May’s contemptuous attitude towards the people of the Border region is shameful
THE Good Friday Agreement celebrates its 20th birthday today, but don’t expect any celebrations in Westminster. The current British government barely acknowledge its existence.
The disdain with which British Prime Minister Theresa May treats Northern Ireland was exemplified on a recent whistle-stop tour. In an effort to convince the plebs in the regions she cares about them, Mrs May made a frenzied trip to the four countries that comprise the UK in one madcap day.
Having started in Scotland, where she visited a textile firm, Mrs May darted down to Newcastle, in north-east England, to crash a parent and toddler group before zooming off to a farm in Co Down, where she posed with some bewildered-looking livestock. She managed to squeeze in a trip to Wales, to meet some business people, before returning to London in time for tea.
“Today, one year until the UK leaves the EU and begins to chart a new course in the world, I am visiting all four nations of the union to hear from people across our country what Brexit means to them,” said Mrs May at the start of her one-day odyssey.
Mrs May can claim she is eager to hear the concerns of people from all four regions of the UK, but she patently doesn’t want to hear too many of them. In truth, she has probably spent more face-time with cows in the North than she has with nationalist politicians or communities.
Most damningly, she has shown zero interest in learning how the imposition of a hard Border will affect the lives of those living in that area. People who now fear they will have to cross Border checkpoints when they go to work or drop children to school.
Asked on her brief visit to north Co Down whether she envisaged travelling 50km down the road to visit the Border region in advance of the UK leaving the EU, Mrs May declined to give a commitment to do so.
Despite the fact the issue of the Border has dominated Brexit negotiations to date, very nearly scuppering attempts to move on to trade discussions, Mrs May couldn’t be bothered to even give the pretence of caring.
The notion that the prime minister can’t find the time, within the next 12 months, to travel to the Border region and speak with people who will be directly impacted by her Brexit folly, tells you all you need to know about the region’s priority in Westminster.
Clearly, the Tory government doesn’t give a toss about the North and is completely indifferent to the impact Brexit will have on the lives of thousands of people, north and south, if a hard Border is reinstated.
The North barely featured in the debate in the UK which preceded the Brexit vote, and remains an afterthought now – even as research from Whitehall suggests the hit for the North’s economy could be as high as 12pc over 15 years.
The risk that this poses to the Good Friday Agreement, facing its biggest challenge in years as a delicate peace is imperilled by the threat of Border checks returning, cannot be overstated.
Don’t take my word for it. Speaking on Sunday, the architects of the peace deal, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, criticised Mrs May’s “aloof” approach to the North – a scathing rebuke from those who worked hard to deliver a deal.
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Blair said restoring the Stormont Assembly, which has been collapsed for 15 months, “requires the full focus of the [British] government”.
“At a certain point, the authority of the prime minister is necessary to get people to come into some form of alignment,” he said.
That authority, from Mrs May, has been entirely absent to date. Reliant on the DUP to prop up her administration, Mrs May has shown
‘Mrs May couldn’t be bothered to even give the pretence of caring’
no interest in applying any pressure to force parties back to the table.
Doing so could anger the DUP, and create a headache for her in Westminster, so she has preferred to adopt a policy of apathy and indifference.
MRS May has maintained this disinterested stance, even after admitting the collapse of the power-sharing agreement means the views of those in the North are not being represented as forcefully as they should be.
Speaking on that farm in Co Down, Mrs May said “the absence of a Northern Ireland executive makes it even more important to hear directly from people in businesses”.
Well, how does she propose to do that, to hear the views of business people in the Border region, if she won’t deign to go there to listen to them? This contemptuous attitude for people whose lives will be utterly upended by Brexit, from a prime minister who claims to be a strong advocate for all “four nations of the union”, is shameful.
It is particularly so when you consider the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, and the EU Parliament’s Brexit negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt, have both made the time to visit the region.
They did this because they realised it was important to visit an area whose fate now hangs in the balance and they wanted to impress on local people that they will not be forgotten.
In contrast to this, the Tory government’s utter disregard for the region is exemplified by Brexit Secretary David Davis’s inane insistence that an invisible border can be retained, when Northern Ireland leaves the custom union, by “a whole load of new technology” – but refusing to expand on the precise nature of this technology.
The attitude of the current Tory government to the North, an inconvenient irritant impeding its path to Brexit glory, will not just have negative consequences for the economy in the North.
The Good Friday Agreement, which has saved the lives of thousands of people in the 20 years it has been in existence, risks being undermined and subverted if the North is wrenched from the EU – in direct opposition to the wishes of a majority who live there.
There are no easy answers to the crisis. The two likely options for the North post-Brexit – the creation of a land border or one in the Irish Sea – both come with real risks that paramilitary activity will be reignited.
The scandal is the British government refuses to acknowledge the logical consequence of its Brexit mania and is blithely careering towards a future in which the peace, which these islands have enjoyed for two decades, is in real danger of being shattered.