When Does The ERG Alligator Enter The Framework Fray?

Dr John Coulter ✍ We’ve now moved into a new phase of the Windsor Framework (WF) which will decide - Hard Sell, or Sell Out for Unionism.

While Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has enough MPs with the help of Labour to get his WF comfortably across the line in any Commons vote, the European Research Group (ERG) will want to prove its MPs are still very much politically alive and kicking.

While former PM Boris Johnson brought in the original Protocol, it was very much like a political computer virus to infect the European Union bureaucracy, I suspect Boris knew the Protocol would never work and had he remained as PM, he would have used it to re-negotiate his own Boris Brexit deal which would have seen the European Court of Justice (ECJ) permanently eradicated from the UK. This was a point I outlined recently on GB News.

As the WF currently stands, even PM Sunak has admitted there is the “minimum necessary” of European law still applying to Northern Ireland - 3% according to the PM.

Put bluntly, how can someone be a little bit pregnant? The person is either pregnant or not! Part of the UK is either subject to EU law or the UK has not left the EU entirely as per the 2016 referendum vote.

There is clearly another agenda at work here - this is part of the comeback of Boris Johnson; is he a so-called ‘busted flush’, or are we about to see the so-called ‘Boris Bounce’?

At the most, he will create a situation using the WF to undermine Sunak’s premiership; at the least, he will ensure that Sunak has to keep looking over his shoulder at Boris and the ERG - surely Sunak will not spend the rest of his premiership relying on Labour boss Sir Keir Starmer’s MPs to get Tory legislation through the Commons?

So what will Boris and ERG strategy be - like the horror movie, Lake Placid, feed the alligator and it will come back for more! The WF, therefore, is merely the meat and potatoes - what Boris and the ERG wants is the extra veg and gravy from the EU.

So in the short-term, Boris and the ERG can put pressure on Sunak to go back to the EU and ask for more concessions. But is that possible or fantasy politics from the ERG given that numerous ERG MPs have publicly backed the Sunak Framework?

Even more key questions emerge since last week’s Sunak Spin tour in Northern Ireland as part of the hard sell - does the EU have any more to give? What would be the consequences for the EU if that remaining 3% of EU law was removed from Northern Ireland?

Certainly in Northern Ireland, all eyes will be on the DUP. In spite of the constant spin, the party is split between the anti-deal faction based at Westminster and mainly comprising the original Paisleyite faction. The supposed pro-deal faction would be mainly those who want to return to Stormont. This faction would be heavily influenced by the supposed ‘blow-ins’ from the Ulster Unionist Party.

If the DUP rejects the WF, what is the Hard Right of Unionism’s workable alternative? How can the peace process be salvaged ? How can Stormont be saved as the so-called Stormont Brake will only function if there is a working devolved power-sharing Executive?

The real danger to avoid is that PM Sunak cannot sell the deal to the DUP, and that the hard men of Loyalist terrorism decide it is their turn.

They will target the Republic of Ireland (remember how an RoI Foreign Minister had to abandon speech in Belfast because of Loyalist bomb alert).

Extreme Loyalism has a track record in this scenario. In 1974, when the political vacuum was caused by the fall of the Sunningdale power-sharing Executive, Loyalist terrorists set off no warning bombs in Dublin and Monaghan, murdering 30 people and injuring another 300.

The UK may have had an economy to soak up the consequences of the IRA’s bombing campaign during the Troubles; the Republic’s economy has no such safeguard.

Above all, democracy and the ballot box must remain front and centre - the gun and bomb can never be allowed back into Irish politics. We’ve already seen it last month with the attempted murder of a senior police detective in NI by the New IRA dissident republican faction.

Again, if the DUP does reject the deal, there will almost certainly be a realignment in Unionism with the UUP merging with the pro-deal DUP to form a new party simply called The Unionist Party. The anti-deal DUP and Jim Allister’s TUV, elements of the Loyal Orders, and even a section of the Loyalist community, will form a hardline, Right-wing Unionist Coalition movement.

This would almost be a mirror image of the two Westminster General Elections of 1974, when Unionism was divided between the Centre Right pro-Assembly Unionists, and the Hard Right United Ulster Unionist Council (known as either the Treble UC or Unionist Coalition). The latter comprised four Unionist parties - UUP, DUP, Vanguard Unionist and United Ulster Unionist Party (UUUP).

Later this month, Unionists will travel to the United States for the traditional St Patrick’s Day celebrations. Be in no doubt, US President Joe Biden will be in full flow to heap as much pressure as he can on the DUP delegates to back the Framework. Given Biden’s dreadful debacle over Afghanistan, he desperately needs a foreign policy coup he can boast about.

And given Biden’s ‘nationalist credentials’, Unionists will not appreciate ‘Sleepy Joe’ rocking over to Northern Ireland next month (if at all!) to mark the Silver Jubilee of the Good Friday Agreement to lecture Unionism on how to run a government.

The spin war over the Windsor Framework is really about who runs the DUP and what is a future direction for the ERG. These are all more points I have hinted at on GB News.

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Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online.