If you think Brexit is a bad idea, wait until you meet Irexit
ANEW political party was launched last weekend. The main focus of the Irexit Freedom Party is withdrawal from the European Union, of which the Irish State has been a member for almost half of the period since Independence in 1922. The party intends to run candidates in next May’s European Parliament election.
Ireland’s involvement in the deepest form of international co-operation in history has been overwhelming beneficial for the country and its people. That has always been my view, based on a weighing-up of the benefits and costs of more than four decades of membership.
As with any big commitment, EU membership is not without downsides. Because it has both pros and cons, countries need to keep assessing the case for membership with an open mind.
More generally, debate and discussion of all important matters of State is healthy. Without it, complacency can set in. The absence of an ongoing debate on the pros and cons of EU membership arguably led to two referendums on Europe being rejected at first asking in 2001 and 2008.
That an Irexit party is being launched now, 46 years after Ireland voted overwhelmingly to join, is testament to the shifts that are happening in the politics of Ireland and the wider western world. There is a sense that the tectonic plates of societies are shifting in a way that has not been seen since the 1960s.
Britain’s vote to leave the EU more than two years ago and the extraordinary state of both of that country’s big political parties is but one example of how the old order is undergoing change.
The establishment of the Irexit party is linked to Brexit. One of its leading lights, Derryman Hermann Kelly, has a long association with Nigel Farage, one of the most prominent anti-EU figures in Britain. The party also advocates the reunification of this island, an issue that has risen rapidly up the agenda since the 2016 Brexit referendum destabilised Northern Ireland.
But the timing of the new party’s founding is somewhat curious, coinciding as it does with growing talk of shortages of food and medicines in the UK after it leaves next March. Even if pro-Brexit voices who claim this is fear-mongering are correct, their claim before the British referendum – that leaving the EU would be easy and straightforward – has already been proved very wrong.
The massive complexity of leaving the EU was predictable and predicted. Most of the problems arising from the divorce with the EU revolve around commerce. Cross-border economic activity in Europe is governed by agreements and rules designed to ensure a level playing field for all. It is the sovereign right of any country to decide that it doesn’t want to play by the collective rules. But to expect that everyone else will meekly accept one country giving itself the right to queer the pitch in its favour was never remotely plausible.
When all the complexities around trade rules are stripped away, leaving the EU comes down to a simple trade-off: the less a country is willing to play by the collective rules, the fewer benefits it gets from access to the EU market.
Many in Britain are prepared to pay an economic cost for more freedom to set their own rules. This is a perfectly legitimate position to hold. The difference between Britain and Ireland is that having these freedoms would come at a much greater cost for us than for them.
Ireland’s entire economic model is based on EU membership, which comes with the benefit of unimpeded access to the enormous European market.
One in eight jobs in the private sector is accounted for by foreign, export-focused multinationals. The by-now old description of Ireland as a country that exports everything it produces and imports everything it consumes remains only a mild exaggeration.
Britain, as the sixth biggest economy in the world, produces much more of what it consumes. Its exports relative to the size of its economy are a fraction of Ireland’s.
The British economy will certainly suffer from going it alone and will continue to see jobs and companies depart. But with a domestic market of 65 million people, most will stay. Ireland’s tiny market of 4.8 million holds no such allure for the companies that employ more than 200,000 people here.
For very good reason, advocates of Irexit will have a hard time convincing these 200,000 people and their dependants that their livelihoods would not be imperilled by following the UK out of the EU.
They will also have their work cut out for them convincing the entire population about the money in their pockets, purses and bank accounts. Unlike the UK, Ireland decided to join the euro two decades ago. There is a case to be made that the euro was mistake and that Ireland should not have joined, but attempting to unscramble that egg now could, by itself, bankrupt the country. Recall that Greece came close to leaving the euro in 2015, but pulled back after weighing up the huge certain costs against the very uncertain gains of recreating its own currency.
It is surprising, given how vulnerable Brexiteers have been to charges of failing to make detailed preparations for Brexit, that the Irexit Freedom Party has not published a comprehensive plan for how Ireland might leave the euro, along with many other issues.
An opinion survey taken in August by the Ireland Thinks pollster found that 94pc of those who had a view on membership were supportive. Just 6pc believed Ireland should leave. It is hard to imagine an electorate anywhere taking as clear a position on a political matter.
That, of course, might change. The new party could gain traction. If the UK leaves the EU next March with a deal and without too much ado, it could win votes in the European election which will take place just a few weeks later.
If, however, Brexit proves to be an immediate and costly disaster, there will be few takers for Irexit and the new party could well go the way of so many others set up since the State’s founding.