Election may just prove how disunited the United Kingdom really is
THERESA May reportedly made her decision to call a snap general election while on a walking holiday with her husband in Wales over the Easter weekend.
If she had chosen the North of Ireland for her break, she might not have decided to make such a surprise decision. While I cannot actually visualise Mrs May ever taking a walking holiday in the North, I’m sure that, if she had, she would have been much more acutely aware of the consequences of her decision on the efforts to get the institutions in the North up and running again.
As I’ve said before, it’s my view that Prime Minister May and her Conservative and Unionist Party do not give much thought to the possible effects on Ireland when making such political decisions. The embryonic efforts to get the power-sharing government back in place in the North, after the recent Assembly elections, have been blown out of the water by May’s decision.
The Good Friday Agreement mandates the British and Irish governments to be guarantors of its implementation, and yet it seems that the possible effect of calling a snap election on the North’s political landscape hardly registered with Downing Street when it made its decision to go to the polls.
Hardline unionists, while they will not publicly acknowledge it, must realise how low down in the British political pecking order they are. Jim Wells, the DUP MLA for South Down, obviously accepted this when he said, on Thursday, that Theresa May ‘forgot’ about the North when she made this decision.
Despite statements to the contrary, I’ve no doubt that the Northern political parties will have their eye firmly on the June 8 election date, and that they will have no real heed in the talks in the meantime. So, potentially, it means that there will not be a government in place in the North until the autumn, by which time the Brexit negotiations may be well under way.
OF course, this might suit the unionists who will point out that they will be able to articulate Northern Irish issues in Westminster, knowing full well that the anti-Brexit Sinn Féin does not take its seats in the House of Commons.
While I can understand the need to keep her decision under strict wraps, for fear that word would leak out before her announcement, in my opinion it speaks volumes for the so-called ‘unique relationship’ between our two islands that even our own Taoiseach, apparently, was kept completely in the dark.
Yet again, Irish Government sources were putting a good face on May’s decision. They suggested that Ms May would be able to face down the hardline Brexiteers within her party if she came back with a much larger majority. In other words, the Irish Government was hoping that May might be more able to orchestrate a socalled ‘soft Brexit’, should she have her hand strengthened after June 8.
For me, this is wishful thinking. Do they really think that the British government would be more willing to pay the reported €60million divorce settlement, after May has a stronger mandate?
I think not. If anything, a stronger mandate from May would toughen the British negotiators’ resolve in dealing with the EU.
The European Council president Donald Tusk colourfully likened the latest twist in British politics to an Alfred Hitchcock script. I’ve no doubt that the mood of the mandarins in Brussels has not been made any better by the latest developments. While the enormity of the Brexit decision may be starting to dawn on the British political system, their erstwhile political colleagues across Europe will not be any easier to deal with, as a result of this election call.
Over the last number of weeks, May has been softening her approach by indicating that she expects transitional arrangements to apply after Britain leaves the EU. And yet, Brussels seems adamant that no talks on a trade deal between the UK and the EU will take place until after Britain leaves. As I predicted immediately after the Brexit vote, the politicians across the rest of Europe will not make it easy for the UK to turn their back on the EU project. To listen to May and her ministers, they seem to be suffering from the delusion that they can exit the EU without adverse consequences.
Despite the fact that May made out that her decision was because of Brexit considerations, clearly the weakness of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party had a huge influence on her thoughts. No politician, with the type of recent poll figures which May has, would pass up on such an opportunity to strengthen their position and, conversely, weaken the opposition.
Most of the commentary would suggest that Labour is going to get a drubbing. Clearly, the party’s biggest handicap is Corbyn himself. However, I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that the Conservatives will wipe out their opposition. Voters, who may not be happy with the direction Labour is taking at the moment, are not necessarily going to flock to the Conservatives. The makeup of society in the UK is such that this is unlikely to happen.
After the Brexit vote, May called for unity across the United Kingdom. She feels that the country did not get it. How she thinks that a divisive election will bring that unity closer is beyond me.
The election may merely prove just how disunited the United Kingdom is.