Newton Emerson: DUP seeks bogey man as ‘sea border’ solution looms

Sammy Wilson, an MP and former Stormont finance minister, has accused Tánaiste Simon Coveney of being a "belligerent, interfering Brit-basher" using Brexit "as an excuse to break up the UK".

“Border issues can all be dealt with by technology but Coveney and co have stuck their heads in the sand refusing to even consider this solution because it doesn’t suit his aggressive republican agenda,” according to Wilson.

His comments are first and foremost part of the DUP’s panic over Brexit. He was responding to a BBC interview on Sunday, where Coveney set out the Irish Government’s position in light of Downing Street’s vacillation between its two Brexit options.

Since last August, it has been British government policy to continue frictionless trade with the EU through either a customs partnership, in which the EU and the UK collect each other’s tariffs; or by “max fac” (maximum facilitation) – using IT systems and trusted trader schemes to minimise physical checks.

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Prime minister Theresa May favours the first option. Both would still create "Border issues" and Wilson is correct that technology could solve them. The problem for the DUP is that these solutions would be applied at Belfast harbour, not at the Border itself.

Technological sea border

Even worse for the unionists, avoiding all infrastructure at the Border is a British government promise – implicit in last August’s two-option policy document and explicit since March’s draft EU withdrawal agreement.

Of the two options, a customs partnership would make the technological sea border aspect of Brexit less painfully obvious. But May’s divided cabinet is now wobbling towards max fac, a technological border by definition, whose Irish Sea location would be impossible to ignore.

The DUP is hardly going to blame itself or its Conservative partners for this, or credit Sinn Féin, with which it still wants a Stormont deal – so a Dublin bogeyman is the inevitable alternative.

A more remote Brussels bogeyman would be less antagonistic to Northern Ireland politics but that is not enough of a distraction.

Wilson is an interesting choice to deliver the DUP’s latest broadside. Neither an insider nor an outsider, his undiplomatic remarks can be laughed off if required by the DUP leadership.

Not burning bridges with Dublin would be wise, as a calmer hearing of Coveney’s BBC interview reveals.

Brussels has rejected both the British options, dismissing the customs partnership in particular as “magical thinking”. It is implausible that all 27 remaining EU members would run a second tariff system for the UK’s benefit, or that global firms and third countries would willingly make allowances for it. However, Dublin is prepared to create a bespoke customs partnership between the UK and Ireland, which is a far more practical proposition.

Irish Government sources signalled a "cautious welcome" for the customs partnership in early April, while the rest of the EU was ridiculing it.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar put his name to this welcome last week, saying that while the customs partnership "in its current form" is unacceptable to the EU "it is something we could perhaps make workable".

Coveney fleshed this out on the BBC, explaining that “some form of customs partnership” would put Northern Ireland and the Republic in “a shared customs territory”, thereby maintaining an open border.

He said this could be “delivered to create no new barriers between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom” – the DUP’s overriding objective.

Dublin’s preference for the whole UK staying in the EU customs union remains, but it is no longer essential to Dublin’s objectives.

Ironic and bizarre

The lack of attention this generous offer has garnered is ironic and bizarre.

Brexiteers assumed they could split Ireland off from the rest of the EU in negotiations and were enraged when they could not do so. Many in Europe warned that perfidious Albion would not be allowed to play its classic game of divide and conquer again – especially in Ireland.

Yet the Irish Government has spent the past two months gesticulating its willingness for a separate arrangement and nobody in Britain even seems to have noticed. Clarifying the offer has only provoked more rudeness from the DUP.

Civility matters in resolving Brexit. During Sunday’s interview, Coveney said a customs partnership is “British government language” for what he called a shared customs territory – but he was happy to use the British term if it helped deliver a frictionless border.

Coveney overstated his case in claiming a customs partnership would create no new barriers between Northern Ireland in Britain. In practice, there would be barriers for non-UK trade, with internal UK shipments having to prove they could go around them.

But not portraying this unnecessarily as a “sea border” could soothe many unionist and British government concerns. What the UK and Ireland would in effect be creating is a common travel area for goods – a completely uncontentious idea when applied to the movement of people.

Perhaps the right language can be found to put that across, in between the DUP insults.