Trimble attitude to no-deal Brexit risk is incredible for Good Friday deal architect
AFTER today, there are just 14 working days until Britain is due to leave the European Union on March 29. You’d be forgiven for thinking Brexit is as far away as ever, such is the irresponsibility of many of the hardliners insisting that, deal or no deal, all will be well and anyone raising concerns is involved in “project fear”.
It doesn’t matter how often or from which quarter warnings come, “taking back control” has become an article of religion amongst Brexiteers, and anyone with reservations can quickly be dismissed as an enemy of the people.
Just this week, the British Royal College of Radiologists warned that hospitals are likely to experience delays to cancer testing and treatment in the event of no deal being agreed with the EU.
Let that sink in. It’s not just shortages of tomatoes and other perishable goods that Brits face if Theresa May can’t get her deal across the line in the House of Commons.
People in need of lifesaving cancer drugs will have their treatment delayed with potentially dreadful consequences.
The handful of pro-Brexit cavaliers who bothered to respond to the warning offered little more than a shrug of the shoulders. The recklessness is breathtaking – if Brexit was a far-fetched movie, the critics would pan it, arguing that viewers would never believe that elected politicians would behave in such a way.
Former Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble – now a member of the House of Lords – has also entered the fray with an open letter to Mrs May making the audacious claim that any fears of Northern Ireland being affected by a no-deal Brexit are “groundless”.
This is despite the fact that the Confederation of British Industry has warned that such a scenario would have a “devastating” impact on the North, shrinking the economy by almost €6bn over 15 years.
Lord Trimble assures the prime minister that such claims “fail to take into account obvious opportunities”. Obvious to who? It’s hard to tell. Mr Trimble doesn’t feel it necessary to outline these so-called opportunities. Quelle surprise?
He goes on to assure Mrs May that in his view, Border “infrastructure is no longer needed since modern electronic procedures can do the job”.
Like everyone else who has suggested an electronic solution for the frontier, he has no suggestions on how this mysterious technology would actually work.
His comments provoked a sharp rebuke from his fellow peer Baroness Nuala O’Loan who said he was talking “rubbish”. The former police ombudsman for the North accused Mr Trimble of acting irresponsibly. That’s putting it in rather parliamentary language.
The spectacle of a man who won a Nobel Prize for his commitment to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement being so blasé is incredible to witness.
The genuine concerns of people as diverse as industry leaders, farmers and ordinary citizens who live along the Border are real and should be taken seriously rather than dismissed glibly.
The ironic thing, of course, is that Brexit drives a horse and cart through the agreement. Not that this will lead to a dismantling of the peace process or a return to violence, but the good faith on which the deal was reached has been damaged beyond repair.
The genius of the Good Friday Agreement was that it allowed for people in the North to choose British identity, Irish identity or both in the context of European citizenship.
Allied with the fact that Catholics could now get a fair crack of the whip, it effectively parked the “national question”, and most nationalists were content with the status quo and threw their weight behind the post-1998 reformed Northern Ireland.
Many Northern nationalists were happy in the knowledge that they were Irish, but not necessarily Irish in the way that someone born and raised in the Republic is.
It became common to see people from both a unionist and a nationalist background choose to self-identify as “Northern Irish” rather than British or Irish.
Overall, people made their peace with the fact that Northern Ireland was a shared place with complex identities and the power-sharing government – at least in theory – ensured that no identity was exaggerated at the expense of another.
Brexit unpicks that and cuts the North off from the Republic and the rest of Europe. I never thought I would see in my lifetime a Border poll as set out in the Good Friday Agreement. Like most Northern nationalists, I always harboured a romantic ideal of a united Ireland, but it didn’t keep me awake at night. It still doesn’t, truth be told – but Brexit has made it a more attractive prospect and even many moderate unionists are showing signs of coming around to the idea.
Talk of a referendum on the future of the North has to be handled sensitively. Sinn Féin’s call for an immediate Border poll is reckless. It’s as if it has learnt nothing from the divisiveness of the Brexit referendum. History shows that communities don’t react well when faced with what looks like an ultimatum.
The road to a vote on a united Ireland is one that sooner or later will have to be embarked upon. Even former DUP leader Peter Robinson has urged unionists to start thinking of their place in a new agreed Ireland.
The ironic thing is, of course, that Brexit drives a horse and cart through the agreement