Thread by @AndrewChapman50

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…

The government has published its Unilateral Declaration on Consent:

as required by Article 18(2) of the new Protocol:

Consent is to be by a majority vote in the Northern Ireland Assembly:

in an apparent breach of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, which allows a 'significant minority' of Assembly members to trigger a cross-community voting procedure for 'key decisions'. Who would claim that this is not a 'key decision' for Northern Ireland??

Moreover, as the DUP point out today, the Assembly has no opportunity to give consent to *entering into* these arrangements, which certainly change the status of NI in the UK:

order-order.com/2019/10/17/rea…

arguably in breach of the 1998 UK-Ireland Agreement:

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…

Having I hope stated the DUP's objections fairly, there are I think two factors that work the other way:

1) the cross-community procedure makes sense where a veto leaves the status quo in place. But with Brexit, there is going to be change whatever happens - and it seems unfair

that an outcome preferred by a minority should prevail over one preferred by the majority;

2) if the DUP had argued for a normal international border between UK and ROI, they would in a way have had a stronger case for the normal procedures to be adopted. But in their 2017

manifesto they called for a 'frictionless' Irish border, to attain which special arrangements of one type or another are necessary. These had to be worked out and negotiated at the UK-EU level, and so I it may be reasonable for the UK govt to take a broader view and treat this

as a special case, where the normal GFA procedures for consent would not I think lead to the fairest outcome.

David Trimble likewise thinks the consent mechanism is in accordance with 'the spirit of' the GFA - apparently acknowledging implicitly that it may not be compliant with the letter of it:

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/10/nobel-…