Northern Ireland: lost and forgotten as Brexit looms

I wonder how many people in England, not just politicians but ordinary voters, have given so much as a moment’s thought to the impact of the election just gone on the future of Northern Ireland.

A year ago, debate in Westminster, both in the chamber and in the tea rooms, was dominated by talk of the Backstop and the inordinate power of the DUP over the shape and structure of Brexit. Nigel Dodds and Sammy Wilson had only to touch their forehead to catch the Speaker’s eye. The mellifluous Sir Jeffrey Donaldson was such a regular visitor to the BBC at Broadcasting House that he might as well have taken a suite in the neighbouring Langham Hotel.

The party’s leader, Arlene Foster, was a baleful presence, the Ghost of Brexit Passed, forever reminding Theresa May and Boris Johnson of the central importance of that most precious of gifts: the Union.

But that was then. On the day the election was called called, a thick fog settled over the Irish Sea, muffling any sounds of disaffection and effectively concealing the construction of the customs border down the middle of the North Channel.

The prime minister, who just months previously had presented himself as a doughty champion of the Union, had in the meantime concluded that with a decent Commons majority he could afford to drop the DUP, and promptly did so. Perhaps half a dozen of his Tory colleagues in Parliament thought this a rum-do; the rest simply shrugged.

And so it is that not only the DUP-ers, but the entire Northern Ireland political class has been put out to grass. As far as Boris Johnson is concerned, the Backstop has been agreed and it is time for the Unionists to take one for the team.

The election went ahead, of course, but in Northern Ireland terms it was rather like a tree falling in the forest when there is nobody around. Did it really fall? Did it make a noise? Was there, in fact, ever a tree or a forest?

For the DUP, used to lording it over the British media, there was no time to adjust to their reduced status. They lost two of their ten seats, including that of Nigel Dodds in North Belfast, now held by Sinn Fein’s John Finucane. Dodds, a Cambridge-educated lawyer who used to be the Rev Ian Paisley’s gofer in the European Parliament, was the party’s token intellectual. He has now given way to a lawyer of a very  different kind. Finucane, the current Lord Major of Belfast, charged last month with urinating in a public place, is the son of Pat Finucane, a civil rights advocate and sometime consiglieri to the Provisional IRA, murdered by loyalist gunmen in 1989.

As a Shinner, Finucane will not be taking his seat. Though he opposes Brexit, he is not prepared to do so from the green benches of the Palace of Westminster. Dodds, meanwhile, will be looking for work. His wife, Diane, is about to lose her job as well. She is a member of the European Parliament, set to quit Strasbourg for the last time on January 17, two weeks before Britain retreats across the Channel and pulls up the drawbridge. The word is that a place will be found for her husband in the defunct NI Assembly, but I like to think that he and his wife can enter Stormont’s drafty halls as a couple, dreaming of better days as they survey the empty husk that is their party’s Brexit strategy.

Overall, the election was less than a triumph for the DUP. It won 244,128 votes across the province, just 30.6 per cent of the total – a drop of nearly 5.5 points on its showing in 2017, which in its turn was down on 2015. As the only avowedly pro-Brexit party, the DUP lost out heavily to Sinn Fein, the SDLP, the Ulster Unionists and the Alliance Party – all Remainers – which between them, with a little help from “Others,” garnered just under 538,000 votes, or 66 per cent of the total.

The DUP claim to represent the people of Northern Ireland was always fraudulent. Now the full extent of the fraud has been exposed. What happens now is unclear. The Backstop is even now being assembled, in Brussels. It will be in two sections, the first to be erected in the mid-point of the Irish Sea, the second along the Border with the Republic. Once activated, Northern Ireland will become, de facto, a protectorate of the EU, looking increasingly to Dublin and Brussels and less to London.

The PM insists that there is no question of an Irish Sea border. He denies that GB-based businesses selling to NI post-Brexit will be obliged to pay tariffs and that trade in the other direction will be subject to checks and a blizzard of online paperwork. The EU and Dublin, backed by HM Treasury, say otherwise. Time will tell who is telling the truth, but Johnson’s record in this area is not exactly spotless.

And then, of course, there is the small matter of Irish unity. The total pro-Union vote on Thursday caps out at 42.3 of the total. Ranged on the other side are Sinn Fein, the SDLP (resurgent after winning two seats) and two smaller nationalist parties, which in aggregate won 40.7 per cent of the vote. Between the two blocs, Unionist and Nationalist, sits the Alliance Party, with its 17 per cent share of the vote, liberal on social questions, largely neutral on the national question.

Alliance used to be the home of middle-class Protestants, with a sprinkling of Catholic professionals, forever worthy, rarely worth bothering about. Today, it is a rising force, almost equally divided between the two religious traditions, content to stay British but persuadable on unity. With demography increasingly favouring the nationalist side of the argument, the strongly pro-European Alliance may well come down long-term on the side of unity, or at least in favour of a border poll, to be held as early as next autumn. Such a development would at once put Unionists on the back foot.

But let’s not jump the gun, as we say in Belfast. If Brexit turns out well for England, and the Backstop proves to be no more than a temporary inconvenience, the British link might yet have some life left in it. But with the Tories’ eyes fixed on a much more compelling prize ­­– English independence – the people and politicians of Northern Ireland will not be holding their breath.