A no-deal Brexit would hurt the UK but devastate us

GROWING hostility between the US and Russia and the deepening rift between the UK and Europe menace world peace and future prosperity. But a trade war over Brexit affects Ireland much more profoundly than a spat between superpowers, especially when an influential Tory threatens the nuclear option – to ‘bankrupt Ireland’.

Brexiteer MP Jacob Rees-Mogg sounded like a Bond villain when he talked about bankrupting Ireland by introducing a 70% tariff on £800m (€900m) worth of Irish beef imports.

It is not melodramatic to state the obvious: Brexit is the biggest threat to our economic survival since independence.

If the UK separates from the EU without a deal, it will be a disaster for Britain and a catastrophe for this Republic — mutually assured destruction, or MAD, a popular slogan throughout the Cold War.

MAD kept the world safe when the US and the USSR confronted each other across a military and philosophical barrier in Europe.

The border between Northern Ireland and this Republic is the epicentre of any solution to the current stand-off. The status quo is non-negotiable for the EU and Dublin, but the UK’s Tory government wants out of the customs union and therefore a reintroduction of monitoring on the border.

JACOB Rees-Mogg’s casual contempt provokes an involuntary spasm in the muscle memory of Irish nationalism, causing it to urge the EU to concede ‘not an inch’ on the Irish border. Assuming that Ireland would have no option but to meekly submit to the UK’s argument because the economy depends on trade with Britain was a major miscalculation by the Brexiteers.

Blame for the crisis can be shared between the UK government’s and the Tory party’s hubris as they arrogantly ignored 50 years of these islands’ contemporary history. How can Britain disregard a peace treaty to end a conflict that had cost so many lives – a significant majority of them Irish – and revert to jingoistic back-to-thefuture British nationalism?

The Good Friday Agreement is an international treaty and abandoning it leaves the Irish State no choice but to join with an EU that saw an opportunity to remind Britain that it is not a great as it thinks it is.

The Irish Government’s partnership with the EU to resist British demands has provoked a growing political crisis in the UK. Can Theresa May survive as Prime Minister and will minority Brexit support in the UK parliament prevail over the ‘remainer’ majority?

The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has maintained the sort of polite cool that was once the signature of stiff-upper-lip British diplomats and the UK’s bargaining team is as confused as its government.

THE bottom line is that Britain now wants to abandon its ‘back-stop’ agreement, where there would be no hard border, and instead install technology to monitor the movement of goods. Demolishing physical reminders of the Border, no matter how unobtrusive, would encourage criminals to claim that their criminality was patriotic.

It is also hard to see how any Irish Government can compromise on this State’s border stance in an effort to help a foolish British government save face.

Economic forecasts of 5.7% growth for 2018 and of 4.1% growth next year come with a warning – that Brexit is a real and present danger to our economy.

Meanwhile, Britain’s growth rate has been downgraded to 1.4% from an earlier estimate of 1.9% because of the UK economy’s weak performance in the first quarter of the year.

We have a lot to lose (our prosperity and the dividends from 20 years of peace in Northern Ireland) if Britain cannot secure a sellable Brexit deal from the EU.

If Britain, as is widely predicted, catches a severe case of the economic flu, Ireland will be struck down with pneumonia.

So after the Budget in October, when the referendum and the current scandal over medical services for women are dots in the rear-view mirror, Brexit will be top of the agenda in 28 European capitals.

And the date when Brexit is finalised next year will be as significant a day for Ireland as a red-letter 100 years before – January 21, 1919, the day that Ireland declared independence from Britain.