Alex Kane: The Windsor Framework review is just about making a show

The purpose of a brake – its sole purpose, in fact – is to stop or slow down motion.

The first time most of us learn how to use one is when we find ourselves behind the wheel of a car in preparation for a driving test.

Its use may cause us to skid a little bit, slow down if speed restrictions or road conditions require it, or hold the car in place when we leave it. It’s all about controlling motion.

The Stormont Brake – promised to the DUP as part of the package to restore devolution – does none of that.

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Alex Kane: The Windsor Framework review is just about making a show

The assembly vote just before the Christmas recess – when all the unionist MLAs voted against the existing regulations – automatically trigged the brake. But it didn’t stop the regulations. It didn’t even pause them.

If you hadn’t been paying any attention to local politics recently, you wouldn’t even have noticed any difference at all between conditions before the vote or after the vote. And that’s because there is no difference.

But because the government was required to be seen to do something in response to the vote, the Secretary of State announced a few days ago that the had appointed Lord Murphy of Torfaen (the former Secretary of State Paul Murphy) to “conduct an independent review of the functioning of the Windsor Framework. This will report to me within six months”.

And don’t ask me why – although I do love musicals – but my mind immediately turned to Oliver! when I read the NIO statement: ‘I’m reviewing the situation, I must quickly look up everyone I know. Titled people - with a station, who can help me make a real impressive show!’

Because to be brutally honest, making a show is what this review is all about.

The Windsor Framework will never be acceptable to political/electoral unionism because it underpins Northern Ireland’s constitutionally unique position of not being fully in the UK, nor fully in the EU.

That being the case – and with no prospect whatsoever of that position changing as a consequence of the review – then I can conceive of no circumstance in which unionists would change their vote if another vote were held.

The government knows this, of course. As did Rishi Sunak and the other 515 MPs who voted it through the House of Commons on March 22 2023.

As did the DUP MPs who voted against it and then spent the next few months trying – and failing – to get it changed.

For all their talk about “making a strong case to the European Reform Group of Conservative MPs and others”, the DUP only managed to persuade 22 ‘rebels’ to join them in the No lobby; and at least half of them were more interested in damaging Sunak than in supporting the DUP.

The DUP already knows that the Framework will still be firmly in place when Lord Murphy’s commission reports. And Lord Murphy and the government know that the DUP knows that.

But they also know that the DUP will not be deploying a wrecking ball and bringing down the assembly and executive again if the commission doesn’t deliver for it.

The DUP has nowhere else to go because if there had been a way of ditching or rewriting the Framework to their satisfaction, we would have seen the evidence by now.

And nor does the DUP want to do anything that would be seen to play into Jim Allister’s hands.

So, what’s the likely outcome? I think we’ll see a significant push to address the concerns of traders and business owners.

Whatever their political views and constitutional preferences may be, they want life made easier for them. Less paperwork. Less red tape. Less difficulty in moving goods to and from Northern Ireland.

As I’ve been banging on about since November 2018, what most people who have everyday contact with Brexit regulations need most is clarity and certainty.

If the review commission found a way of providing this sort of clarity and certainty (and I’m pretty sure both the EU and incoming Irish government would be prepared to help), then I’m also pretty sure that the DUP – and unionism generally – could sell it to their bases as a success.

Fair enough, it still leaves the problem of Northern Ireland’s precise constitutional status to be resolved; but sometimes it’s better to bank successes as you gather them rather than insist on an all-or-nothing purist victory.

But one caveat (oh, come on, you knew there’d be one).

If the DUP is going to stay in the assembly/executive, then at least find a way of making it work a darn sight better than it has been since last February’s reboot.

I really don’t want to be singing another song from Oliver! in six months’ time.

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