Why the DUP rebellion on the Brexit bill is simply bluster

Jeffrey Donaldson and his colleagues have nothing to lose from their opposition to Rishi Sunak’s protocol replacement, says Sean O’Grady

Jeffrey Donaldson explaining his stance at Stormont on Monday (PA)

The Democratic Unionist Party has said it will vote against part of the government’s revised Brexit deal as it affects Northern Ireland. The Windsor Framework, agreed last month by Rishi Sunak and EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, was designed to fix the problems created by the original Northern Ireland protocol (which was negotiated and signed off by Boris Johnson) and persuade the DUP to rejoin the power-sharing Northern Ireland executive. The first vote on the Windsor Framework will be held in the Commons on Wednesday.

Why is the DUP doing this?

The short answer is because Sunak’s deal doesn’t meet the party’s “seven tests”, which are that any agreement should:

• Fulfil Article 6 of the Act of Union
• Avoid any diversion of trade
• Not constitute a border in the Irish Sea
• Give the people of Northern Ireland a say in making the laws that govern them
• Result in no checks on goods going from Northern Ireland to Great Britain or from Great Britain to Northern Ireland (and remaining in Northern Ireland)
• Ensure no new regulatory borders between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK
• Preserve the letter and spirit of Northern Ireland’s constitutional guarantee in the 1998 Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement by requiring the consent of a majority of the country’s citizens for any diminution of its status as part of the UK

Whether the Windsor Framework fulfils any of these tests is being assessed by a DUP panel that includes former leaders Arlene Foster and Peter Robinson. They will take some weeks to complete their deliberations. Some see this as a way to provide political cover for DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson.

In the meantime, the DUP will be voting in the Commons against the part of the agreement known as the “Stormont brake”, which purports to give the Northern Ireland Executive an effective veto in special circumstances, albeit exercised via the UK government and the EU.

Can the DUP block the Windsor Framework?

No. It’ll be backed by the government plus the other opposition parties, including SDLP, Official Unionist and Alliance MPs from Northern Ireland. (Sinn Fein has seven of the 18 MPs elected from the province, only one less than the DUP, but has a long-standing policy of not attending Westminster, as it does not recognise it as legitimate.)

Even if a substantial Tory rebellion – which (bizarrely) could include Boris Johnson – gets behind the DUP, the Windsor Framework will be implemented because it is far superior to the existing protocol. Thus, the DUP and their Tory allies can rebel performatively, safe in the knowledge that their actions will make no difference.

Will they secure any changes?

No. The EU is very unwilling to concede any more, because of the threat to the integrity of the EU single market and customs union. Sunak has also said his deal is non-negotiable.

However, the DUP has heard this sort of thing before, and has seen its obduracy rewarded. After all, the protocol was supposed to be signed off in a treaty, and that has been reopened. Realistically, there might be some minor administrative tweaks, but there will be no radical changes on the application of EU law or the role of the Court of Justice of the European Union.

What will happen now?

Nothing for the time being. One problem is that there is little incentive for the DUP to rejoin the Northern Ireland Executive, especially if it is going to be nominally second to Sinn Fein. Politically, it has little to lose from the boycott at the moment, even though the salaries of its ministers will now be cut. In the longer term, the DUP may have to accept the “facts on the ground”.

Fortunately for Sunak, he’s already got Joe Biden to publicly commit to attending the ceremonials marking the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement at Easter. American influence will be brought to bear on all parties to live up to the spirit of 1998. It’s possible that the DUP panel, along with some tokenistic concessions by the EU, will get the DUP back into the Northern Ireland Executive, but it will be last-minute stuff – just as it was in 1998.

How will Northern Ireland be run if the DUP maintains the boycott?

It will continue to be run by a combination of local authorities, regional agencies, British ministers and civil servants working for the executive. They’re allowed to keep the machinery of government running, but not to embark on any major changes in policy. There is a considerable democratic deficit in this situation, which is damaging the people of Northern Ireland.

When are the next Northern Ireland elections due?

If an executive is not formed in the meantime, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Chris Heaton-Harris, has said that the last deadline for an election would be 11 April 2024. By that point, the DUP may have concluded that it has nothing more to gain from a boycott, given public dissatisfaction with having no regional government.

Opinion in the country might also point towards the DUP regaining its status as the largest party in the assembly, and thus holding the right to fill the post of first minister. This was lost when Sinn Fein pipped the DUP to the post in the May 2022 elections. Sinn Fein currently holds 27 seats in the assembly, while the DUP holds 25. The biggest party is entitled to the power-sharing post of first minister, a position long held by the DUP and never held by Sinn Fein. In reality, the two act as joint or co-first ministers, but pride plays a part in the DUP’s reluctance to serve with a Sinn Fein first minister.

However, the nightmare for the DUP is that its hardline approach alienates many moderate unionist supporters, who might defect to the UUP or Alliance, while it also loses ground to the even more hardline Traditional Unionist Voice, which rejects the Good Friday Agreement in its entirety. It might even be that the DUP would slip to third place behind Alliance in a future election, though it seems unlikely. In fact it would cause a novel constitutional conundrum because, as members of a group aligned with neither the nationalist nor the unionist bloc, Alliance representatives would be unable to take up the role of first or deputy first minister.

The rise of the cross-community Alliance Party is one of the most striking developments of recent years, reflecting more fluidity in social and cultural identification; the irony is that power-sharing keeps its representatives out of the top roles in government.