Thirteen months after the collapse of the Northern Ireland Executive, talks to restore a devolved government have collapsed. Despite optimism last weekend that a deal was imminent \u2013 leading the Prime Minister and Taoiseach to make a spontaneous trip to Belfast \u2013 these hopes were dashed when the Democratic Unionist Party\u2019s Arlene Foster bluntly concluded, \u201cthere is no current prospect of these discussions leading to an Executive being formed.\u201d It\u2019s back to square one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same time, the countdown to the UK\u2019s departure from the European Union continues to tick ever so loudly in the background. What effect will the protracted absence of a government have on Northern Ireland\u2019s voice in the wider Brexit process? Or is Brexit itself partly a cause<\/em> of the stalemate at Stormont?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scotland and Wales each have a devolved government, and hence there is a clear channel through which Scottish and Welsh voices can provide some form of input to the UK government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Neither Nicola Sturgeon nor Carwyn Jones have seats around the negotiating table in Brussels, but they do hold mandates to represent the interests of Scotland and Wales respectively, and this makes their voices worth listening to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If Northern Ireland did get an Executive back up and running there would, in theory, be a \u2018go-to\u2019 voice to represent its interests. Even allowing for the fact that a majority of voters (56%) opted to remain in the European Union, Northern Ireland is in a unique position, and the magnitude of the consequences of the UK\u2019s departure from the EU are highly dependent on the precise nature of this departure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How will farmers be affected by the ending of Common Agricultural Policy subsidies? Will trade with the Republic of Ireland continue to be as frictionless as it is today? And, highly symbolically, can any \u2018hardening\u2019 of the border be avoided? A functioning devolved government could, presumably, lobby for Northern Ireland\u2019s distinct interests in these matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In reality, however, it is unlikely that a restored Northern Ireland Executive would speak with any kind of coherent or consistent voice. The two largest parties, both of whom would be required to share power in a cross-community coalition, are simply too heavily divided on Brexit. They both oppose a \u2018hard border\u2019, but their positions diverge heavily when it comes to substantive policy demands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Democratic Unionist Party, the largest unionist party, campaigned to leave the EU and is insistent that the UK as a whole leaves both the single market and customs union. It says that customs checks at the border can be avoided by cameras and online declarations. Sinn F\u00e9in, the largest nationalist party, argues that Northern Ireland should effectively stay in the EU through some form of \u2018special status\u2019 to avoid any<\/em> visible manifestation of a border on the island of Ireland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is somewhat ironic that despite the centrality of Brexit to the broader political discourse across these islands, and despite the potentially acute consequences of Brexit for Northern Ireland itself, it has not featured on the core agenda in the talks to restore Northern Ireland\u2019s government. Instead, it is the question of legislation to promote the Irish language that has been the primary sticking point over the last 13 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This issue is undoubtedly important to many people, but in the grand scheme of things it is hardly as important to most people as the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, not least given the time-sensitivity of the latter. It\u2019s as if the whole world is talking about the border conundrum and how to square the circle of the commitments made by the UK and EU in December, while the parties in the affected geographical region effectively ignore the biggest issue of the day in their own set of talks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This may seem a tad bizarre, but, then again, it underscores how na\u00efve it would be to assume that the restoration of a power-sharing administration at Stormont would necessarily make Northern Ireland\u2019s voice on Brexit clearer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, one interpretation of recent developments could be that neither the Democratic Unionist Party nor Sinn F\u00e9in have a particularly strong interest in restoring devolution in the first place. Some form of direct rule from Westminster is now much more likely, and this outcome may (paradoxically) serve both parties\u2019 strategic goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the Democratic Unionist Party, the current arithmetic in the House of Commons could make direct rule rather appealing. After a remarkable combination of events in the 2017 General Election, the party effectively holds the balance of power at Westminster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If direct rule ministers took decisions with which the Democratic Unionist Party disagreed, Theresa May\u2019s life might become even more difficult than it already is. The party could withdraw its support for the minority government at any time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The risk, of course, is that any threat of doing so would not be taken seriously: would the Democratic Unionist Party really rather risk triggering a general election and Jeremy Corbyn walking into 10 Downing Street?<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Sinn F\u00e9in, the logic is slightly counter-intuitive. The ideologically republican party does not even take its seats at Westminster, so why would it countenance ministers in London taking decisions previously made at Stormont? Publicly, it says such a scenario would be unacceptable. However, if the party is thinking purely in terms of Irish unity, direct rule may help its pursuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By removing the middle-ground constitutional option (devolved power-sharing within the UK) from the menu, it leaves two binary options: direct rule from London, or a united Ireland. With the possibility of a hard Brexit within the next 13 months or so, it is more likely that \u2018soft\u2019 nationalists \u2013 previously content with the status quo \u2013 would opt for Irish unity in any referendum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This interpretation may be slightly unfair to the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn F\u00e9in, but given that both parties have had 13 months to re-establish a devolved government, there simply does not appear to be the political will to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Either one party, or both, may calculate that its strategic interests lie elsewhere. Up to now we have thought that the Irish question had entered British politics in big way. Perhaps the reverse is equally true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brexit involves significant constitutional flux for the United Kingdom, so it should be no surprise that it influences the strategizing of parties in a place where the constitutional question is already salient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jamie Pow<\/a> is a postgraduate research student in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen’s University Belfast. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Article originally appeared in The UK in a Changing Europe website.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The featured image<\/em> has been used courtesy of a <\/em>Creative Commons license. <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After the parties failed to reach a deal at Stormont this week, Jamie Pow and Prof John Garry look at the role Brexit may have played in this week’s negotiations. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2431,"featured_media":3431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[106],"class_list":["post-4048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","tag-northern-ireland"],"mb":[],"acf":{"authors":{"simple_value_formatted":"