 Good afternoon everybody and you're all very welcome to this webinar with Matthew Thule who's a member of the Northern Marathon Assembly, a member of the SDLP, representing South Belfast. My name is Dario Callig, I'm chair of the UK group in the Institute and we have, as you know, discussed the protocol from time to time and I'm really delighted that Matthew is here to discuss it with us. He's written extensively about it, he's debated extensively about it and he has a relevant experience. He spent six, seven years as a civil servant in the British administration, in the Treasury, in the Ministry for Justice, but most importantly in number 10 under both David Cameron and Theresa May. He's been a member of the Assembly since 2020 when he replaced Claire Hannah who is now an SDLP member of the House of Commons. Matthew, it's a great pleasure to welcome you to the Institute. Your opening speech, I understand, will be between 20-25 minutes and then we'll take questions between now and two o'clock. So, Matthew, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Dahi and I'm delighted to be with the IIA. Today I'm pleased to be here, I went through my own biography because I spent too much time explaining my own somewhat unique relationship to Brexit and how I ended up in the Northern Ireland Assembly, but the IIA has been at the heart of unpacking the hellish complexity of the UK's exit from the EU the last five years, but while in principle I'm delighted to be at the IIA, an extraordinarily important part of the discourse in Ireland. In practice I wish I was here discussing something else. This week of all weeks is a reminder of the gravity of the policy dilemmas facing the international community over the coming decades. In Glasgow leaders are discussing and we hope progressing new commitments to address systematic climate breakdown to ensure that there is a planet habitable for humans in the decades to come. As all thinking people now accept there is no greater or more fundamental policy challenge for us in our lifetimes. But if we do manage to stave off a truly catastrophic rise in global temperatures, there are other imponderable but unavoidable challenges for policymakers. The revelations from Facebook whistleblowers over the sheer scale of harm being done by that company's products has crystallized for many people the uneasy feeling that the relationship between the tech industry and the common good has become hideously imbalanced and as new technology advances more generally and inexorably and brings social, economic and psychological disruption yet unimagined the question of who will advance or defend a public good separate to the determinations of tech giants will become ever more pressing and of course linked to both of these challenges is the question of whether economic growth if we are to have growth can be more broad based and indeed more just than liberal capitalism has achieved in recent decades that last theme was of course touched on extensively by Secretary Yellen and indeed Minister Donohoe in their remarks at the IIA yesterday but of course none of these subjects is what I'm here to discuss today and that is precisely my point the futility of Brexit is perhaps best represented by the opportunity cost for those actors most closely engaged in it to put it mildly we should all have more important things to focus on we all do have more important things to focus on Secretary Yellen yesterday quoted Beckett and powerful though her quotation was I can't help thinking that Samuel Beckett would be even more aptly referenced in relation to Brexit for what is Brexit but a kind of theater of the absurd in which language is increasingly detached from meaning and the actions of key characters literally the British government become ever more detached from any apparent logic today I want to briefly summarize the current context around Brexit and the protocol and their impact on the politics not just of the three strands of the Good Friday agreement across these islands but some of the broader to you political context to put it in summary things are worrying I believe my party believes that where we should end up and where we can end up is making a virtue rather than a curse out of Northern Ireland's unique position at the hinge point of the UK and European Union we believe that's possible and that's what I and my party are working towards but currently the evidence from London is not encouraging if we could be assured the UK government was pursuing a policy of seeking practical flexibility under the aegis of the existing withdrawal treaty and its protocol and then seeking to make it work for everyone in Northern Ireland that would be one thing but the current signs are that the UK is not simply trying to increase flexibility but rather to entirely reframe the nature of the withdrawal agreement if the UK government has chosen a path of destabilization and escalation it is important to be clear and resolute about the facts of the past five years the reality of Northern Ireland in 2021 and the need to hold firm in the face of provocation from ideologues lest I be accused of simply taking sides against London let me be clear that there is a responsibility on the EU side too and one that could have handled better in January when its precipitous near triggering of Article 16 prompted unwelcome instability but the cynical misuse of that hastily corrected error by the UK government ever since points to the true balance of blame for the unstable position we now find ourselves in in case any of you have been trying to avoid the subject of the protocol which is quite understandable and indeed possibly even advisable if you don't have to directly spend your professional lives working on it or to give it its proper name the protocol on Ireland Northern Ireland and I will summarize briefly what the protocol is and why it exists the protocol is the set of provisions in the UK's withdrawal agreement with the European Union which relates to Northern Ireland and indeed the island of Ireland specifically it ensures that Northern Ireland remains substantially inside the single market for goods but it is critical to note Northern Ireland is only in the single market for goods not for services capital or people I've often found that one of the most important things when discussing the protocol is explaining the limits to the protocol the only substantial areas of the only substantial exceptions to this are in the area of the single electricity market where EU law continues to apply in Northern Ireland with the not unreasonable and the single electricity market I should say which relates to the whole island of Ireland we share a grid for those of you who aren't aware and one of the one of the outstanding and notable achievements in terms of cross border cooperation over the past 20 years and in this area EU law continues to apply in Northern Ireland with the not unreasonable intention of ensuring seamlessness and stability of electricity supply there are also important and as yet untested guarantees in terms of rights in the protocol but in economic terms the protocol is largely limited to keeping Northern Ireland in the single market for goods but also but also ensuring that Northern Ireland in effect stays in the EU customs territory even though it is De Jure in the UK customs territory which is a slightly complex Schrodinger's cat arrangement but it is important to point out as I say the limitations I'll come back to the point about the limits on the parameters of the protocol because all too often lazy assertions about the scope and scale of the protocol are left unchallenged suffice it for now to say it palpably and clearly does not entail quote an economic united Ireland to use an expression favoured by some of its antagonists and if I could just offer an example in parenthesis it would be the effective closing down of what was one of the most durable parts of the all island economy even when the border on this island hardened 100 years ago and that was the financial services industry what we are seeing at the minute is financial services institutions effectively divesting from one side of the border to the to the other and the three main all island banks Bank of Ireland AIB and Ulster Bank have all substantially reduced their cross-border activity and it's my view that that simply can't be separated from from Brexit despite some of the public statements or the lack of public confirmation of that and but why does the protocol exist to come back to that question well in our preset process terms it exists because the European Union acted to protect a series of interrelated interests including the conditions or some of the conditions for all island cooperation as envisaged in the Good Friday agreement and yes the integrity of the EU single market and Ireland's place within it and in that case I do of course mean Ireland the state rather than Ireland the island as a whole but of course northern Ireland remaining in part of in parts of the EU single market and in effect in the EU customs territory means that the deeper the disalignment between the UK the UK here meaning Great Britain and the EU the greater the potential for disruption in the movement of goods between Britain and Northern Ireland is this a good thing no disruption in trade flows between Britain and Northern Ireland are not a good thing but if we simply separate out the impacts on the protocol the protocol's impacts on East West trade from the broader disruptions of the UK leaving the EU we are making an obvious conceptual and practical mistake whether we like it or not the protocol is a consequence of the UK's decision to leave the EU and the specific manner of exit that the UK chose indeed one of the most acute reasons why the protocol had the had a difficult birth at the beginning of this year were a succession of UK choices the protocol landed on people and businesses not after a prolonged period of planning consultation and preparation but after just a year of transition a year in which the UK refused a period a transition period which the UK refused to extend despite the explicit offer from the European Union for that to happen and despite us being in the middle of a once in a century pandemic and during that year of transition the UK government had mostly downplayed the practical consequences of the protocol indeed in a command paper published in May 2020 it sought to begin the task of redefining and correcting from its perspective the meaning of the protocol just months after the withdrawal agreement was signed and of course the UK and European Union only concluded negotiations on the trade and cooperation agreement in the days leading up to Christmas 2020 when as I'm sure everyone on this call will remember all of us had other things on our minds it's sometimes easy because there have been such a litany of irresponsible actions by the UK government to forget how individually irresponsible some of those actions were in my view refusing to extend the transition period even by a few months during the pandemic is one of the less discussed but more egregious of the UK government's decisions but thankfully that trade and cooperation agreement scanty though it is was signed because the alternative was much worse if there hadn't been a baseline zero tariff zero quota trade agreement between the two sides what is now called the sea border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland would have been much much harder I won't go through them any ways in which would have been harder but suffice it to say if tariffs and quotas were applied to goods moving between Britain and Northern Ireland we can we can't but imagine how economically and politically difficult that would have been this points to another hard truth the future of the protocol is inextricably bound up with broader UK EU relationships as we've seen in the past few days the operation and even the existence of the protocol becomes very quickly dragged into disputes over issues as apparently distinct as French British fishing rights from the perspective of critics of the protocol this is a reflection of its inappropriately expansive terms they believe that the original negotiating mandate of the European Union was too broad they believe that the definition of a hard border is too weighted in favour of Irish nationalists or at least pro-European narratives they believe that the emphasis placed on protecting the all-ironed economy now and in the future is misguided and possibly even a violation of Northern Ireland's constitutional position in the UK many of these points were made forcefully in a policy exchange paper released yesterday for those of you who didn't see it I think it's worth examining the fact that Lord Frost wrote forward to that paper would indicate a high degree of sympathy with that view at the head of the UK government but in response to these points and perhaps particularly for an audience in Dublin looking east and north and wondering what the hell is happening I think it's important to be clear that analysis is wrong there is no hard sovereignty solution to the issues of Brexit thrown up for Northern Ireland indeed those issues were themselves first created by the hard sovereignty politics of Brexiteers like Lord Frost and I'd say also in parenthesis the idea that the all-island economy has been exclusively preserved in aspect through Brexit is I'm afraid rendered totally false by as I said the fact that Northern Ireland only remains in the single market for goods new meaningful all-island economy in no way could you say that the all-island economy has been left untouched when our immigration rules are now dramatically different and when our financial services the context in which our financial services operates is dramatically different the context in which the entirety of services which is of course about 80 percent of both the UK and Irish economies is now divergent in a fairly dramatic way and nor it is important to say is there mass disturbance in Northern Ireland over the protocol and this is a really important point to make because given that we live in an age of instant social media communication it can be very easy for people to create shock and spectacle on social media the appalling actions of mindless thugs in burning a bus in Newtonards yesterday does not represent broad based unrest despite the appalling nature of that that act and the traumatic consequences for the public servant affected by it street protests and even those at the height of the summer after the easing of COVID restrictions attracted hundreds rather than thousands or even tens of a thousand or even tens of thousands of attendees in Northern Ireland but that is not to say that there are not varying levels of frustration ranging from outright anger to mildest pleasure from unions who dislike the principle underlying the protocol the principle is that Northern Ireland at least in some areas should be treated differently from the rest of the UK but even with the protections of the protocol they're also there also remains the abiding frustration of many people I represent at the principle of brexit itself as I said earlier Northern Ireland is only in limited parts of the EU single market Northern Ireland and it's important to say this slowly I think is no longer in the EU unfortunately from my perspective as a result of a popular mandate derived overwhelmingly from one part of a multinational state and applied with brutal sovereign supremacy over the other parts of the United Kingdom the only reason Northern Ireland now has special arrangements is because the UK's counter-party in the withdrawal negotiations insisted upon them in January 2017 the position of the UK government in its first detailed brexit policy statement which was the Lancaster House speech was merely that there would be quote no return to the borders of the past along with some illusions to the maintenance of the common travel area but as those of you who followed these issues closely over the years when though the common travel area was largely until the brexit it's been slightly beefed up now a series of administrative conventions and some agreements intergovernmental agreements but largely a series of administrative conventions which was given the title of the common travel area but didn't quite did not quite have the status of a of a grand constitution arrangement that the UK government sometimes gave it without clear demands in those years from the Irish and EU side the upshot of the UK position would substantially have meant a border and goods on the island of Ireland and yes it's important to say again and and it's frustrating to have to say it all these years on but that would have been hugely regressive for both jurisdictions and people on this island the truth is that public opinion in Northern Ireland is more nuanced and open-minded on the protocol than you would be led to believe by certain overall commentary from London and elsewhere and the latest polling commissioned by Queen's University points to a small but seemingly increasing majority in favour of the protocol but perhaps more instructive than that number is the more than two-thirds of people believe that some form of distinctive arrangement from four Northern Ireland is necessary to reflect our unique geography and political dispensation so where do we go from here my hope is that the performative Sovereignism from London is just that a performance building up to a compromise but I can't say at this stage that this hope is anywhere near an expectation certainly the expansiveness of the EU's offer on easing some of the practical mitigations in terms of the easing some of the practical east-west consequences in terms of goods movement is not just welcome but should be transformative and there are particular issues that needed to be resolved and I think particularly of issues like the movement of medicines into Northern Ireland from Britain and those are areas where practical mitigations and agreed solutions were necessary and essential to make the protocol work there are other areas where I do think it would be in all our interests to see even more progress for example we think more ambition on engagement and consultation with Northern Ireland's devolved institutions would be welcome we hear a lot in the discourse now in London Belfast and elsewhere about the triggering of article 16 I'd like to hear more discussion about the triggering of article 14 which allows for representations on areas of relevant protocol implementation to be made by the North South Ministerial Council sadly the fact that the North South Ministerial Council is not operating as comprehensively as it should at the minute is one reason why that hasn't happened yet as usual in discussing the protocol I spent far too little time talking about the very real economic opportunities that arise from Northern Ireland having access to both EU and UK markets the truth is that what the protocol can mean if interpreted and applied in its most expansive and generous sense is that Northern Ireland's duality so long a source of strife and conflict could become an advantage so we would like to see more dedicated strategy binding in not just London and Brussels but investment agencies in Dublin and Belfast to maximise the investment opportunities for the North and indeed the whole island this of course could complement the vision of Ireland's bridging position between Europe and the US that was expanded upon by Secretary Yellen yesterday but all of that is subject to the scaling back of the bleak sovereignty obsessed vision of Lord Frost and the current UK government put simply post Brexit and indeed in relation to everything else in Northern Ireland there is no positive future for Northern Ireland or our island more collectively or our island more collectively if framed in a narrow vision of hard sovereignty I will draw my remarks to the conclusion of that thank you Dahi