What's the next for Northern Ireland with Liz Truss at the helm?

It's not just about thawing relations, it's about resetting the board with an entirely new approach toward tackling the mounting problems in the North

Liz Truss hosts the first meeting of her new cabinet in Downing Street in London. 

Liz Truss, the architect of the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, has become the fourth Conservative Party leader to take the reins since the 2016 Brexit referendum.

And just like her predecessors, Truss is pursuing an unattainable version of Brexit, which is likely to be her undoing.

Truss’s shoehorned Northern Ireland Protocol Bill is set to override large aspects of existing international agreements and risk a trade war with the EU.

For six weeks, Northern Ireland featured front and centre in the Truss campaign.

Left unmentioned throughout Truss’s campaign, however, was the absence of any support for her Bill in Northern Ireland itself, with the exception of the famously regressive Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) — themselves currently engaged in blocking the formation of the Northern Ireland Assembly in protest of the post-Brexit trade arrangements.

The rhetoric surrounding the Truss campaign, along with her personal buy-in to the Bill she enacted, ensured she was given warm welcome by the DUP. 

Northern Ireland 'amnesia'

How short-lived that feeling of security must have felt as Truss failed to so much as passingly mention Northern Ireland in either her acceptance speech as new party leader, or her first speech as prime minister.

It would seem Truss’s Northern Ireland amnesia isn’t an isolated case within the Tory party, as so few potential candidates possessed any interest whatsoever in the region that she reportedly struggled to fill the position of Northern Ireland Secretary.

Sajid Javid, Penny Mordaunt, and Iain Duncan Smith are all reported to have turned down the brief, before ardent Brexiteer Chris Heaton-Harris stepped in.

Heaton-Harris, a former chair of the secretive right-wing conservative ERG group, once wrote to the vice-chancellors of all the universities of Britain, requesting the names of all the academics teaching students about Brexit, as well as copies of all course material. The request was described as “McCarthyite” and “sinister” by academics.

The appointment of a self-proclaimed "fierce Eurosceptic" to a region where half the population is European citizens is a prime example of the unashamed partisanship of the current British government.

Diplomatic approach needed

Given the well-known history and sensitivity around identity in Northern Ireland, a nuanced and diplomatic approach is essential.

Instead, the people of the North have been foisted with a hardline right-wing conservative who meets weekly with DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson. Disturbingly, yet unsurprisingly, this partisanship is wholly in line with the actions of the new prime minister.

DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson met Liz Truss as British foreign secretary earlier this year. Picture: Peter Morrison/PA Wire

During a visit to Northern Ireland as foreign secretary in January, Truss met with the head of the Orange Order, the Loyalist Communities Council, and the DUP, opting to not meet with any representative, political or civic, of the North’s other communities.

Heaton-Harris’ appointment to the Northern Ireland post puts ice on the idea of a relationship reset.  With Truss at the helm, and Heaton-Harris on Northern Ireland, further unilateral action would seem all but inevitable.

The EU position on the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill is clear — one party cannot unilaterally depart from or rewrite an international agreement. 

If enacted, the Bill would represent a breach of international law, which in turn would force the EU to retaliate, most likely in the form of trade tariffs and court proceedings.

The first sounding horn will be September 15, when Britain has to respond to legal action launched by the EU over attempts to override parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The scale of the problem developing in Northern Ireland is far greater than may be easily perceived. The DUP’s walk-out from the executive marked the sixth collapse of the Northern Ireland institutions since 1998.

As Northern Ireland endures yet another period without a functioning government, the sustainability of the institutions is inevitability being brought into question. This boycott is in addition to the DUP’s withdrawal from Strand 2 of the Good Friday Agreement in 2021 after the party refused to participate in North-South structures, collapsing the North-South Ministerial Council.

Human rights provisions blocked

The problem doesn’t stop there — the vast majority of human rights provisions contained within the Good Friday Agreement remain unimplemented, and many of the aspirations toward creating a rights-based society rooted in equality and mutual respect have been systemically blocked. 

In truth, the historic landmark agreement we’ll all be celebrating during next year’s quarter-century anniversary has never even been fully operational, and never will be if we don’t recognise the failures which brought us to this point.

Progress in the North continues to be plighted by issues which the Good Friday Agreement and subsequent agreements sought to address. The Civic Forum was disbanded, a Bill of Rights was never delivered, peace walls remain, paramilitaries are active, and legacy, Irish language, and sectarianism all remain live issues.

The first pillar of the Good Friday Agreement was to end the violence — which it by and large did —but peace is more than just the absence of conflict.

There is a real and pressing need to recapture the spirit of generosity, cooperation, and compromise that ultimately led to the Good Friday Agreement, a process necessitating the interventions of the Irish, British, and US governments as well as significant efforts from civil society across Northern Ireland. 

Notably absent from the escalating UK-EU impasse on the Northern Ireland protocol have been Northern voices. Expanding the remit of the negotiations to include Northern representation would seem a natural olive branch. 

Given the breadth of the outstanding issues in relation to the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, one might go further, by instigating a fresh set of talks, with the assistance of a US interlocking, on furthering the aims of the peace process into the next 25 years.

Liz Truss' acceptance speech made no mention of Northern Ireland. Picture: Stefan Rousseau/PA

There will be much to celebrate as we approach the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, but that this historic milestone is underfoot against a backdrop of political instability cannot be ignored.

The only way out is “through”, and in the case of Northern Ireland, the only way “through” is by negotiation. Fresh thinking, and renewed focus on ensuring the work of the Good Friday Agreement is complete runs in tandem with finding a resolution to the Northern Ireland protocol, for the two are interconnected.

In addition to instigating formal talks with an external interlocking, a wider civic society intervention could take place in the form of a Civic Forum. Made up of the next generation of peacebuilders and civic society leaders, a reformed civic forum structure could be created to examine the current stalemates in Northern Ireland, in order to find creative solutions rooted in compromise.

Any number of outcomes are possible in the coming weeks and months; Truss may trigger Article 16, Northern Ireland might return to the polls, and the EU might escalate legal action against Britain — none of these outcomes are good for Northern Ireland and none will restore stability.

We don’t just need to reset relations, we need to reset the board with an entirely new approach toward tackling the mounting issues developing in Northern Ireland, before they come to a head and place the survival of the Good Friday Agreement under formidable threat.