The Democratic Unionist Party has apparently agreed to resume its power-sharing deal in the Northern Ireland Assembly, even though none of the objections to post-Brexit trade rules over which its members walked out seem to have been addressed.

The DUP quit the Stormont assembly nearly two years ago, in protest at the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol for post-Brexit trade that would put a border between the Province and the rest of the United Kingdom.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak proposed a new deal, called the Windsor Framework, last year. This adopted a suggestion from the European Union that ‘Green’ and ‘Red’ lanes be set up at borders.

There would be a ‘Green Lane’ for goods going into NI, and they won’t be checked, while goods going through the province and into the Republic (or the other way, and into the UK) will be subject to customs procedures.

And the DUP didn’t like it – so Stormont remained closed for business.

Now, after talks with NI Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has announced that a deal has been reached.

But nothing seems to have changed!

Heaton-Harris has said full details of the deal won’t be available until all-party talks are finalised, and it contains “significant” changes.

However, according to the BBC:

“Not one word of the Northern Ireland Protocol has been altered, and that means Northern Ireland remains under the EU’s customs code, and that means Great Britain continues to be regarded, in law, as a foreign country when it comes to trade.”

He tells gathered reporters: “Under the protocol there are hundreds of EU laws that we do not make and cannot change.”

He points out that those laws which shape NI’s goods economy are “identical” to those that govern the goods economy of the Republic of Ireland.

He says it’s all a “tawdry climbdown by the DUP on their own tests which have not been met” and accuses the party of “accepting foreign law”.

This Writer suspects that the change of heart may be partly to do with one aspect of the ‘Windsor Framework’ deal that Sunak mentioned when he announced it last year.

He said the Northern Ireland Assembly would decide whether the ‘Windsor Framework’ should be supported, in 2024.

This means, I think, that if the DUP wishes to oppose it, there needs to be a functioning Assembly, and if that party continues to refuse to take up its seats there, stopping it from working, then government of Northern Ireland goes back to Westminster, which will support the new deal.

Either way, it seems the DUP is checkmated because the Assembly will probably back it.

So the reasoning may be that it is better to go back to Stormont, debate the deal there and see what can be negotiated than to let the Tory government in Westminster make the decision and be forced to live with it.

But I’m prepared to be wrong.

We’ll find out, when the details are published.

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