Has Rishi Sunak done the trick?

 

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his team have clearly worked hard to find a decent way round the crisis caused by Boris Johnson's Northern Ireland Protocol, it being perhaps the most disagreed part of the widely disagreed UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement*.

Together with the EU, they have paid due attention to the practicalities, the economic concerns, politics and ideological positions of the different interests the former Prime Minister neglected. By contrast, and subject to no invincible devils hiding in the detail, the resulting Windsor Framework appears as a range of considered proposals and a commendable achievement. 

The questions that will not go away are how and whether this framework can be built on. Is it solid enough to structure lasting arrangements in Northern Ireland or, failing that, how long before it must be dismantled as a makeshift? 

Perhaps more awkwardly, is it entirely fanciful to see a constitutionally devolved region, one foot in the European Union and outperforming economically because of it, becoming a kind of fifth column inside a not-so-United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? Questions around Brexit, sole cause of this and so many internal divisions and contradictions, are not going away either. 

Long term there seem to be only four dependable ways out of the Northern Ireland dilemma: 1) Defeat or ditch the DUP and Tory Brexit Irreconcilables; 2) A united Ireland; 3) Defeat or ditch the European Union.

An answer to 1) could be closer than we think: Mr Sunak has said there will be a parliamentary vote on the Framework. Tory terror of wipeout in the general election will ensure the Ayes have it and maybe some Brexit hardliners will go along with it and maybe some won't. Either way it's hard to see them carrying the same clout afterwards.

The answer to 2) calls for prophecy, always of doubtful reliability.

And 3) is just one more pipedream of Brexit, which the public are coming to see is a total fantasy. 

Many will also see the Windsor Framework is essentially a sideshow and point to the likeliest way out of the real problem given time: Number 4) Rejoin. 

Some will say it has started already.

*The Unsettled Settlement, December 31 2020