The future of UK-Irish relations, with former Conservative Minister, Sir David Lidington

The future of UK-Irish relations - with Sir David Lidington

Sir David Lidington, Conservative MP for Aylsebury from 1992-2019 and former Minister for Europe, Justice, and Shadow-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, speaks to Professor Richard Penty, Master of Sidney Sussex College and the IoI team about the future of UK-Irish relations. How much progress has been made towards a “shared society” in Northern Ireland? Is this progress being undone by Brexit? Do politicians and voters in Great Britain really care about Northern Ireland? And how can the UK foster more constructive relationships with Ireland and the EU? 

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• Executive summary
• About the speaker and discussant
• Watch the conversation
• What was said?

Executive summary

• We shouldn’t underrate what has been achieved in Northern Ireland over recent decades. Ending Republican and Loyalist paramilitary campaigns is a huge achievement. There has also been significant progress in desegregation of workplaces. However, Northern Ireland is still not a truly shared society, and public opinion has recently been polarising on unionist-nationalist lines.
• Lidington wants both the UK and EU to think more strategically about their long-term relationship and prioritise Northern Ireland as crucial to ongoing relations. Lidington believes voters in the rest of the UK are widely indifferent towards Northern Ireland, but government “cannot be driven by that indifference.”
• He recommends a self-standing, time-limited treaty between the UK and the EU to agree in detail on sanitary and phytosanitary standards. This would allow the UK to play a more constructive role in setting standards, rather than having to stay in dynamic alignment with changing EU regulations.
• Lidington wants the UK to formally establish a new set of bilateral relationships with the Republic of Ireland. This could include an annual summit between Taoiseach and Prime Minister, a joint Cabinet meeting, a structured dialogue on security threats (both internal and external), and a secondment programme for officials to spend 6 or 12 months working for the other government. 
• This reform of the bilateral relationship could also mean an expanded role for the British-Irish Intergovernmental Council, with quarterly meetings and a more practical, less ceremonial role, becoming a routine, boring part of intergovernmental business.

About the speaker

Lidington was the Conservative MP for Aylsebury for 28 years, from 1992-2019, and has served in various ministerial positions, including Minister for Europe, Justice Minister and Shadow-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

Watch the conversation

What was said?

When Sir David Lidington first took office as MP in 1992, he was issued with a mirror on a telescopic pole. The mirror was to check for Republican bombs underneath his car. The threat of assasination was very real - two Conservative MPs, Airey Neave and Ian Gow, had been killed in Republican car bombings, and five party officials and officals’ spouses died in the Provisional IRA’s 1984 Brighton Hotel bombing. Lidington regards it as a huge achievement that now a whole generation of young people has no direct memory of the conflict in Northern Ireland, which claimed over 3500 lives from 1969-98. However, many young people have grown up with family stories of the Troubles, and know those who still bear the physical and psychological scars to this day.

Lidington thinks we shouldn’t underrate what has been achieved in Northern Ireland. The major Loyalist and Republican paramilitary groups have long ended their campaigns, and he commends the success of desegregation in workplaces and, as Barry Colfer, notes, in higher education. However, Lidington does not believe Northern Ireland is a genuinely shared society, with ongoing divisions symbolised by the ‘peace walls’ that still separate nationalist/republican and unionist/loyalist neighbourhoods in Belfast. Lidington believes that public opinion has recently polarised, and Brexit has made things even more sensitive. 

A particular area of tension post-Brexit is the Northern Ireland Protocol. To avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, Northern Ireland continues to adhere to EU single market and Customs Union regulations on goods, while imports from Great Britain are checked at Northern Irish ports to ensure they match these standards. The Protocol has proven unacceptable to many Unionists, who regard the customs checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain as an effective border, and thus a real and symbolic separation between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

Lidington himself went on the campaign trail for Remain in Northern Ireland, alongside the UUP’s Danny Kinahan and the SDLP’s Alasdair McDonnell. He thinks a significant dilemma over borders would always have been inevitable with Brexit, but many politicians from his own Conservative Party, such as Boris Johnson and Theresa Villiers, naively disregarded the issue. Pressed on the point by Barry Colfer, Lidington sees Villiers’ April 2016 claim, that Irish border rules could remain unchanged post-Brexit because they have been broadly consistent since Irish independence, not as deliberately disingenuous but rather betraying a misunderstanding of how the EU single market works. Lidington also believes that EU negotiators share some of the blame for tensions in negotiation over the Protocol; he emphasises his liking and respect for Michel Barnier, but found that Barnier never really thought himself inside the skin of mainstream unionists.

Lidington believes more is required from both the UK and EU 27 to secure a workable deal for Northern Ireland and rebuild relations more generally. Britain’s exit from the European Union has removed the channels of permanent conversation which maintained trust-based diplomatic relationships prior to Brexit - both official EU councils and committees and the informal chats over coffee or lunch. Rebuilding this trust is a duty for both parties. The UK and the EU need to think more strategically about what they each want the long-term relationship between them to be. 

Furthermore, neither the EU or UK has given sufficient political priority to Northern Ireland. Asked by audience member, Matthew Bullock, former master of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, how much the English public care about what happens in Northern Ireland, Lidington answers, “Not very much, is the brutal truth.” He explains that opinion polls repeatedly demonstrate English as well as Scottish and Welsh voters’ apathy towards Northern Ireland, but that the English in particular are prone to indifference towards the other areas of the UK, resenting them taking our money and failing to understand their particular issues and histories. However, British politicians have a responsibility to take the initiative and not be driven by that indifference. 

As an alternative to the current protocol, he proposes a self-standing, time-limited treaty between the UK and the EU to agree in detail on sanitary and phytosanitary standards. This would allow the UK to play a more active role in agreeing standards, rather than having to stay in dynamic alignment with changing EU regulations. He reminds us that negotiating and signing a bilateral treaty is a fundamental expression of sovereignty, rather than an incursion on it.

Lidington also wants the UK and the Republic of Ireland to rejuvenate their bilateral relationship. New arrangements could include an annual summit between Taoiseach and Prime Minister, a joint Cabinet meeting, a structured dialogue on security threats (both internal and external), and a secondment programme for officials to spend 6 or 12 months working for the other government. He also envisions an expanded role for the British-Irish Intergovernmental Council, with quarterly meetings and a more practical, less ceremonial purpose. Its meetings would become a routine, boring part of intergovernmental business.

Within Northern Ireland itself, Lidington thinks there has been a lack of strategic thinking among Unionists, who have thus far failed to adapt to the reality of the region’s shifting demographics. With the loss of a Unionist majority, the Union depends on having enough moderate nationalists and unaligned people prepared to go along with it, because actually letting sleeping dogs lie is the best option – that people can live their lives as Irish men and women, within what is the UK, but without the border making any practical or psychological difference to how they live their lives. 

He admires the role played by civil society and churches in building up contact and relationships across communities. The clergy can utilise their public trust and respect to act as facilitators, as confidential channels between opposed political factions. However, he warns churches and civil society cannot create a shared society alone. Ultimately, action and cooperation from political leaders - in Westminster, Stormont, Dublin and Brussels - is essential to building trust across borders and communities, and further progress and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.