It’s time to get past Brit bashing - we don't want an isolated UK
MOST initial political analysis of the Tory party ministerial mayhem was well wide of the mark. References to ‘anarchy’, ‘chaos’ and ‘disarray’ couldn’t distinguish teak tough wood from leafy Chequers trees.
Historians will record last weekend as the pivot point from deepening despair of a ‘no-deal’ disorderly Brexit – ever since 17.4 million people voted Britain out of the EU – turning towards the beginnings of a basis of an agreed settlement between London and Brussels.
My two iron rules of politics are:
Politics always follows economics;
Internal party political conflict is always resolved in favour of those who have the headcount.
In the case of Brexit, the former was dictated by chilling, unambiguous statements from Airbus, Jaguar, Land Rover and Nissan. Simply put – if the UK leaves the customs union, we’ll relocate hundreds of thousands of direct/ outsourced jobs elsewhere.
The ‘headcount’ truism has many Irish precedents. Charlie Haughey took on his Fianna Fáil internal opponents, and three parliamentary party votes of confidence later, drove Des O’Malley out to form the Progressive Democrats.
John Bruton successfully fended off two FG noconfidence challenges prior to becoming Taoiseach.
If you’ve the majority, sore heads can suck it up on the backbenches.
Friday week, Mrs May’s massacre was her finest hour as party leader.
She won the Conservative leadership (despite being a Remainer) on the basis of “Brexit means Brexit”. She appointed ardent Brexiteers to key cabinet posts, but became their captive after losing a failed election gamble. In the past year, she has dithered, delayed, fudged and obfuscated with ambiguity.
Realising that an overpromised Utopian Brexit of free trade deals, extra NHS weekly £350m windfalls and strict migration control was simply unattainable by any British government, she changed course towards damage limitation. She took control of all Brexit policy/ negotiations through the cabinet office and No 10.
Mrs May had the Tory headcount – both in cabinet and amongst the party’s 316 MPs. She planned her ambush, rolled the dice and garrotted the hardliners. David Davis and Boris Johnson belatedly realised how they were hatcheted. She had divided and conquered the most vocal 60-80 MPs who were bent on shafting her.
At 70 years of age, Mr Davis is a beaten docket, formerly a serial resigner. He was marginalised by the secondment of his permanent secretary, Ollie Robbins, as her key man. He was out of the loop – yesterday’s man.
Mr Johnson is a busted f lush – destroyed by his suicidal riposte “F**k business” when asked about business concerns over the British government’s handling of Brexit; and the fact he was in Afghanistan on the day of a key vote on a third runway at Heathrow Airport.
He slunk out of the Foreign Office residence without even a press conference, resembling a dishevelled, spent party reveller – no credibility as a potential PM and reduced to the life of colourful columnist.
Michael Gove, Liam Fox and Anna Soubry have stayed on the basis that they’ve subserviently signed up to full White Paper acceptance of the common EU regulatory rulebook on products in perpetuity. Replacement secretaries Jeremy Hunt and Dominic Raab have been appointed on the basis of unreserved loyalty to Mrs May.
The prime minister has immeasurably tightened her grip on power and bid good riddance to the ideological, stubborn rebels. Her message was: bring it on. They didn’t.
All of these developments are enormously positive for Ireland.
We have (at last) an adult in the room and in charge, representing the UK. Prospects of a ‘no-deal’ crash out have greatly receded with London’s significant movement on the red lines, likely to be responded to by verbal Eurocratic reciprocation.
It is progress for us because our Government’s
dependence on the backstop, as set out in last December’s joint agreement, has numerous fundamental flaws and severe limitations. Not least because it may not be worth the paper it was written on.
Subsequent British backsliding of “nothing is agreed, until everything is agreed” became a reality that the Irish Government reluctantly acknowledged and accepted.
Yes, it provided superficial reassurance of an invisible Border along the 310-mile Ulster landscape in an endgame of disagreement. However, it potentially solved our internal island dilemmas at the expense of creating a greater problem of an East-West Irish Sea border, which is eight times more economically important.
Equally unnerving were growing signs that this putative failsafe could be ultimately sacrificed to avoid a ‘no-deal’ outcome.
The EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier’s repeated public references to “dedramatising the backstop” had all the hallmarks of preparing the ground for a Canadian CETA trade deal that would unavoidably require administrative borders on an EU frontier.
The eventual shape of a bespoke Norway Plus relationship between the UK/ EU is emerging, albeit with dwindling deadlines that may extend to the end of the transition period into 2022. The current British proposals are incompatible with preserving the four pillars of the single market. The UK only proposes to comply on goods; while cherry-picking abstention on labour market mobility, services and capital.
BUT it’s a Brexit-InName-Only. Brexitino is always the best we could have hoped for – given that Westminster’s all-party appetite for a second referendum is one of abhorrence.
All Brexits diverge significantly from the status quo.
The Government and exporters will inevitably customs challenges and logistical obstacles.
Layers of paperwork with approved agents await. Haulage times across a 12-hour UK land bridge, versus 17-hour direct sailings to France, remains the critical continuity conundrum.
Our best realpolitik backstop is the current configuration of the 650 MPs elected to Westminster in 2016. Then, Mrs May sought a mandate for both comfortable Tory majority and bullish Brexit. The electorate snubbed this insular invitation – decimating Nigel Farage’s UKIP, both of whom won’t return.
With each future Westminster vote to ratify further British compromises, the centre of parliamentary Brexit gravity will be majority acceptance of closer alignment to the EU’s customs union and single market – because that’s what British business wants.
A general election or Labour government represents no panacea. Jeremy Corbyn is worse than useless. His anti-EU prejudices are camouflaged by Kier Starmer’s pragmatic common sense.
We should support Mrs May.
It’s time for us to get past Brit bashing/bitching on Brexit.
Simply because of our geographic realities, greater political isolation for Britain means greater economic isolation for Ireland.
Between now and the final UK EU treaties, most participants will transiently adopt more positions than the Kama Sutra. Boris was right about “polishing a turd” – but it’s our only viable option.