British-Irish Council: ‘Safe space’ always for conversations between taoisigh and unionist leaders

Sitting at a long table in a hotel in St Brelade in Jersey in 2014, surrounded by then taoiseach Enda Kenny and then British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, Peter Robinson (then the Democratic Unionist Party leader and first minister of Northern Ireland) was cross, very cross.

The dignitaries attending the 29th British-Irish Council (BIC) meeting, a creature of the Belfast Agreement that first met in 1999, had just been asked to point to a single achievement of the body. Was it more than a talking shop?

“This is not an executive body which takes decisions to do things. This is a body that improves relations,” said Robinson, making little – in fact no – attempt to hide his irritation with both the question and the questioner.

The British-Irish Council, with representation from Dublin, Belfast, London, Cardiff and Edinburgh, along with the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, meets every six months. On Thursday night, it gathers in Dublin Castle.

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It was inserted at the last minute into the Belfast Agreement because of pressure from Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble, who remained interested in its fortunes after the agreement came into being.

“It was very much an afterthought, the whole thing was a bit odd, especially because the unionists insisted the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands be included, along with the devolved administrations.

“The unionists were very keen during the noughties that the BIC would have its own secretariat, which it didn’t then. It was serviced directly by both governments,” said one former official with close knowledge of its workings.

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“They were keen to build it up to be a match for the North-South Ministerial Council based in Armagh, which had, and has, its own standing secretariat. David Trimble was very keen on that. Eventually it was conceded.”

Today, the secretariat is based in Edinburgh, where it has prepared for this week’s gathering, which will be attended on the British side by secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities, Michael Gove, and Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris.

In truth, Robinson had a point: the body has helped to build, quietly and with little excitement, relations between politicians from Ireland and those from all parts of the United Kingdom that occasionally have helped, even if hard “wins” are absent.

It has provided “a safe space” for conversations between taoisigh and unionist leaders at times when it was difficult to have such conversations anywhere elsewhere, especially when the North-South Ministerial Council was not meeting, as has frequently been the case.

“Just after Brexit, Enda [Kenny] spoke off the top of his head about having an all-Ireland forum on Brexit. Arlene [Foster] was extremely unhappy, so there was a 30-minute meeting during one BIC where she got a chance to vent on the margins, which eased matters,” remembers one source.

Equally, it was valuable during the height of the Brexit crisis where politicians without many other places where they could meet with little or no expectations could talk about the challenges away from the cameras.

During the tense Boris Johnson/Liz Truss years, there were few places for Irish and British ministers and senior officials actually to meet. Leo Varadkar met Gove under the BIC umbrella, Micheál Martin met him, too: “Those meetings helped to lower the temperature,” a source said.

Politicians from the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are major fans, since it gives them a rare opportunity to meet senior British figures: “The people who are keenest on all of this are the Isle of Man and the Channel Islanders.

“They struggle to get face-to-face meetings in London, they struggle to get appointments. Here, twice a year they have a platform where they meet people for a day and a half.”

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Over the years, the BIC has developed its own style. In the early years, the format was stilted. Ministers came with speaking notes and stuck to them: “There was a feeling then that everything was very fragile.

“Discussions were never spontaneous. But they have been in more recent years. The Taoiseach has said what was on his mind, so did Michael Gove. It’s still quite structured, but it must be to some extent given the numbers involved,” said a former official.

However, the seniority of British representation was, and remains an issue, deeply irking Cardiff and Edinburgh especially – and not just them. Gove has been committed, but Gordon Brown remains the only British prime minister to attend a full meeting – in his case, Belfast in 2007.

No 10 Downing Street’s current occupant, Rishi Sunak, came to the dinner on the first night of last November’s gathering in Manchester, but he departed later.

By contrast, the taoiseach of the day has always attended, even though Dublin was less keen on the body than Trimble in the early years, wanting, instead, to have the North-South ministerial axis front and centre.

Today, Dublin is more relaxed on the matter: “This isn’t a zero-sum game. The fact that you could have a vibrant east-west relationship doesn’t mean that you can’t have deep North-South relationships.

“One of the reasons why the Taoiseach is always there, even on occasions when the agenda clearly doesn’t justify it is to show that the Government is committed to the east-west axis, and to make that apparent,” said one BIC veteran.