MATT COOPER THIS COULD BE A GOOD DEAL

NOW it gets really interesting, this Brexit thing. And important too. It’s time for all of us to pay attention. Much of the stuff we’ve heard in recent months has been confusing – and let’s be honest, boring too. The ins and outs of customs unions and the single market and borders down the Irish Sea can be complicated stuff that takes time and effort to understand. The much-vaunted ‘backstop’ has been this decade’s version of the ‘tracker mortgage’ as people didn’t want to admit that they didn’t know what it is meant to be. (Tip: Think of the net in baseball which stops the ball that passes the batter from flying away too far. That’s a backstop. In this case it was to mean that if no deal could be reached between the EU and UK on future trading arrangements, then the safety net would be left in place or erected to ensure the physical border on the island would not be restored.)

Watch now however, as some try to force British Prime Minister Theresa May to abandon the solemn commitment on the backstop into which her government entered last December with Ireland and the EU, and which she confirmed in March. That would be perfidious Albion indeed were it to happen. May’s word back then was surely her bond, even if some of her former government ministers subsequently claimed that, somehow and incredibly, they didn’t understand the significance of the concession she’d announced. (It was clear to us all back then that she was effectively committing the UK to membership of a customs union with the EU, because she couldn’t have a trade border down the middle of the Irish Sea that would separate Northern Ireland from Great Britain.)

Fear

We’re at the stage where push is coming to shove, where complacency and fear have met each other: for all those who think Brexit is no big deal (nobody would dare to close the border or stop flights between here and Britain) there are as many who think it is the worst thing that could happen to us (the border will take hours to cross and food, medicines and industrial components will become more difficult and expensive to source and export.)

Dishonesty and disingenuousness is present too in the febrile atmosphere that has taken hold, as some adopt a win-at-all-costs approach and others slip around words in a form of constructive ambiguity. That is a phrase that found favour when deals had to be done to construct the Good Friday Agreement, when give and take had to come into play and people, for the sake of the overall deal, had to suck up things they didn’t like at all.

So now we stand on the verge of history. That is not too dramatic a statement. This is not just generation defining stuff, but what happens now could shape the future of these islands for decades upon decades, in ways unimaginable even three years ago before the dye was cast.

The relationships between the UK and the EU and (by dint of our membership of the EU) between the UK and Ireland are going to change. The questions that remain to be answered are how and by how much.

We may get a deal between the UK and EU which changes existing arrangements in a significant but relatively manageable way. Or we may get what some people call a bad deal, which suits few, but at least provides a road map to future relations. Or we may get no deal which leads to chaos, which is rarely good, no matter how much some people like to highlight disruption as some kind of virtue.

The coming days threaten to be fraught. We don’t know the details of what has been agreed apparently, albeit in draft form it seems, between the UK and Ireland. We have only the reports of some details, starting with what RTÉ revealed after 4pm yesterday. That hasn’t stopped those who haven’t seen the devil of the detail from jumping to conclusions.

Pressure

The usual suspects on the hard Brexit side have been ramping up the pressure on May with press statements since about 5pm yesterday. They are complaining about what they assume the agreement contains and they have rejected it already, sight unseen. That is no surprise, given their form.

However, their main issue may be that they fear she is about to win which, more importantly to them, means they lose. To their horror, she might be able to persuade enough of her party to support her and approve a negotiated deal, one which doesn’t give the hard-liners everything, or near enough of what they want. These men like their all or nothing positions.

But if May achieves victory, against the odds, the likes of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg are likely consigned to the margins of political history, most unlikely to ever have the power in future that they desire or seemingly believe is their entitlement. Their personal ambitions have long taken priority over Britain’s national interest, no matter how much patriotism they boast. It is easier to see that from across the Irish Sea.

Our Government, wisely, seems ready to hunker down in the coming days, staying largely silent. It is important for it to ignore provocation from those who last night claimed that the mooted deal is going to destroy ‘the precious union’, giving the Irish Government too much oversight over what is British territory. That is an exaggeration but it is coming forth easily from both the DUP and the malcontents of the Conservative Party. The urge to respond must be resisted. This is for May to sort out. If Mary Lou McDonald tries to goad the Government in the Dáil today and in coming days, then all Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney need ask in return is when Sinn Féin will be taking its seats in Westminster for what could prove to be crucial votes.

Interests

For the most part, Varadkar and Coveney have played their cards very well to date, defending this country’s national interests while being largely respectful to the rights of six-county Unionists and regretting the overall British decision to leave the European Union. Our Government has had clear goals: stop the reimposition of the border and maintain all trading links possible with the UK while using it as a workable land bridge to continental Europe. Those goals seem set to be achieved.

But things could get even better. While we celebrate the possibility of a deal, rather than a no-deal Brexit, events in the coming days and weeks could bring about a second referendum of the British people. If British politics splinters further – with Labour in chaos because of the machinations of Jeremy Corbyn, always duplicitous in revealing his true Brexit position, Scotland demanding the same status as the North as it too had a majority vote against Brexit, and the Tories torn between two sides who think the deal is disastrous for entirely opposite reasons – it is possible that the British people may be asked to vote again. It may be the only way to provide clarity in a mess.

This time the vote would most likely not be a straight in or out, but a vote on the nature of the deal with the EU, a preference for no deal at all, or an option to give the whole thing up and stay within the EU. That last option surely, no matter what is on offer now, is what Ireland wants: for this country and our nearest neighbour to remain in the EU, without a border on this island, for ever greater cooperation… and to forget the sorry mess that has consumed us since the summer of 2016.