Challenging Peace

The Impact of Brexit and the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill on Northern Ireland’s Transitional Justice Process

Abstract

Scholarship on how the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union destabilized Northern Ireland’s fragile post-Troubles peace focuses predominantly on the border issue and Protocol negotiations. However, this article explores the possibility that Brexit and its contributing factors – Euroscepticism, English nationalism, sovereignty concerns and empire nostalgia – also impacted Northern Ireland’s transitional justice processes by playing a role in the introduction of the widely criticized Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill in May 2022, which was passed into law in September 2023. That Bill foresaw the elimination of centralized judicial transitional justice mechanisms and concentrated power in the hands of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Results from an analysis of UK parliamentary debates combined with evidence from two stakeholder interviews indicate that the Legacy Bill’s timing, its contents, and the way in which its introduction was handled by the sponsoring Northern Ireland Office in the UK Government were likely impacted by Brexit and the influence of the hard-Brexit Conservative party faction characterized by its Euroscepticism, English nationalism, and commitment to British sovereignty.