Northern Ireland’s political future is put on hold over the next few months by the UK Conservative Party’s leadership succession at a precarious time for its power-sharing institutions and overall well-being.
Despite the North’s marginal status in British politics Boris Johnson courted hardline Brexiteers in unilaterally changing the Northern Ireland Protocol as he fought for his survival. Whether his successor will continue that policy is a key factor in the current uncertainty. The future course of Irish-British relations will be framed by the victor’s readiness to reset the UK’s policies and relations with the European Union.
A majority of Northern Ireland voters and most of its political parties oppose these changes to the Protocol, which they see more as an opportunity than an incubus. These facts express the new political realities there, despite the Democratic Unionist Party’s commitment to the Protocol and the hardline politics behind it. Will that commitment survive the succession battle? The argument that ideological differences among the Conservative candidates may make it difficult for Johnson’s successor to be flexible on these issues is convincing enough to make one doubt whether the DUP will be able to re-enter power-sharing in the autumn.
A wider set of uncertainties flows through the Conservative succession battle in these circumstances. Prolonged deadlock and impasse in Northern Ireland’s politics, when most people there want to see its everyday problems of health, welfare and living standards tackled effectively, opens up questions of constitutional change. Would such dysfunction not be better overcome by linking Northern Ireland’s future more closely with an Ireland in the EU than with a United Kingdom out of it? Demands for Scottish independence will feed into this emerging Irish debate. And an Irish Government heading towards its own general elections by 2025, coinciding with the UK’s one, will find it difficult to avoid such questions and increasingly necessary to address them with specific plans and policies.
A Conservative government in London determined to continue with the Protocol Bill through the autumn would face the prospect of a trade war with the EU on top of mounting economic and security difficulties. That would make any reset of relations with Dublin impossible. Alternatively there is the prospect of a more accommodating and flexible approach which would find Brussels and Dublin ready to respond in kind.
It remains to be seen whether and how much these factors play out in the Conservatives’ campaigning this month and next. It certainly makes sense that Irish political, commercial and civil society actors should aim to inject them into the British debates of the Conservative succession and the next government.