{"id":292,"date":"2024-02-03T07:34:04","date_gmt":"2024-02-03T07:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/?p=292"},"modified":"2024-02-02T16:56:18","modified_gmt":"2024-02-02T16:56:18","slug":"some-ado-about-not-much-the-dup-deal-on-power-sharing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/2024\/02\/03\/some-ado-about-not-much-the-dup-deal-on-power-sharing\/","title":{"rendered":"Some ado about not much: The DUP deal on power-sharing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The publication on Wednesday of a UK Command Paper “Safeguarding the Union<\/a>” came largely out of the blue. For months the Secretary of State and budding author, Chris Heaton-Harris, has been talking with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) about returning to power-sharing in the Northern Ireland Executive.<\/p>\n

Last year’s Windsor Framework<\/a> was supposed to have achieved this, although at the time it was evident that a lot more effort had gone into squaring circles with the Commission than any of the parties in Stormont.<\/p>\n

Any manner of carrots and sticks have been banished over the last 12 months, to no obvious effect, so hopes were not high at all about this current push.<\/p>\n

But a deal does indeed seem to have been done, with the institutions get back into operation<\/a>, some two years since they collapse.<\/p>\n

In this post, I want to explore the elements of that deal as they relate to the Northern Ireland Protocol. This was nominally the major issue for the DUP, so we’d expect things to have moved clearly.<\/p>\n

However, my top line is that this deal doesn’t really make any major change to what was agreed in Windsor, so any argument that London moved mountains here is not really in accordance with facts on the ground.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Command Paper is a hefty tome, filled with many pages of reminders of what’s what and lofty promises of what will be. Take those bits out and you’re left with, well, not much.<\/p>\n

It sets out 24 (count ’em!) ‘measures the Government is committed to’, which feels like a relic from the ‘never mind the length, feel the width<\/a>‘ school of marketing.<\/p>\n

As much as is possible, those measures break down into:<\/p>\n