Dr Niamh Gallagher, Cambridge University academic, author and historian. Outside No10 Downing Street, Westminster.
Dr Niamh Gallagher said there is no evidence to support recent claims that the post-Brexit trade arrangements threaten the 1998 peace accord. She argues that Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and other ministers are in "flagrant violation" of Conservative Party commitments in the Downing Street Declaration.
The Co Armagh-born author and historian, pictured above, who was a member of the independent advisory panel on the North's centenary, has written a searing takedown of the British Government's rhetoric around the Brexit Sea Border. She looks at separate aspects of the Agreement and challenges claims that the protocol threatens it.
The people of Ulster voted overwhelmingly for parties that supported the NI Protocol. 53 of our 90 MLAs support it. A clear majority. The actions of the Conservative and Unionist Party are against the principles of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA)
She concludes that senior Tories are "woefully - and perhaps willfully - misunderstanding the Good Friday Agreement" and its relationship to the protocol. Last night Dr Gallagher told The Irish News that her scrutiny had revealed that "no-one has done their homework on the Good Friday Agreement" to have "no selfish strategic or economic interest in the North of Ireland".
The Cambridge University associate professor in modern British and Irish history, who was a member of the independent advisory panel on the North's centenary, says it is the Tories who in their political representations as to why the NI Protocol Bill must be introduced, have broken their commitment to the peace process that their predecessors of the 1990s did so much to bring about.
The paper looks at separate aspects of the Good Friday Agreement and asks if the accord is threatened by the protocol, as claimed. It investigates the "alleged disruption to power-sharing" and concludes that the key pillar of the Stormont institutions is not under threat but that the "problem lies exclusively with the DUP and its actions over the NI Protocol". She argues that power-sharing in the region has always been "rocky" and there is no evidence of "wider political disengagement which should cause concern about governance in the North of Ireland".
Dr Gallagher argues that many senior Conservatives are using the principle of cross-community consent as a "politically expedient tool" and questions whether there is any legal basis to "protest the protocol on a consent basis". She believes there has been a "considerable misunderstanding" by the prime minister and foreign secretary about what cross-community consent is, noting how Strand One of the agreement is exclusively about "democratic institutions in the North of Ireland". In all of this strand's clauses, the Stormont assembly, not Westminster, has exclusive authority over cross-community consent.
"Cross-community consent is therefore the preserve of the NI Assembly and concerns internal relations," her paper states. "It is not for the UK government to interfere with nor any other co-guarantor. It is exclusively about institutions, not policies." The academic also highlights numerous instances where the Westminster government ignored cross-community consent to pass legislation, including the outworkings of the 2016 Brexit referendum, the introduction of abortion legislation in 2019, and the recent Legacy and Reconciliation Bill.
Of the latter Dr Gallagher says: "It is one of the few policies opposed by all groups in NI and the Stormont Assembly without exception, yet the British government presses ahead with the legislation, railroading over consent... On none of these occasions did 'consent' matter to the UK government in its setting of policy. This is fundamentally because consent does not apply to policy."
She also notes that the UK government originally made the provision that a simple majority, rather than a cross-community majority, would suffice for an assembly vote every four years on the protocol. The paper also highlights the "misunderstanding" of east-west relations as detailed in Strand Three of the agreement. The author notes that rather than relating to the North of Ireland and Britain in the manner interpreted by Liz Truss, Strand Three's focus in on the relationship between the Republic and Britain.
Dr Gallagher told The Irish News last night that her scrutiny had revealed that "no-one has done their homework on the Good Friday Agreement". "No-one's opened up the document and looked at it thoroughly and compared it to the rhetoric that's coming out of the government ministers' mouths - I think that's especially important because we're now in the committee stages of the bill," she said.
With many thanks to the: Irish News and John Manley POLITICIAL CORRESPONDENT for the original publication.
Follow these links to find out more on this story: Guardian View on overriding the Brexit treaty: a national disgrace
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