On Monday a new Cross Party Coalition Against the Windsor Framework. The Officers include Chair: Lord Dodds; Vice-Chairs: Jim Allister MP, Baroness Hoey, Danny Kruger MP, Lord Lilley and Sammy Wilson MP. In this article Lord Dodds and Jim Allister reflect on the upcoming challenge for the group mindful of, among other things, the much-trailed European Partnership Bill, the very first Bill to be mentioned in today’s King’s Speech.
It is fair to say that no unionist politicians in any part of the United Kingdom welcomed the division of our country on 1 January 2021 by the EU through its imposition of a customs and international Sanitary-Phyo-Sanitary (SPS) border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Some said that while the Northern Ireland Protocol was a thoroughly disagreeable thing, it was something that must be embraced as a temporary expedient in a two step Brexit process in which Great Britain would leave before Northern Ireland. Others, notably those of us in Northern Ireland itself, were not prepared to countenance this indignity for any length of time.
Things became more difficult in 2023. That was the moment when, had the border been a temporary short-term expedient, steps should have been taken to remove it. In the event the Windsor Framework snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by taking the Protocol, which was unimplementable and should have been allowed to breakdown under the weight of its own failure, and reframing it on a more sustainable basis. What had been completely unworkable was made much more manageable and cemented in, rendering the temporary division of Northern Ireland from Great Britain, permanent.
In early 2024 it was claimed that, while not perfect, the Safeguarding the Union deal secured significant progress in addressing unionist concerns with the Windsor Framework, and that this progress should be ‘banked’. In truth, though, Safeguarding the Union did not deliver any substantive changes (and none to the text of the Protocol/Windsor Framework) but rather offered some highly superficial, surface finessing of a fundamentally unchanged Windsor Framework Irish Sea border.
First, even if the Stormont Brake applied to all imposed law and worked, it would not change the fact that Windsor disenfranchises UK citizens in part of the country so we can no longer stand for election and make the laws to which we are subject in a staggering 300 areas of law.
Second, the only way in which goods can move under the Windsor Framework from Great Britain to Northern Ireland is with an export number, customs paperwork, international SPS paperwork and Border Control Posts. Far from creating a UK Internal Market System, the Windsor Framework created a GB-EU/NI Trade Border System which the misnamed Safeguarding the Union Command Paper left very much in place.
In the context of the fracturing of our United Kingdom, the notion that Northern Ireland should be compensated by the provision of Inter-Trade UK, a body with no full time staff and an annual budget of just £750,000 (compared with £17.5 million for Inter-Trade Ireland to which the UK contributes at least £5 million), and an Independent Monitoring Panel to measure what proportion of goods move from Great Britain to Northern Ireland with an export number, and simplified customs forms rather than full length customs forms, is extraordinary. To make matters even worse the Government has now effectively abandoned one of the key Windsor Framework Article 16 Safeguards, the protection against trade diversion.
Brexit was supposed to be about regaining sovereignty, taking back control and making our own laws and yet in one part of the country we have ended up giving far more control away than was ever the case when we were an EU member state. Northern Ireland has effectively been made a colony of the EU in 300 areas of law. In this, the 27 member states of the EU no longer respect the territorial integrity of the UK, something they did when we were in the EU. They not only claim the right to make laws for part of the UK – they also actually make those laws. This is not just an extraordinary humiliation for Northern Ireland. It is an extraordinary humiliation for the whole UK, and one that our current government is now using as a pretext for its EU Reset, applying EU law to the rest of the country apparently because of a desire to avoid divergence between one part of the UK and the other.
In truth the ploy of keeping part of the UK in the EU has proven to be a masterstroke not only of the EU but of all those in the current Government who are desperate to ‘rejoin’, although we cannot really say ‘rejoin’, because, nearly ten years on from the referendum, part of the UK, Northern Ireland, is still waiting for Brexit.
On 23 June 2016 no one living in England voted for England to leave the EU because that was not on the ballot paper. No one living in Northern Ireland voted for Northern Ireland to leave the EU because that was not on the ballot paper. No one living in Wales voted for Wales to leave the EU because that was not on the ballot paper. No one living in Scotland voted for Scotland to leave the EU because that was not on the ballot paper. All of the 17.4 million votes cast for Brexit, regardless of where they were cast, were votes that the United Kingdom should leave the EU.
As we approach the ten year anniversary of the Brexit vote, parliamentarians from across the whole United Kingdom who respect this the biggest democratic vote in our history are coming together to form the Anti-Windsor Framework Parliamentary Group. We exist to fight for the whole United Kingdom to leave the EU so that: i) no part of the country is subject to laws we don’t make and can’t change and ii) this cannot then be used to justify the application of EU law in relation to the rest of the country.
Unlike current arrangements which violate the Belfast Good Friday Agreement consent, cross community consent and democracy protections, Brexit can be secured for the whole UK, without violating the agreement or creating a hard border across the island of Ireland, through Mutual Enforcement and the application of technology which has inevitably moved on since 2019. In this context the formation of the Anti-Windsor Framework Parliamentary Group as we enter the new parliamentary session has never been more important.
**Rt. Hon Lord Dodds of Duncairn and Jim Allister KC MP are the Chair and Vice Chair of the Anti-Windsor Framework Parliamentary Group**
