Now EU is using the Irish issue to undermine Brexit
BREXIT represents a golden opportunity for a national reawakening after decades of Brussels rule. The vote to leave the European Union should herald British independence.
But that is not how the establishment views the process of withdrawal. Infused with timidity rather than courage, gripped by defeatism rather than patriotism, our ruling elite sees Britain’s departure as an obstacle to be surmounted, not an opportunity to be grasped.
This lack of enthusiasm is exploited by the Remoaners whose worship of Brussels makes them determined to wreck Brexit by creating an atmosphere of permanent despair and crisis. In this endeavour they are joined by the EU’s leaders such as Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker who aim to punish Britain for daring to challenge its cherished federalist dogma.
Tragically the EU’s ruthlessness, cheered on by the Remoan lobby, appears to be working. The Brexit talks are rapidly turning into a catalogue of surrender by Britain, epitomised by reports that the Cabinet has now agreed to pay a colossal £50billion so-called “divorce” settlement.
The same meekness can be seen in the promise to award full rights of residence to all EU citizens living here, regardless of their contribution to our society, and in the acceptance of an open-ended transition period, which could mean free movement and domination by the European Court for years to come.
THIS week has brought a new, even deeper, humiliation. The Government’s plan was that an early agreement with the EU on the first stage of negotiations would open the way to substantive talks on a trade deal. But these hopes were shattered by a combustible row over the Irish border, as the Democratic Unionist Party, the Tories’ partner in the Commons, refused to accept the draft text set out by the British Government.
The DUP feared the special arrangements proposed for Northern Ireland, put forward with the aim of avoiding a hard frontier with the Republic, would in practice further separate the province from the rest of the UK and could ultimately drive the reunification of Ireland. The saga showed incompetence on the British Government’s part. The text should have been fully cleared with the DUP before Theresa May travelled to Brussels on Monday for her meeting with Juncker.
Yet it is absurd that the question of Ulster’s border has become a threat to Brexit itself. With some imagination and flexibility this side issue could have easily been tackled. After all Britain and Ireland have had a common travel area since 1923, while modern technology, including automatic number plate recognition and online tracking, lessens the need for physical customs checks. Northern Ireland and the Republic already operate different currencies and tax systems without any problem.
Just as wrong-headed is the purist belief in the rigid constitutional integrity of Northern Ireland. As someone who was brought up there, I recognise that the place is very different from Somerset or Surrey, since 40 per cent of the province’s population have an allegiance to another nation.
That is why, whatever diehard Unionists might pretend, Northern Ireland has always diverged from the rest of the UK, whether in politics, sport, economics, culture or the law. Abortion and gay marriage, for example, are still illegal in Ulster.
But with goodwill that constitutional difference should provide room for pragmatism over Irish trade. Creative ambiguity has always been at the heart of progress in Ulster.
At present an impasse exists largely because the EU has weaponised the Irish issue to undermine Brexit. “The key to the UK’s future lies, in some ways, with Dublin,” Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, trumpeted recently. That just shows the EU’s disdain for national autonomy. The UK’s future should lie with the British people.
Moreover, the EU’s pose as the friend of Ireland smacks of outrageous hypocrisy. This is an oligarchy that twice ordered the Irish electorate to vote again after rejecting the Nice Treaty in 2001 and the Lisbon Treaty in 2008.
NO DOUBT some kind of agreement will soon be cobbled together, following further concessions by Britain. To soothe the anxieties of the DUP, the Government is considering that “regulatory alignment” should apply, not just to Northern Ireland but to the whole of the United Kingdom, with the result that we would continue to abide by EU regulations.
In practice therefore we would remain part of the single market and the customs union, unable to make our own rules, restore border controls or even conclude our own trade deals with other countries. All the advantages of Brexit would have been thrown away.
Such an outcome would make a complete mockery of the referendum decision. The majority of British people voted to bring back sovereign control. There is now a real danger that Britain could end up with the worst of all worlds. We would still be under the thumb of the EU but without any say in its governance, a worse version of what we have now.
The Government now seems to regard the achievement of a deal with the EU as an end in itself. But that is a disastrous miscalculation. What matters is the restoration of British independence and democracy. Real Brexit, not retreat, is the means to that goal.