I have many fond memories of hours spent debating and revising the rules of a newly invented childhood game. Always, more time was spent developing the rules than actually playing. In some ways, international relations are similar: the rules of the game matter more than any one actor’s role or even than the collective outcome. 

This is why the statement before the House of Commons by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Brandon Lewis, that the government intended, through the United Kingdom Internal Market (UKIM) bill, to break international law “in a specific and limited way” was so explosive. In one sentence, Lewis had upended centuries of diplomatic convention, damaged the UK’s reputation as a reliable international actor, kickstarted another Brexit-related maelstrom and placed Northern Ireland, once more, centre stage.

According to the UK Government, the provisions of the UKIM bill are required to ensure “the government will be able to deliver its commitments to protect the peace process in Northern Ireland and the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement;” according to the European Union, it “does the opposite” by undermining provisions of the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol in the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement which has, as its purpose, the protection of the same peace process and 1998 Agreement. 

Yet again, Northern Ireland is subject of a diplomatic dispute between the UK and the EU. 

Means, not ends

In substance, the 1998 Agreement is concerned with means, not ends. Its terms recognised the legitimacy of different national identities – Britishness and Irishness – and the diverging constitutional aspirations – nationalism and unionism – with which those identities are associated in Northern Ireland. Meaning, therefore, without resolving longstanding differences on the ideal constitutional future for Northern Ireland, the 1998 Agreement forged new consensus on the rules of the legal and political game.

Those rules included a commitment to democratic and peaceful means and an acknowledgement of the importance of relationships between nationalist and unionist communities within Northern Ireland, across the island of Ireland, and between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, among others. It established a unique system of multi-level governance that was underpinned rights-based legal guarantees and a legally binding treaty between the UK and Ireland governments.

By focusing more on process than outcome, the 1998 Agreement created balance of institutions and principles between still opposed parties in the hope of enabling mutually beneficial collaborative working notwithstanding ongoing disagreements. Such a delicate set up relied on trust not necessarily in the reliability of fellow actors but rather in the robustness of the legal guarantees to which they had also signed up. 

International law and harmonious North-South and East-West relations are thus the cornerstones of the 1998 Agreement and the process of peace in Northern Ireland it symbolizes; both of these were undermined by the actions of the UK government last week.

Since Brandon Lewis’s declaration in Westminster a cacophony of voices condemned and cautioned the UK government about the impact of their retreat from the terms of an international agreement signed just months ago. 

Some of the most vocal critics have had Irish accents. Prior to the publication of the UKIM bill, relations between Dublin and London were tense following three years of Brexit-related disagreements. However, Number 10’s proposal to renege of aspects of the Withdrawal Agreement not only call into question the UK’s commitment to international law on which the 1998 Agreement depends, but it also provides fresh momentum for a deterioration in East-West diplomacy, thus threatening the modus operandi of British-Irish relations envisaged on Good Friday twenty-two years ago. 

A question of trust

It is perhaps worth stating that, as yet, the controversial UKIM bill is not yet law. There is still a chance that this particular political storm may end without any long-term damage to the international legal basis of the 1998 Agreement and the tenuous system of trust on which it was founded. 

That said, the line between political game-playing and real-world consequences is a bit like the Irish border: easy to cross and hard to control. If the 1998 Agreement and Northern Ireland’s still-in-process peace is going to emerge from this latest dispute intact, instead of rhetorical pledges of ‘protection’ there is an urgent need for legal clarity born of political wisdom. Sadly, for the people of Northern Ireland, neither seem forthcoming.