Northern Ireland and Brexit: where sovereignty and stability collide?

Abstract

Having been issues which stimulated little discussion beyond Northern Ireland before the Brexit referendum, the 'Irish issue' dominated and complicated the subsequent EU-UK withdrawal negotiations. The 'taking back control' narrative bears the hallmarks of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's notion of a 'recaptured sovereignty'. This conception of sovereignty, however, clashes with the post-sovereign character and content of the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. The institutions created by the Agreement move beyond the old frameworks for political order by creating a series of interlocking territorial, cross-territorial, and cross-national institutions based on shared sovereignty. This prompts critical questions about the resilience and sustainability of the Agreement against the backdrop of a shift in sovereignty which appears incompatible with the key tenets of Northern Ireland's peace agreement. This article examines how Northern Ireland's approach to and experience of the EU referendum differed from the rest of the UK. It queries how the referendum result, subsequent political and electoral developments, and difficulties in agreeing a withdrawal formula and future UK-EU relationship, expose the gap between the UK's commitments to a post-sovereign arrangement for Northern Ireland and the preference for a return to an older conception of sovereignty as implied by the Brexit vote.Unlike other parts of the UK, Northern Ireland's historic experience has been marked by serious and violent conflict. The movement from conflict to peace over a protracted period of time culminated in the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in 1998. The evolving process of peace consolidation which followed was interrupted by the June 2016 referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union (EU). In Northern Ireland, a majority voted in favour of Remain. The referendum campaign, however, was different in tone and content to the rest of the UK (see Murphy 2016). It focused less on migration and 'taking back control', and more on issues, such as the future status of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, the implications of a Leave vote for the (fragile) peace process and the impact on trade and policies. Having been an issue which stimulated little discussion beyond Northern Ireland before the referendum, issues pertaining to Northern Ireland and the Irish border came to dominate and complicate the subsequent EU-UK withdrawal negotiations. The 'taking back control' narrative which so animated Britain, and particularly England's, referendum narrative and the subsequent UK-EU negotiations bears the hallmarks of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's (2020) notion of a 'recaptured sovereignty'. This conception of sovereignty, however, clashes with the post-sovereign character and content of the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. The principles and institutions established by the Agreement move beyond the old frameworks for political order by creating a series of novel and interlocking territorial, cross-territor...

Building Peace in Northern Ireland: Hopes for the Future

“…Brexit has certainly added another layer of uncertainty to any discussions of funding for conflict transformation. Murphy (2021) carefully notes that the results of the UK Referendum indicate that Northern Ireland voted in favour of staying in the EU. The concern with Brexit is the potential re-introduction of a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.…”

“…April 2021 saw significant violence in Belfast (Landow and McBride, 2021). In addition, the 2017 collapse of Stormont's power-sharing executive left Northern Ireland in a political vacuum until its restoration in 2020 (Heenan and Birrell 2018;Heenan and Birrell 2021;Murphy 2021).…”

A worlds-eye view of the United Kingdom through parliamentary e-petitions

“…This is hardly surprising since the Parliament, which ran from 2017 to 2019 was largely consumed by the type of Brexit deal that was to be negotiated between the EU and the United Kingdom (Heide and Worthy, 2019; Martill and Staiger, 2020; Schnapper, 2020). While in a post-Brexit deal world it may be thought that this topic is now settled, this is unlikely to be the case with opinions still polarised on the topic (Hobolt et al, 2020; Ryder, 2020) and much detail still to be worked out (Gamble, 2021; Murphy, 2021; O’Reilly, 2020). Thus, Brexit and to an extent domestic UK politics (e.g., the devolution of powers or the possible separation of member kingdoms) are likely to be continuing topics of interest.…”

Migration and partisan identification as British Unionists or Irish Nationalists in Northern Ireland

“…It is for instance widely acknowledged that freedom of movement between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland was a crucial aspect of bringing decades of sectarian violence to an end (e.g. Coakley, 2018; McCall, 2018; Murphy, 2021). Less attention has however been given to the potential of migration softening the entrenched historical conflict between predominantly Protestant British Unionists and predominantly Catholic Irish Nationalists.…”