Brexit border was a done deal. And yet we still had a four-day crisis
FINE Gael and the Conservative Party do not understand Northern Ireland. The ancient tribal feuds of the Six Counties confuse and repel the two parties. Their leaders again displayed their lack of empathy for Northern politics in their shoddy handling of the post-Brexit status of the border.
Fortunately, as the country learned on Friday morning, the crisis was averted and a deal done.
But how did we end up with an incensed DUP, flummoxed Irish and British governments and a Brexit deal that raised the spectre of a hard border?
The failures of the tormented UK Prime Minister Theresa May are understandable. She is, as Bertie Ahern told the Irish Mail on Sunday last week, out of her depth. She campaigned for Remain in the referendum in June last year, so in her heart she doesn’t support the policy she’s been forced to enact. Neither her head nor her heart is in it. The anti-Europe fanatics and opportunists that her predecessor David Cameron tried to neutralise with his reckless referendum are chewing at her expensive heels. And while her Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson plots against her, May’s chief protector, and effective deputy PM Damian Green, is fighting for his own career over personal allegations. But she also has a new chief whip, Julian Lewis.
It is Mr Green and Mr Lewis who should have been getting the Democratic Unionist Party in line in advance of the Monday Brexit talks. Mr Lewis, inexperienced, and Mr Green, distracted, were among those who let her down. And as this year’s general election humiliation and her embarrassing autumn conference have shown, Mrs May has little political skill and less luck.
She entered a lunch with the EU Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, to agree policy on the border without having squared things with the ten DUP MPs who prop up her minority government. That should have been an unforgivable mistake. But she’s not alone in her errors. Leo Varadkar and Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney made their own mistakes too.
Leaks emerged from the Government on Monday morning that an agreement had been reached between the UK and the EU that would see ‘regulatory alignment’ between the North and the Republic. Effectively, there would be a maintenance of the Customs Union and the Single Market, something the DUP would not want in isolation from the rest of the UK.
With great fanfare, a press conference was arranged for the Taoiseach at Government Buildings for 2.30pm. Mr Coveney said in an interview with RTÉ’s News At One, that the Taoiseach was about to ‘make a positive statement to the country’ on Brexit.
The DUP may be insular but they do have access to RTÉ in their Northern stronghold. ‘Great deal’ and ‘positive statement’ are trigger words for the DUP. In fact, any words that hint at joy or happiness in the Republic are trigger words for the DUP. And our top negotiators should know their foe.
On Wednesday night I met a veteran civil servant who has worked with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael administrations. We were in a Dublin 2 pub not far from where the separate Christmas drinks for the press were being hosted by the two parties. Fianna Fáil were in Kennedy’s of Westland Row and Fine Gael were about 80 yards away in the Lincoln Inn on Lincoln Place. ‘The crowd in Kennedy’s had a better feel for the North,’ he said. ‘They probably always did, going back to the way the sides went over the Treaty. But they know the language. When you strike a deal on the North you say forlornly “oh we’ll live with it, but it’s not great”. You have to show some pain is being taken.
‘What you don’t do is gloat before it’s signed.’
Bertie Ahern, an often criticised former taoiseach, has few critics of his marshalling of the peace process in the North.
This civil servant said: ‘Bertie wouldn’t have let a word of what had been agreed get out until it was finalised.’
Mr Varadkar and Mr Coveney were wounded from the previous week’s downfall of colleague Frances Fitzgerald. They wanted a quick win too badly and failed to nail down the details.
In Britain, ‘perfidious Albion’, where the establishment has a 1,000-year history of deceiving its diplomatic opponents, there is a second string Tory administration. Mrs May and Mr Johnson et al are only in power because the public school-educated bright sparks, Mr Cameron and George Osborne, walked away after the referendum rout.
The establishment had groomed Cameron and Osborne because they were sharp, but their referendum stunt went wrong. Over here, we have two leaders, Mr Varadkar and Mr Coveney, running our foreign policy.
Coincidentally, they were both educated in Irish equivalents of public schools (Varadkar, Kings Hospital; Coveney, Clongowes Wood College).
They appear to be practising politics as learned from the TV series West Wing rather than studying their derided predecessors Enda Kenny, Bertie Ahern and Charlie Haughey.
The political achievements in Northern Ireland came about because peace requires skilful compromises.
The EU was, of course, founded after World War II to stop France and Germany going to war again. Peace in Europe is in its DNA. The EU recognises its role in preventing a return to conflict in the North.
Still politicians, just like Napoleon’s favoured generals, require luck. And Mr Varadkar and Mr Coveney got lucky last week when Mrs May and Mr Juncker were forced by far greater forces than the border to return to talks.
So the question remains: if chaos can ensue at the signing of a deal on Brexit that everyone agrees on, what is likely to happen when there is real disagreement?
When the Germans get involved, for instance. Or – and God help Britain – the French.