Theresa may is helping nationalists erode the union | thearticle

Over the past three years, the Belfast Agreement has become the Swiss Army knife of political debate in the UK. The document, which was supposed to establish peace in Northern Ireland, is

used to support all kinds of dubious arguments about Brexit; usually without any specific reference to its provisions. This tactic is relatively new in Great Britain, but Irish nationalists

have been interpreting the agreement in imaginative and fanciful ways ever since it was signed, back in 1998. More thoughtful unionists, including, on occasion, Conservative politicians,

responded by directing discussion back to the text. Nationalist parties sold the agreement to their voters on the basis that it diluted British sovereignty in Northern Ireland and returned

power to the island of Ireland. They portrayed the north-south and east-west bodies that it established as a form of joint authority, that gave the Republic a say in the province’s internal

affairs. Unionists and British officials, in turn, pointed to the agreement’s three-stranded approach, which specifically precluded Dublin’s interference in matters devolved from Westminster

to Stormont. They emphasised the ‘principle of consent’, which is the document’s central theme, underpinning its affirmation that, “the present wish of a majority of the people in Northern

Ireland, freely exercised and legitimate, is to maintain the Union and, accordingly. . . Northern Ireland’s status as part of the United Kingdom reflects and relies upon that wish”. Quoting

the substance rather than the ‘spirit’ or ‘context’ of the agreement seems like a durable strategy, but it’s being undermined by Theresa May and her ministers. Constructive Ulster unionists

maintain that the Good Friday deal strengthens Northern Ireland’s place in the UK, rather than diluting it, but their arguments are weakened when even the British government seems to accept

misleading claims about the text, because it suits its agenda on Brexit. This baleful tendency first became apparent in July last year, when the prime minister told an audience in Belfast

that anything that compromised a ‘seamless border’ on the island of Ireland, was a “breach of the spirit of the Belfast Agreement”. This statement echoed claims from her Irish nationalist

and remainer opponents. In typical May style, it was aimed at internal critics in the Conservative Party, who were at the time attacking her Chequers proposals for close customs links with

the EU. From that moment, she’s used Northern Ireland ruthlessly to excuse unpopular aspects of her Brexit plans. Her true intentions were revealed in all their cynicism, when her chief

negotiator, Olly Robbins, made the candid admission that the Irish backstop was intended as a ‘bridge’ to a more permanent arrangement between the UK and Brussels. May wants close regulatory

and customs alignment with the EU and that would be a perfectly defensible goal if she were to defend it openly. Instead, she claims that these features of the withdrawal deal are necessary

because they uphold the Belfast Agreement. In her eagerness to mollify Irish separatists and the Dublin government, the prime minister has indicated that she is receptive to the republican

drive to change British citizenship law in Northern Ireland. At Westminster’s Liaison Committee this week, May spewed platitudes about respecting the rights of ‘Irish citizens’ in the

province, following a commitment made in Belfast to review Home Office procedures. Republicans are campaigning energetically to change the application of the British Nationality Act in

Northern Ireland, so that British citizenship is not conferred automatically upon people who are born here and have at least one British parent. They complain that holders of Republic of

Ireland passports from Northern Ireland cannot apply to have settled status in the UK after Brexit, even though they already have an unequivocal right to stay without filling in any

paperwork. This invented grievance is another tactic to put the province on a different footing to the rest of the UK, yet, with her talk of reviews and her careless use of the word ‘rights’

Mrs May shows every sign that she will capitulate to the campaigners’ demands. Indeed, in their desperation to coerce the DUP into supporting the prime minister’s Brexit deal, Conservative

ministers have implied a much more fundamental rewriting of the Belfast Agreement. Both Michael Gove and Northern Ireland secretary, Karen Bradley, have hinted that the Irish republic’s

government could have a consultative role in governing the province, if a new round of talks fails to restore devolution at Stormont. Almost every time nationalists have tried to bend and

shape the agreement to their purposes, they’ve sought to imply some form of joint stewardship over Northern Ireland between London and Dublin. It’s extraordinary that a British prime

minister, who bangs on ceaselessly about ‘our precious Union’ and whose government is propped up by a deal with the DUP, is threatening to give them exactly what they want. Under the Belfast

Agreement, Northern Ireland’s constitutional status is supposed to change only if unionists lose a border poll. That direct challenge can be countered easily enough, but a more insidious

campaign tries to erode steadily all the consequences of the province’s Britishness, until it becomes almost meaningless whether it is part of the UK, the Republic of Ireland or something in

between. These attempts are already being assisted by post-national liberals in Ulster, like the Alliance Party, who don’t much care for the nation state or constitutional politics. Now,

the separatists are also being helped by a Conservative prime minister who either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about the damage she could do to the Union, by using the Belfast

Agreement to justify her unpopular Brexit deal.