Nation now looks to Parliament to solve this mess
There is no guarantee that a second referendum would not end in the same irrational decision as the first, writes Dennis Kennedy
❝ European identity has added a new dimension to the gulf between Irishness and Britishness
❝ It was an ill-considered referendum that got us into this mess. Why would another get us out of it?
Only one thing is certain today on Brexit — it is that uncertainty is guaranteed, not just for a few weeks or months, but probably for years, particularly as regards Northern Ireland.
So far we have a draft agreement between officials in London and Brussels. At the time of writing, there is uncertainty whether Mrs May will get the full support of her Cabinet. After that, it has to be approved by Parliament, and then by the other member states of the EU.
If it is approved, how long will the UK remain part of the EU’s Customs Union to ensure a frictionless border in Ireland? What will happen at the end of that period?
With all eyes on the border, the real impact of Brexit on Northern Ireland is ignored; this is not what happens on the border, or in the middle of the Irish Sea. A re-erected border would be regrettable and would provide a tempting target for dynamiters currently in retirement, but would it lead to widespread violence on anything like the scale of the Troubles? Probably not, unless a radical change in the situation led Sinn Fein to see a future in resumed violence.
The real impact of British withdrawal from the EU — effectively from the whole post-war European integration
project, as Mrs May reaffirmed yesterday — is that it changes the context within which progress was being made in Northern Ireland, and within which it made some sort of sense, in the Belfast Agreement, to define the problem in terms of two national identities, both of which were part of a wider European identity, and hope that they would be able to reach some accommodation in that context.
But in the event, the Agreement — both in its institutions and its implementation — made the political issue into a zero-sum game to be settled by a one-off referendum in which winner would take all.
Not surprisingly, it soon led to a rush to the extremes and the near destruction of both moderate nationalism and moderate unionism.
The current deadlock is a conflict of national identities — Sinn Fein’s assertive Irishness, seen it its exaggerated claims for the Irish language and talk of a border poll, and the DUPs ultra-British nationalism with its contempt for most things Irish and unquestioning demand for Brexit.
The divide is wider than ever, with the European identity, far from being a bridge, now adding a new dimension to the gulf in Northern Ireland between Irishness and Britishness.
Those of us who went along last Friday to Queen’s University to hear two of the most articulate and intelligent Remainers at Westminster, Lord Adonis of Labour and the Tory MP Dominic Grieve, hoping to hear some sense made of the current chaos, were disappointed.
Both are advocates of a second referendum, but neither could offer any convincing scenario for a referendum being called, nor for their confidence that if it were held, it would reverse 2016.
Opinion poll figures suggesting this were quoted, but then most polls predicted defeat for the Brexiteers in 2016. Mr Grieve said the 2016 poll had shown “irrationality” in the debate and in the voting, but he did not say why there would not be a similarly irrational debate and decision this time.
Already the drums of British nationalism are beating to the tune of the gallant Brits defying
the tyrants of Brussels.
It was disappointing that two experienced and much-admired parliamentarians were advocating a second referendum without any discussion of the incompatibility of referendums with a system of parliamentary democracy which has as its fundamental principle the supremacy of parliament.
It was an ill-considered referendum that plunged us into this mess. Why should we pin our hopes on another referendum getting us out of it?
In times of national crisis in a parliamentary democracy, it is to Parliament that the country should look.
Following Mrs May’s “Brexit is Brexit”, the Commons timidly voted overwhelmingly to support the process of withdrawal, despite the evidence that a clear majority of them were, or had been, convinced Remainers.
What had changed, according to several frontbenchers on both sides, was that ‘the people’ had spoken, instructing Parliament to take the country out of the EU. So much for the sovereignty of Parliament.
Will MPs find the courage to remember that they belong to a sovereign Parliament, and exert that sovereignty by saying no to Brexit?