The state of play

The particularly belligerent and vexing form that the Brexit process has taken since 2016 emanates from the British government's original sin of having failed adequately to account for Northern Ireland's specific and unique political and constitutional status. British disengagement from the “Irish question” had started long before the Brexit vote and was a defining feature of British politics during the 2000s, as the Northern Ireland settlement eased into a period of relative peace. This was the case even as the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and the wider processes of devolution, of which the Agreement formed part, worked to reshape the British territorial constitution. The British government's failure to embrace devolution, and all its policy and political consequences, created a false perception of constitutional stability. It was against this backdrop that the decision to hold an in–out referendum on the UK's EU membership was taken. No thought was given to the potentially profound consequences of such a vote for the UK's territorial constitution and particularly for Northern Ireland. In the event, the referendum produced differential territorial outcomes, with constitutional implications. The opening up of a fractious constitutional conversation in and about the UK has, since 2016, haunted the British political system and had knock-on implications for Ireland and the EU more widely. Brexit has prompted profound political disquiet in Scotland and increased pressure for a second independence referendum. In Wales, it has presaged an increase in what has come to be called “indy-curiosity”. Both of these trends have been exacerbated further by the Coronavirus pandemic.

Nowhere has post-Brexit constitutional debate become more loaded or more urgent than in Northern Ireland. Despite having supported and welcomed Brexit, the DUP has nonetheless been its primary casualty, with profound implications for unionism more broadly. Critically, by supporting the hardest possible form of Brexit, the DUP has backed unionism into a political and constitutional corner which it may not be able to work its way out of. Unionism is more or less united in seeking to overturn the Protocol. If this fails, which seems likely, then new and material forms of separation between Great Britain and Northern Ireland are liable to endure. If it succeeds, then the fall-back is a hard border on the island of Ireland which will only hasten the conversation about constitutional change.