It’s time to declare war on weapons of mass delusion
The time has come to stop lying to ourselves about Brexit, Trump, migration and how virtuous we all are, says Brendan O’Connor
‘Having half a border is a bit like being half pregnant — you either have a border or you don’t’
IMAGINE this. Imagine if Donald Trump decided to detain all illegal immigrants in camps while he conducted extreme vetting on them. Imagine if he said those people might stay in those places, repurposed old holiday camps and other buildings, for up to a decade. Facilities would be minimal and the people would not be allowed to work but they would be given $1,000 a year to survive on. Twenty bucks a week.
It’s fair to say our dudgeon would be high, and the horses we would get up on would be higher. It’s fair to say the phrase concentration camps would be used. Trump would be called a fascist. He would be likened to Hitler, as he regularly is now. And we would be so deluded that we wouldn’t see that this is exactly what we do here in Ireland. We would be so high on our illusion that we are better people than Trump and the half of America who voted for him that it wouldn’t even cross our minds that we tolerate exactly the same thing in this country. And we tolerate it without calling ourselves Nazis or fascists of any kind.
None of this is to say that Trump’s travel ban is not an illthought-out mess. It is more to highlight the delusion that is in the air right now.
Theresa May is similarly deluded. Did you notice her patronising air with Trump? Like a lady at a Tory fete in the Home Counties being introduced to a brash American who has just bought the local manor. It was polite and tolerant but cold and condescending. Equally, she was making a fool of herself. And then, while she was still on the plane home, pressure grew for her to condemn Trump’s policies on migrants. She duly obliged. It’s up to him what he does, but it’s not something she herself would do, she said, and not something she had ever done in all her time as home secretary. The subtext was that, like us, Theresa May is a better person than Donald Trump and the people who voted for him.
Theresa May did not seem to see the irony in her looking down on Trump given that she is essentially detonating her economy and possibly ruining her country’s future purely to keep foreigners out. Theresa May has made this very clear. Brexit is about leaving the EU and giving up access to markets there because the Brits were not prepared to take the free movement of people that went with it. They are willing to pay the ultimate price to keep immigrants out. And that is their decision to make apparently, but don’t then lecture everyone else about their migration policies.
Deluded Ireland and the deluded UK have also conspired in another massive delusion that is, in a way, more relevant to all of our lives. From the first moment she made her absolutely deluded speech setting out her stall on Brexit, Theresa May has propagated the delusion that she can have it every way, and particularly with regard to Ireland.
So we keep hearing this daft talk of no hard border between Ireland and the UK. Now a small child looking at that claim would ask the obvious question: “How do you expect that to happen? You are leaving the EU, but you think they will leave an open border in Ireland?” Think about it: all around Europe there are customs, immigration, a ring, not quite of steel, but a border to protect the common travel area and the common market. And let’s face it. Having half a border is a bit like being half pregnant. You either have a border or you don’t. And the notion that you would go to all this trouble to have borders everywhere else, and then leave a gaping hole in it to facilitate Britain, who have just thrown your whole project back in your face, is deeply deluded.
But still she trots it out, and Enda trots it out with her, that we will have a seamless, frictionless open border. It’s crazy stuff.
Possibly even more deluded is Britain’s notion that we will be fighting for their team in all this, and our notion that Britain has our best interests at heart. Britain has made it abundantly clear now that their policy going forward, is Britain First. For us to think that they care about us in all this, and that a quick visit here, tacked on after a trip to the US, Turkey and then Wales, where she refuses to address our parliament, represents a prioritising of Ireland in Brexit negotiations, is more delusion.
Us thinking the UK gives a tuppenny damn about us right now is as deluded as Theresa May thinking that cosying up to Donald Trump is going to in any way make up for losing access to the EU. Just 14.5pc of UK exports go to the US right now. Britain exports three times to the EU what it does to the US. So whatever trade deal they get with Trump will not go any way towards filling the post-EU gap.
And also, let’s remember that Trump is about America First and he’s about winning at the deal. Despite all the handholding, he will not be doing Theresa May any favours. The whole reason that Trump favours one-on-one trade deals over group efforts is so that he does not have to be an equal partner. He has said all this in recent weeks. Trump wants individual trade deals with countries so he can screw the other countries in a way that is not possible in something like TPP. He has also made it very clear that he views a trade deficit as a lose. The UK and the US roughly operate a trade balance right now. Trump will not want to see Britain’s side of the equation going up. If anything, he wants to see it go down.
But the biggest delusion in everything that’s going on at the moment is the notion that we can all make the world a better place merely by taking in refugees, while letting carnage reign in the Middle East.
Taking in a piddling amount of refugees from Syria or wherever (we have taken 800 of them in this country) is really the equivalent of putting money for the black babies in the poor box. It is well-meaning and it helps to some extent, but it is really only reacting to the symptom rather than the problem.
The biggest delusion of all is the notion that we have no obligation to commit to sorting out the Middle East. Trump has made it clear he will be no policeman for the world. Theresa May has made it clear that the days of Blair-style liberal intervention are over. Obama had pretty much started the isolationism that Trump has now crystallised. And the left and mass protest movements have made it clear that they do not want any “intervention” in the Middle East.
So in our delusion now, the left and the right have conspired to ignore the root of the problem and to make the conversation about migration.
There is much discussion of policy around migration, who takes whom, how many are you taking, etc, etc. All deluded distraction tactics and displacement activity to avoid getting our hands dirty and dealing with the actual problem.
Isn’t it time now that we stopped messing around and had a serious conversation about what the world is prepared to do about the Middle East, rather than continuing to squabble over who is the more virtuous nation, who gets to look down on whom, and who takes in the poor refugees and gives them a room in a hotel that no one wants to stay in any more?