Commemorations of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement are overshadowed by the legacy of Brexit and the manner in which the UK government chose to implement the narrow vote to leave the European Union.

The author of the referendum, David Cameron, departed Downing Street promptly on 24 June 2016, the day after it was lost.

It was open to Theresa May and her successor Boris Johnson to fashion a long-term relationship with the EU, which would have minimised the damage to the Northern Ireland (NI) peace process, built around the assumption that both the UK and Ireland would continue indefinitely as EU members.

They chose instead to opt for a ‘hard’ Brexit, eschewing the option of a close continuing link to the single market and customs union.

This meant problems for the open border between NI and the Republic, the only land frontier between the UK and the EU.

There had to be an economic frontier somewhere once the UK chose the status of a third country, and it could only be in the Irish Sea, creating barriers between NI and Britain, or on the Irish border, whose open status was a central building block in the 1998 settlement.

Two former UK prime ministers, the Conservative John Major and Labour’s Tony Blair, campaigned for the Remain cause during the 2016 referendum, citing potential difficulties for the peace process on a joint visit to Derry a fortnight before the vote was taken.

If we throw the pieces of the constitutional jigsaw up in to the air, no one can be certain where they might land

Major said: “I believe it would be an historic mistake to do anything that has any risk of destabilising the complicated and multi-layered constitutional settlement that underpins stability in Northern Ireland.

“If we throw the pieces of the constitutional jigsaw up in to the air, no one can be certain where they might land.”

Blair, who succeeded Major in 1997, expressed identical concerns and urged Northern Ireland to vote Remain and 56% of the region’s voters did so.

But there was an overall majority for Leave and it would not have mattered had everyone in Northern Ireland ticked Remain.

Both prime ministers had been instrumental in forging the Good Friday Agreement through the 1990s.

Since a ‘hard’ Brexit was not on the ballot paper in 2016 (it offered a Leave/Remain choice with no details) they would have expressed even greater misgivings on their trip to Derry had they foreseen the path which was eventually followed.

Current impasse

The current impasse over the formation of an executive in Northern Ireland is not the first: early concerns about the decommissioning of weapons and later disputes about corruption scandals and the status of the Irish language have meant that the institutions have not functioned fully for 10 of the 25 years since they were created.

The latest stand-off was not caused by domestic disagreements in NI. It is attributable to choices made by the UK government subsequent to the referendum, and not to the Leave decision itself.

The ‘get Brexit done’ imperative led Boris Johnson’s government to implement a version which precluded more open frontiers for all of the UK with EU neighbours, and hence the dilemma for unionists – interruptions to British links or checks on the border with the Republic.

Britain’s trade with Europe is tariff-free but the border checks are a substantial hindrance and also hinder personal mobility

Johnson’s insistence that no such choice was being made was never credible and has been replaced with an agreement that will minimise the damage.

But it was both predictable and predicted that it would threaten the delicate balance of the Good Friday Agreement.

For Johnson and the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative party, the hard form of Brexit held out the prospect of freedom for the UK to pursue trade deals around the world, unconstrained by any remaining obligations to the EU. For example, attachment to the customs union would have required adherence to the common external tariff, while attachment to the single market would have meant a continuation of common product, including food safety standards.

New trade deals

Having paid the price for the freedom to eliminate these constraints and to pursue new trade deals outside Europe, there is very little to show.

Britain’s trade with Europe is tariff-free but the border checks are a substantial hindrance and also hinder personal mobility.

Under the Windsor Framework agreed by prime minister Rishi Sunak and the EU, Northern Ireland will enjoy favoured access to both the European and British markets, at reduced practical cost in compliance for business and industry.

The greater cost is the political breakdown and the loss, for now, of the institutions created 25 years ago.

Had the UK managed to negotiate the promised trade deals around the world, the benefit claimed for the go-it-alone version of Brexit chosen and implemented by the Johnson government, a case could be made that the cake was worth the candle. But the benefits are elusive and the costs for NI all too real.