland for some limited ‘easements’ in trade flows within the borders of our own country. Seed potatoes can once again travel from GB to NI, and many other businesses sending goods across the Irish Sea for domestic consumption will no longer have to fill in complicated customs forms, because HMRC will do the paperwork (and send it to the EU) for them. In exchange, the status of Northern Ireland, guaranteed in the Acts of Union of 1800 which states that the whole of the UK shall be a single customs area under a single sovereign jurisdiction, is compromised. To put it facetiously, we are selling the birthright of Northern Ireland for a mess of potatoage.
The Protocol was bad enough, but it was always understood to be temporary. The Windsor Framework, which does not repeal the Protocol but only amends it, alleviates some of the problems of internal UK trade. But it effectively locks us into an arrangement which is incompatible with the EU Withdrawal Agreement Act (Section 38: ‘the Parliament of the United Kingdom is sovereign’), with the Acts of Union, and indeed with the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement by which political arrangements in Northern Ireland depend on the consent of both communities. For all these reasons I fear that our battles with the EU are not over, and the restoration of devolved government in Northern Ireland is as far away as ever.
We had an alternative, which was the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, recently passed by the House of Commons and currently in limbo, pending its abandonment by the Government as the price of the Windsor agreement with the EU. This would have asserted the supremacy of UK law in Northern Ireland and allowed businesses which wished to trade with the EU to operate under EU law. Our European partners did not approve of this approach, and it would have made life difficult for the Prime Minister in his negotiations on other vital matters like Ukraine and the small boats - so I understand his willingness to drop the Bill. But it would have enabled a permanent settlement in Northern Ireland that actually worked in the long term.
Anyway - here we are. It’s very uncomfortable to be out of step with your Party. Overall I am full of admiration for the PM, for his integrity, industry and leadership. I hope he (and the other 514 MPs who backed him) is right about the Windsor Framework, and I and the other 28 dissenters are wrong.
