Why a No Deal Brexit would cripple Ireland

COULD the emergence of a new prime minister next week inject a fresh dose of engagement and realism into the Brexit imbroglio?

If the signals from both Brussels and Westminster yesterday are anything to go by, don’t hold your breath. Speaking to BBC Panorama, chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier was at his intransigent worst. The withdrawal deal could not be reopened, he said, and there was no other option.

In the same documentary, the European Commission’s top civil servant, Martin Selmayr – another graduate of the Brussels charm school, known to his colleagues as ‘the Monster’ – was equally bombastic.

While the EU was ‘perfectly prepared’ for No Deal, he said, it would spell disaster for the UK. Brexit should be ‘put on ice’. Meanwhile in the Commons, Tory dissidents were conniving with Labour in a plot to remove the threat of No Deal from the negotiating table – yet again.

If all this sounds like Groundhog Day, that’s because it is – same old stale rhetoric, same old refusal to accept the referendum.

No one has been more concerned about No Deal than the Mail. We believe it would be bad for Britain and that Theresa May’s deal was infinitely preferable.

But that deal is dead. And if any vestige of it is to be saved, a solution must be found to the Irish Backstop conundrum.

Irish premier Leo Varadkar has so far refused to countenance any alternative. But as the spectre of No Deal looms larger, he is under intense pressure at home to be more creative.

In their cushioned Brussels salons, Messrs Barnier and Selmayr may be able to ‘live with’ a hard Brexit. The Irish economy would not.

The UK buys over half the Republic’s beef, timber and construction material exports, with even more passing through in transit. The application of tariffs would be catastrophic.

If disaster is to be averted – for Britain and the EU – the trench warfare has to end.

Dissident Tories must ask themselves whether they are really prepared to bring down their own Government and risk propelling Marxists into Downing Street.

And Ireland must decide whether it’s prepared to be a sacrificial pawn in the EU’s game of Brexit chicken.

Mercifully Mr Selmayr is on his way out (possibly Mr Barnier too before long), bringing hope of a more flexible approach.

The pathway to a new deal is fraught with difficulties. But with a new spirit of pragmatism and good faith, salvation is not beyond hope.