By any standards, the Democratic Unionist Party has so far had a difficult year. On Saturday, at the DUP’s annual conference, its leaders tried to move on from nine months of turmoil and launch plans to reclaim its former position as Northern Ireland’s largest party.
That will not be an easy task, given the continued success of Sinn Fein and the deep rivalries that still divide unionism. The party’s pro-Union opponents have accused it repeatedly of inconsistencies and misjudgements, as it struggled to manage the fall-out of Brexit.
Indeed, the DUP started the year observing a boycott of the devolved executive at Stormont, in protest against the Northern Ireland Protocol and Windsor Framework. By the end of January, it had struck a deal – Safeguarding the Union – with Rishi Sunak’s government, and returned to power-sharing on the basis that it had effectively removed the Irish Sea border.
It quickly became apparent that those claims were, at best, exaggerated. Then, to add to the party’s woes, two months after the province’s regional government was restored, the DUP leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, was arrested for alleged historical sex offences.
The former Lagan Valley MP had personally driven his deal through the party’s executive, against some spirited resistance. Now his successor, Gavin Robinson, was left to defend that strategy. And to make matters worse, Sunak soon announced a snap summer election, with the DUP still in disarray and most aspects of Safeguarding the Union yet to be implemented.
The party largely avoided humiliation at the polls in July, but the result was still chastening. The DUP lost two of its seven Westminster seats and came perilously close to losing two more. In its most high-profile defeat, Jim Allister of the Traditional Unionist Voice took the party’s stronghold in North Antrim from Ian Paisley Junior, whose family had dominated the constituency for 50 years.
The party’s performance was certainly affected by Donaldson’s arrest and trial, but voters also believed that the DUP had misled them about the impact of Safeguarding the Union. Indeed, in the run up to the election, Robinson was forced to acknowledge that the deal had been oversold and did not in fact remove Brussels’ authority over Northern Ireland. He argued that the agreement represented ‘progress’, but the DUP was again promising to remove EU law in the province, after claiming previously to have resolved this issue.
At its conference on Saturday, Robinson denied that his party had ‘taken its eye off’ issues around the sea border. The DUP would continue to fight against Brussels’ rules and campaign for the new government to deliver outstanding aspects of Safeguarding the Union.
His latest message was not without its own contradictions.
Last week, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) postponed plans for a new parcels border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Robinson insisted that those arrangements would actually keep packages moving to the province freely and should be delayed only to allow smooth implementation, but hauliers lobbied for a postponement on the basis that the system was unworkable.
Under the new rules, which will now be enacted in March, mainland companies must sign up to the UK Internal Market Scheme (UKIMS), in order to send parcels to customers in Northern Ireland without full customs formalities. This will involve providing HMRC with an authorisation number and signing off no fewer than nine declarations, stating that goods are ‘not at risk’ of entering the European Union. In effect, GB firms could be penalised and expelled from UKIMS if they deal with businesses in Northern Ireland that sell their products on into the Republic or elsewhere in Europe. In any case, anything that cannot be proved definitively ‘not at risk’ of entering the EU will automatically be deemed at risk and will have to undergo the rigours of the ‘red lane’, which includes customs declarations and potentially tariffs.
Some companies have already decided to stop trading with the province because of the added costs, paperwork and legal commitments that will soon be required. Yet Robinson insisted at the weekend that the commitment on parcels should be honoured and that, ‘What is there already… agreed and published should not be renegotiated’.
At the same time, the Court of Appeal in Belfast last week dismissed the Government’s case against a ruling that EU law prevented the Immigration Act from applying in Northern Ireland. Where domestic legislation clashes with Brussels’ rules, the judges confirmed that Westminster’s laws should be struck down.
It was another blow to the central claim in Safeguarding the Union that the ‘vast majority of public policy’ was untouched by the protocol and framework. The Equality Commission in Northern Ireland added to Robinson’s troubles, by calling on the Government to ensure that the province’s laws were compatible with EU rights rules.
The DUP are attempting to portray themselves as an inveterate opponent of the internal border, while implicitly trying to move on from its campaign against the protocol and accepting some barriers in the Irish Sea. Robinson’s emphasis on Saturday was on ‘making Northern Ireland work’, which is often a euphemism for concentrating on devolved matters, rather than constitutional links that bind the province to the rest of the United Kingdom.
We will see in time whether the DUP can juggle these messages successfully, or whether the electorate will find them confusing and contradictory. Many of the protocol’s most potentially damaging features are set to be introduced this year or next. And pro-Union voters do not yet seem inclined to accept that the sea border will form a permanent barrier between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
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