The Northern Ireland Protocol/Windsor Framework subjects Northern Ireland to the EU customs code which treats Great Britain as a ‘third country’, that is a foreign country in relation to Northern Ireland.
Its application thus has the effect of dividing the United Kingdom into two, making Great Britain and Northern Ireland foreign in relation to each other.
Over the last year the Government has allocated over £190 million for the purpose of the construction of permanent Border Control Posts to cement in and give effect to this extraordinary division.
On Monday the first of two major Border Control Posts comes into operation to handle the movement of goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland at Larne.
It is at this moment that the Irish Sea Border, dividing Northern Ireland from Great Britain, is given its most concrete, physical expression since the arrival of the Protocol on 1 January 2021.
28 July is a day of supreme humiliation that completely exposes government protestations that they are committed to upholding the UK Internal Market for Goods because the introduction of these new Border Control Posts, cutting the UK into two, necessarily destroy the UK Internal Market for Goods, replacing it with a Great Britain Internal Market for Goods and an All-Ireland Internal Market for goods, the prerequisite of the EU’s plan to break up the UK and move Northern Ireland into the Republic.
When goods arrive at Larne from Great Britain on Monday they will not be treated as moving from one part of the UK to another but as if moving from the Great Britain Internal Market into a new
All-Ireland Internal Market, and the physical infrastructure will be present to make this possible.
In this the port of Larne will be appropriated for the purpose of destroying a critical aspect of the economic foundation of the United Kingdom, replacing it with a new economic foundation placing Northern Ireland apart from Great Britain.
The destructive effect of these Border Control Posts must be understood on two levels.
First, it interrupts the unfettered flow of goods that is definitive of an internal market, with far reaching economic consequence for Northern Ireland which, like any economy, has acquired so much of its product from what has been the rest of its own economy. This threatens far reaching economic disruption and price increases because Northern Ireland has benefited from the economies of scale of being part of an immediate internal market for goods of nearly 70 million rather than 7.
Second, it testifies to a profound constitutional change.
The Border Control Posts exist as any Border Control Posts exist: to protect the integrity of the new internal market one is entering, defined by the laws that create it. In our case these laws are ‘all Ireland laws’ made by Dublin, and the other members of the EU, and imposed upon us. We are the first place on the planet that having been fully enfranchised for over a century is being disenfranchised and denied the opportunity to pursue democratically national and political aspirations with respect to multiple areas of our lives in direct violation of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement. The Border Control Posts declare that the effect of our disenfranchisement, not in relation to 300 laws but a staggering 300 areas of law, has an integrity that is worth spending millions of tax payer’s money – our money – protecting, and in so doing they necessarily declare that our disenfranchisement is a worthy cause. These Border Control Posts thus give concrete expression to our complete humiliation.
The Border Control Posts also give expression to the complete humiliation of the UK.
Brexit was supposed to be about regaining UK sovereignty.
The Brexit vote was the biggest democratic vote in our history.
Never before had over 17 million UK citizens ever voted for anything.
None of the 17 + million votes were that just England, Wales or Scotland should leave the EU.
That was not on the ballot paper.
It was not an option.
The 17 + million votes were for the option that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland would leave the EU.
As the then Prime Minister David Cameron recalls in his memoirs, we would all leave or we would not leave at all.
The failure to secure Brexit actually humiliates the whole UK because at least when we were in the UK, the EU respected the territorial integrity of the UK, the prerequisite of recognising a state’s sovereignty.
The botched Brexit negotiations mean that now the EU respects UK sovereignty less than when we were in the EU.
The UK is not an ethnic but a political nation, the wellbeing of which depends on a moral purpose that must be respected if it is to have any kind of future.
The arrival of the Border Control Posts today testify to the fact that the whole country is in an existential crisis although much of it seems sedated, unaware or implicated in our humiliation.
Happily, there is a way out of this mess.
Our government could insist the EU respects the territorial integrity of the UK, demanding the mechanism that the EU developed for delivering Brexit without the need for a hard border along the international land border between the UK and Republic of Ireland, mutual enforcement. This is provided for by my EU (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill, currently before Parliament.
It may not be the EU’s preferred option, but any other country that believed in itself would make it a non-negotiable, highlighting the obligation of the EU27 in international law:
‘Every State shall refrain from any action aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and territorial integrity of any other State or country.’
The provision of Mutual Enforcement is now an urgent, existential necessity for the UK.
The Day the UK was Divided in Two
