Our proconsul’s high-handed appointment of Trevor Ringland to be the ‘UK Special Envoy on Northern Ireland’ to the US without regard to the already existing Stormont office there is of course a stunt to appease unionists; they lapped it up, the suckers.
Ringland will be received politely in the US but will not be seen as impartial by Irish-Americans. While he might be a rugby hero for the unionist politicians welcoming his appointment he’s unknown to Americans; all they know is that rugby is a game played by men with oval balls.
The appointment is also an illustration of how this Conservative government sees the north’s divide as a play thing.
Ringland’s qualifications and secure grasp of the relevant matters are summed up by his revealing exclusively to viewers of the BBC’s ‘The View’ in 2019, “We are not leaving the EU. We are having a new relationship with the EU.” Maybe he’s learned since then? If so, will he support the Irish protocol as President Biden and the US Senate do as providing unique opportunities for the north? Or, more likely, will he just be led around by the British embassy?
The frivolous manner in which our proconsul plays around with such an issue is an example of how employment and investment here are treated with ideology trumping economics. A prime specimen of that is Diane Dodds’s recently produced ‘10X Economy’ document. Nobody evens knows what it means. At the Stormont economy committee members wondered whether it meant ten times bigger or ten years bigger, or what? Dodds, but no one else, said it was “purposefully bold and ambitious.” It’s not. It’s mean spirited, small-minded and introspective. It also contains toe-curling obeisance to Brexit Britain when she talks about – cringe – ‘Global Northern Ireland’ in an embarrassing parody of fantasy Global Britain.
The chair of the economy committee, Sinn Féin’s Caoimhe Archibald, pointed out that ‘10X Economy’ is not endorsed by the executive. She also questioned why it was not to be integrated with the Programme of Government? The answer is there is no Programme of Government, but Dodds decided to jump the gun. So, apart from the fact that Poots has now sacked Dodds, 10X Economy will never see the light of day. Just as well, for as John O’Dowd correctly commented, the document reads like a DUP policy paper if you can imagine such an oxymoron existing.
Archibald says: "We have a highly integrated all island economy and all-island supply chains; all-island trade has grown year on year for the past twenty years. Since the beginning of this year north to south and south to north trade have significantly increased. Business surveys show businesses are reorientating supply chains from Britain to Ireland, north and south, and to the EU in response to Brexit.” One of the reasons Dublin and Brussels strove to avoid a border was to maintain that all island economy. Dodds however ignored that reality, believing that the north and the Republic are ‘competing economies’. So much for the beef, pig and poultry industries here.
Even more seriously, as both the SDLP’s Sinéad McLaughlin and Archibald point out, there is no reference to the north’s unique position straddling both EU and UK markets. Chief executive of Manufacturing NI, Stephen Kelly, said in May, “In seven and a half years in this job I’ve never encountered such a level of interest in NI as an investment location for manufacturing.” Obviously this development, like anything else which didn’t fit her worm’s eye view, went over Dodds’s head. Likewise the fact that only 18 per cent of the north’s manufacturers want the protocol abolished. Archibald says: "Our economic strategy needs to harness the potential of our continuing access to the EU single market with its 450 million consumers and maximise the potential of the all Ireland economy.”
Unfortunately Dodds’s replacement will be an equally blinkered DUP MLA.
