Dan Boucher: The Windsor Framework must be exchanged for mutual enforcement as a matter of urgency

​From September 2021, the DUP leadership committed to the removal of the border in the Irish Sea, subject to the important caveat: ‘while maintaining privileged access to the Republic of Ireland’.

In the context of the Trade and Co-operation Agreement, the need for customs duties and tariffs is already minimised such that for many purposes mutual enforcement provides the opportunity to access the Republic on a basis that is like being in the same market, writes Dan Boucher

It is only as we keep this qualification in mind that it is possible to understand both the support of the DUP negotiating team for Safeguarding the Union and its failure to grab the lifeline of mutual enforcement considered by my previous article.

The argument for adopting such an approach is that under mutual enforcement, Northern Ireland would only access the Republic subject to border procedures that would not be required if we were in the same internal market as the Republic.

By contrast, under the Windsor Framework we can get more than this because Northern Ireland becomes part of the Republic of Ireland and wider EU single market of 450 million consumers, while enjoying simplified customs and SPS procedures in relation to some GB goods. This is a ‘net prosperity gain’ that mutual enforcement places in jeopardy.

While this logic sounds compelling, it is deeply flawed for at least three reasons:

First, the only way we can access this perceived ‘net prosperity gain’ is by sacrificing our citizenship, such that we can no longer stand for election to make the laws to which we are subject in some 300 areas. These are now made for us by a foreign Parliament in which we are not represented in an arrangement that is wholly contrary to the UK political tradition of which we are a part.

Second, it is not rooted in economic reality. While it might sound amazing to say that Northern Ireland has access to a single market of 450 million consumers via the Windsor Framework, this has to be assessed in the context of the costs associated with geography and travel which mean that for much of what Northern Ireland produces, the 450 million consumers are quite theoretical.

For the things we want to sell - especially much of the food we produce - and the things we want to buy, the most important provision is being fully part of the proximate UK economy of nearly 70 million, with its attendant economies of scale in the supply chain, which we lose through the Irish Sea border and for which we are by no means compensated through access to the alternative proximate economy of five million that is the Irish Republic.

Third, it is in any event based on a complete misunderstanding of mutual enforcement that suggests it would place ready access to the Republic in jeopardy. The truth is that in the context of the Trade and Co-operation Agreement, the need for customs duties and tariffs is already minimised such that for many purposes mutual enforcement provides the opportunity to access the Republic on a basis that is like being in the same market.

Thus, it provides what we need, the full reintegration of Northern Ireland into the UK in the context of preserving our access to the Republic without a hard border.

It delivers the very thing that the DUP has committed itself to, while Safeguarding the Union and Windsor Framework places this in jeopardy, disenfranchising us and pushing us away from our key, proximate GB market through the imposition of the Irish Sea border.

At this point it must also be emphasised that even if there were some unanticipated mutual enforcement costs, a very obvious solution presents itself. As of February 2023, an answer to a Parliamentary question revealed that the UK government had already spent well over £500 million on servicing the Irish Sea border and an additional £150 million had been pledged to help DAERA in addition to ongoing running costs.

We have since learned that the costs of building border control posts are to be £192 million. Even if every penny spent on running the Irish Sea border was instead paid to Northern Ireland businesses trading with the Republic as compensation for potential mutual enforcement border frictions (which would be wholly unnecessary even if customs and tariffs were applied), this would still constitute a massive net gain because it would avoid the indignity of 1.9 million UK citizens being disenfranchised and the disrespecting of the territorial integrity of the UK.

Going forward, the DUP and all unionist parties should say again and again and again that while the EU might prefer a border in the Irish Sea, in the context of the existence of an alternative means of managing the border that does not necessitate the disenfranchisement of 1.9 million people, and the disrespecting of the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom and the Good Friday Agreement, it would be shameful for the EU and UK government to do anything other than exchange the Windsor Framework for mutual enforcement as a matter of urgency.

If the EU does not avail itself of this opportunity, it will necessarily render itself the deliberate (because it is entirely avoidable) instigator of the most reactionary disenfranchisement exercise of modern times, with deeply unfortunate implications for the EU brand and its standing in the world.

Dr Dan Boucher is a former DUP director of policy and research