This is why Labour's election result could have a negative impact on Anglo-Irish relations

What do Andrea Jenkyns and Jeremy Corbyn have in common? It is not a comparison that either the Vice-Chair of the European Research Group or the Labour leader would welcome. But the answer is found in two Sky News interviews from the height of the Brexit crisis.

Challenged by Kay Burley in the wake of Boris Johnson's October decision to side-line his erstwhile partners in the DUP by agreeing to a regulatory and customs border in the Irish Sea, Jenkyns shrugged: “My constituency's miles away from Northern Ireland.”

It was a far cry from the line Conservative MPs, and ERG members in particular, had taken over the previous two years—trumpeting their unionist credentials, asserting their commitment to “our precious union,” and demanding that the UK leave the EU uniformly, as “one nation.”

What looked like a characteristic gaffe, however, was really a symptom of a deeper relationship problem. Jenkyns had offered a blunt summary of the attitude to Northern Ireland that many MPs across the House share but seldom voice publicly.

Unlike in 1992 or 1997, by 2015, when Jenkyns was first elected, most MPs could safely ignore Northern Ireland. The majority confined their engagement with Northern Irish affairs to a simple affirmation of support for the Good Friday Agreement, perhaps without having ever read it, safe in the knowledge that the subject was largely avoidable and certainly not electorally decisive.

That was, of course, until Brexit and the collapse of Stormont meant that there was nowhere for MPs to hide from the latest Irish question—or indeed, from the DUP, who emerged from obscurity to shore up the Conservatives. The ERG quickly forged an expedient alliance with Arlene Foster's 10 MPs. They, in turn, grasped the opportunity to tighten the screws, neglecting to consider the inevitable strain of an ERG-fuelled hard Brexit on the union.

They were not the only culprits. In the other Sky News interview, in December 2018, Corbyn cited the DUP’s “very good and very sensible reasons” for taking issue with the Irish backstop.

The Labour leadership’s understandable eagerness to exploit the Government’s weakness resulted in the bizarre sight of Jeremy Corbyn—a lifelong Irish Republican—echoing the DUP’s concern of the threat facing the UK’s constitutional integrity, despite the concerns of not only the Irish government but also of his sister party, the SDLP.

Now that Boris Johnson’s resounding majority has denied the DUP any leverage in the Commons and shut down the possibility of any further dramatic knife-edge votes, Labour must stop politicking on the island of Ireland. With Corbyn on his way out, introspection is the order of the day within Labour circles. The party should remember that the Good Friday Agreement is one of its greatest achievements, which means it has a duty and the authority to scrutinise forensically the Government’s handling of it.

Boris Johnson has already set his first test: Labour must react to the commitment in the Queen’s Speech to amend the Human Rights Act—another proud Labour legacy—to disapply it to acts that took place before 2000, explicitly pitched as an attempt to stop prosecutions of Troubles veterans.

But how? The uncomfortable truth is that a wealth of Labour’s expertise and experience in relation to Northern Ireland and Anglo-Irish affairs was lost overnight on 12 December.

The first blow came when Steve Pound, the universally-popular shadow Northern Ireland minister, announced his retirement. With nine years in the role and another thirteen years on the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee under his belt, he represented a significant loss to Labour’s institutional memory.

That collective memory and experience took an even greater hit on election night, when Vernon Coaker, well-respected as Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary under Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn, unexpectedly lost his seat in Gedling. Recognised across the House and in Stormont as a fair broker, he had continued to speak frequently and with passion about Northern Ireland from the backbenches.

Jenny Chapman, who held the Northern Ireland brief in the Shadow Brexit team and had spent three years getting to grips with the Irish Government’s position in the negotiations, lost her seat in Darlington. In Scotland, meanwhile, Ged Killen lost Rutherglen and Hamilton West. In his two years in parliament, Killen built solid relationships with civic groups whilst campaigning for same-sex marriage rights to be extended to Northern Ireland.

He was one of a new generation of Labour MPs, along with Conor McGinn and Stella Creasy, which has highlighted the deficit of civil rights outstanding from the Good Friday Agreement, stepping in where the DUP and Sinn Féin failed.

Meanwhile, the frontbench Northern Ireland team of Tony Lloyd and Karin Smyth are likely to have to take on the Scotland brief just as pressure for a second independence referendum mounts.

Unlike Jenkyns, each of these Labour figures understood the nuances and complexities of the brief in a way few other parliamentarians do. Their departure from the Commons leaves Labour vulnerable at a critical juncture. Expertise and trust with parties and local stakeholders will be needed if they are to have any hope of holding the Prime Minister to account on his Withdrawal Agreement and future trade deals, especially given he still claims—falsely—that there will be no checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea, contradicting his Secretary of State.

And even more pressing are the latest cross-party talks to restore Stormont. There is hope that the chastening election results for Sinn Féin and the DUP will inject fresh impetus into this round of negotiations. One thing uniting the parties as they return to Stormont House is their lack of trust in the UK government; it will fall to Labour to hold it to account.

With key thinkers gone, there is a risk that the place miles away from their constituencies is overlooked again as the party's Brexit focus becomes more insular—and preoccupied with electoral gain. Now more than ever, any prospective Labour leader should take the initiative, and provide a coherent strategy to renew and develop its close ties with Northern Ireland to compensate for the loss in its own ranks. It can start with the two new MPs from its sister party, the SDLP, and Stephen Farry, the new Alliance MP for North Down.

Although Westminster is already forgetting the DUP, it would do well to remember that the Irish question is never fully settled. The test for a serious Opposition and contender for Government will be how it answers this iteration of it.