Menace of the Border grows thanks to Brexiteers
Brexit has heightened the insecurities of nationalists in North
THE Northern impasse and Brexit are feeding off each other. Relations between Ireland and Britain, between Dublin andunionism,and between the two communities in the North are straining again. Prospects for all three relationships are not good.
Let’s start with the one positive development of recent weeks: a greater subtlety in the Irish Government’s diplomacy.
“An té nach bhfuil láidir ní foláir dó a bheith glic” (he who isn’t strong must be smart).
Given Ireland’s size and limited clout in the world, this pearl of ancestoral wisdom should guide Government’s pursuit of the country’s interests and objectives with other governments and actors.
It did not always do so during the first six months of the leadership of the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney at the Department of Foreign Affairs.
In the weeks up to Christmas the Government brought the Brexit talks close to collapse when seeking guarantees from the British that there would be no Border on this island after the UK leaves the EU.
There were injudicious statements by both men on TV and radio.
If talking tough with the Brits and angering unionists, both of which have costs, delivered on the objective of preventing a hard Border it would have been a price worth paying.
Despite no little triumphalism when a giant fudge was reached in December, that is very far from having been achieved.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said two weeks ago that a Border was “unavoidable”, given the UK’s repeatedly stated positions that it will withdraw from Europe’s free market arrangements.
The contrast between claims made before Christmas on the one hand, and the cold reality of the current state of play in the Brexit talks on the other, may have led to the new lower key and more nuanced approach.
A more subtle line on the future of Northern Ireland suggests that the toning down of the rhetoric of the first six months of the Varadkar-Coveney era is more generally applicable.
On Monday the following statement was issued: “the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste reiterated that the Irish Government does not want to see the introduction of direct rule in Northern Ireland”.
This firm but well-modulated language replaces previous foot-stomping statements, such as “there can be no British-only direct rule”.
If a smarter approach to the enormous challenges facing these islands is in evidence in Dublin, it is not in the North or across the water.
The failure of the two biggest parties in Northern Ireland to agree a return to devolved government perpetuates the vacuum that has existed for more than a year.
Although having the DUP and Sinn Féin in government would allow them to continue the Balkanisation process that they have both driven, that is the best available option at a time of enormous uncertainty around Brexit.
Despite this, a restoration of power-sharing looks as far off today as it did six months ago.
In Britain, Ireland has come back into focus in recent days as once near universal support in Westminster for the Good Friday Agreement crumbles along Brexit lines.
Pro-Brexit politicians have called its existence into question following the collapse of power-sharing talks, including Kate Hoey, a Labour MP originally from Northern Ireland and Conservative Owen Patterson, a former Northern Ireland minister.
There is plenty of reason to question the 20-year-old agreement, but now is not the time to seek to renegotiate it, never mind abandon it.
One reason is that London simply does not have the political and administrative capacity to engage in a process to replace it given the enormity of its Brexit under taking.
A much more important reason is the destabilising effect that moving away from it would have.
For very good reason, Brexit has heightened the insecurities of the nationalist community in the North.
The return to a Border and the severing of EU links, driven by English nationalists and cheered on by the DUP, fills northern nationalists with dread, both because of what it will mean in practice and what it says about the mindset of those who advocate it.
Reflecting the deepening madness in British politics, it is not only Tory Brexiteers who are prepared to heighten insecurities in the North in pursuit of their goals.
On Tuesday, the unusually moderate British Labour peer, former minister and leading Remainer Andrew Adonis, waded in.
He tweeted of a “DUP/Tory right plot to ditch the Good Friday Agreement & restore Orange govt & a Border in NI as part of Brexit”.
AT a time when so much is in flux and so much could go wrong, it is wantonly reckless for a British legislator to talk of plot to impose “Orange government” on the North.
That Brexit has caused such division among British politicians on Northern Ireland reflects how it continues to tear that country’s politics apart.
Today, 20 months after the referendum to leave the EU, the British cabinet is meeting to try – yet again – to agree on what sort of Brexit to seek.
In anticipation of the meeting, hardline Eurosceptics wrote to Prime Minister Theresa May. Signed by one in six conservative MPs, they rejected, among other things, a customs arrangement which could make any Border on this island less obtrusive.
Hopes that sense would prevail and compromise be achieved have been fading as the months have passed. With the departure date set for March of next year, time is running out.
Something will have to give very soon if the hardest of Brexits is to be avoided.