Parsing the backstop: Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement in the Brexit debates
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Parsing the backstop: Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement in the Brexit debates Kimberly Cowell‑Meyers1 · Carolyn Gallaher2
© Springer Nature Limited 2020
Abstract This article examines the challenges Brexit poses to the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) in Northern Ireland (NI) by considering how political leaders frame the prob‑ lem of reconciling Brexit with the GFA. Analyzing the Hansard record of four key debates on the European Union (Withdrawal) Act of 2018 in the House of Com‑ mons (the first Withdrawal Agreement), we conclude that the Brexit debate reveals a distinct new threat to the peace accord: its nestedness in British politics. The pri‑ mary objection MPs raised was that the withdrawal deal would undermine UK sov‑ ereignty. In fact, opposition to the multiple sovereignties that the GFA enshrined appeared to be one of the principal reasons for the withdrawal act’s defeat. Second, MPs objected to the way the backstop’s multiple exercise of sovereignty and multi‑ lateralism would impact the union between NI and Great Britain, if not its impact on NI itself. Indeed, they tended to decouple discussion of the backstop from pre‑ vious violence or the peace process. Third, debate was heavily skewed in favor of Unionism, rather than the balanced and plural mechanisms typical of British policy. Fourth, MPs were not coherent in how they understood the GFA. We find that the British Parliament has departed markedly from its established pattern of bilateral‑ ism, bipartisanship and deference to government in dealing with Northern Ireland. The consequence is that the British parliament, rather than armed actors in the prov‑ ince, may well undo one of the most successful peace agreements and for reasons that have little to do with NI. Keywords Brexit · Northern Ireland · Good Friday Agreement · Belfast Agreement · British Parliament · British Policy · Backstop · Sovereignty · Consent
* Kimberly Cowell‑Meyers [email protected] Carolyn Gallaher [email protected] 1
School of Public Affairs, American University, Washington, USA
2
School of International Service, American University, Washington, USA
Vol.:(0123456789)
K. Cowell‑Meyers, C. Gallaher
Introduction The 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (GFA)1 transformed the situation in Northern Ireland (NI), delivering an end to armed conflict, if not quite peace. Brexit challenges the core elements of the GFA. The Agreement was crafted when both the UK and the Republic of Ireland were part of the European Union and shared a common political and economic framework, including open borders. Brexit calls this arrangement into question because the ‘imaginative elements of co-sovereignty’ embodied in the Agreement cannot function with an EU border between the two nation-state partners (O’Leary 1999). This article examines the challenges posed by Brexit to the GFA by consider‑ ing how political leaders discuss the GFA in the context of the Brexit withdrawal debate. Using the Hansard record of four key debates on the European Union (With‑ drawal) Act of
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