He said what suited him, they heard what they wanted to hear

Alex Kane in the IT has an excellent piece that really nails the problem regarding Boris Johnson and the Northern Ireland Protocol with regard to the DUP. He notes that:

Party-political unionism (the DUP, UUP, TUV and a few fringe parties), along with elements of older and younger loyalism, and the Orange Order, insist – for now – they are not willing to pay the price. Their fear is that accepting what would be, to all intents and purposes, a changed relationship with the rest of the UK would make it much harder to insist that Northern Ireland remains an integral part of the UK. And that, in turn, could raise problems in the event of a Border poll (which seems likely within the next decade or so).

All that is true to an extent, but this was – to repeat once more, a direct outcome from a Brexit that the DUP, TUV and a few fringe parties, sought. That the changed relationship with the rest of the UK is not as they expected when they supported it is hardly here or there. Something was going to change should Brexit come to pass. And it did come to pass. 

Once upon a time there was the Backstop. Political unionism loathed this, and were more than happy when one T. May was ejected from the position of PM and Johnson took over.

But then, Johnson, compounded this as Kane notes:

But his deal, which took Britain out of the EU, while leaving Northern Ireland partly within it, was much worse than May’s backstop, which planned to keep the entire UK in the customs union and much of the single market. The Northern Ireland protocol resulted in the North being treated very differently from the rest of the UK and placed in a position not dissimilar to that of a semi-colonial constitutional granny flat.

And it’s not as if Johnson was not and is not up to speed on all this:

Johnson is aware of the problem the protocol presents for unionism, not least it is seen as another massive betrayal by a UK government. He is aware of it because the DUP was telling him about it every day between July 2017 and December 2019, when it was propping up the Conservatives in government. Yet he was willing to attend its annual conference and not tell the truth to them. Willing to attend an event hosted by the party at the Conservatives’ own conference in 2019 – and not tell the truth to them. Willing to attend a general election event in Belfast in December 2019 – and again not tell them the truth.

 

It’s a compelling indictment of Johnson on so many levels. But the problem for unionism is, of course, that Johnson doesn’t answer to the DUP or the UUP or those other worthy representatives of political unionism. Indeed he doesn’t care about them at all. Kane rightly points to the fact that Johnson doesn’t need, or care, about votes or representatives in the North. And so:

 So, the chances of him bringing down his entire “getting Brexit done” withdrawal agreement to help Northern Ireland unionists seem remote. And unionists know it.

Moreover as Kane continues Johnson knows that for all the stuff about those set against the Protocol, and that may vary, there’s a solid other bloc, seemingly a majority or near enough, who are in favour of it, and perhaps more. Indeed Kane goes further and notes that it’s not at all clear that the majority of unionists are not in favour of the Protocol. And those being the case then there’s no appetite to pull down Stormont, let alone put the current numbers in the Assembly at risk. 

So Kane points to one factor that might influence Johnson: “

The only thing that might give Johnson cause for concern is the possibility of the recent, mostly low-key, protests from a section of loyalism tipping into violence.

But quoting accounts from the Anglo-Irish Agreement (and as it happens I’m a bit of a fan of the AIA because it was the agreement that – as it were – forced the UK to actually concede that NI, whatever else, was not as British as Finchley and that an input from the ROI was absolutely necessary – that was to have ramifications further down the line. Sovereignty after all is either absolute or it isn’t, and of course it isn’t absolute and once the latter is demonstrated, well then it becomes easier to modify it again and so on). And what was the intelligence and security forces assessment at the time of the AIA? That unionism as a whole wasn’t going to fight to the last over a small number of ROI civil servants at Maryfield. 

Yet there was a short burst of unionist and loyalist agitation against the AIA – including the RUC getting a very torrid time of it for a while and then… it dissipated. As Kane notes, no doubt there’s been assessments made about the response to the Protocol. And presumably Johnson feels reasonably sanguine that throwing shapes but doing nothing overly substantive to same will win the day. And he is likely correct in that assessment. But Kane has a deeper point to make. Even if Johnson is wrong:

Johnson hopes for the former but may have to deal with the latter. What he does then is anyone’s guess. Either way, he is the worst possible ally unionism could have right now.