There’s little here for us to cheer as Brexit uncertainty prolonged
T ODAY we are a fortnight short of 12 months since British voters shocked many with their decision, on June 23, 2016, to quit the European Union.
Yet the British people – and the rest of Europe – are as wise as ever about what they actually want from this torturous UK-EU divorce process. Today our knowledge has not been advanced by these emerging British election results.
And that is a major cause of concern for the bulk of the Irish people, North and South. Thanks to our nearest neighbours, the Brexit economic uncertainty continues.
Theresa May has – yet again – done Ireland absolutely no favours. And yet again, the perils of trying of make a personality of someone devoid of personality are manifest.
As the British general election counts continued, the overall knifeedge outcome hinged on many detailed counts. But four vital factors had emerged:
Most emerging options appear unhelpful to Ireland’s Brexit mitigation efforts to avoid a hard border and tariffs with our largest trading partner.
Any way you look at it, Mrs May’s hand is hugely weakened as the EU leaders proceed to ramp up these long-delayed Brexit talks.
There might well be a “hung parliament” in the UK – something which would add confusion to already hugely complex negotiations.
Prospects of some kind of coalition, or minority government, in London would be equally unhelpful. British Labour is not reliable on Brexit.
So, rather like this time last year, there is little of good cheer for Ireland emanating from our neighbours.
Mrs May began with an almost 20-point lead in opinion polls facing off against a seemingly unwanted and unelectable Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Mrs May’s Conservatives failed to campaign effectively – Mr Corbyn’s Labour surprised by taking its message to the streets and anywhere else people were gathered.
What emerged was definitely a victory for popular politics. It enhances what happened in the Netherlands in March and in France last month, where mainstream parties, fighting mainstream pro-European co-operation policies, won out.
In the past, British elections used to be relatively easy for Irish people looking on from this side of the water, or for our immigrants with an entitlement to vote. For decades it was just Labour, Labour and Labour.
Just as Scotland and Wales were huge Labour strongholds, it was taken for granted that the Irish in Britain would mainly do the “right thing by Labour”.
Things changed, and our Irish overseas communities climbed the economic and social ladder. Just as the Irish in the USA were no longer automatically assumed to be Democratic Party stalwarts, so the Irish in Britain voted for others, even the ‘auld enemy’, the Conservatives.
Sadly, British Labour for Ireland itself was, at best, a mixed bag. The British Labour Party contained elements friendly to Irish nationalism, and staunch advocates of unpopular causes and human rights, but it remained a strongly unionist grouping.
The North’s greatest nationalist leader, John Hume, has often spoken about the abysmal lack of knowledge among wellintentioned senior British Labour politicians about Ireland. Through the 1970s, two Labour Northern Ireland Secretaries, Merlyn Rees and Paul Mason, by turns frustrated and infuriated decent Irish nationalist politicians fighting a losing campaign against paramilitary violence.
It took another 20 years for Labour’s Tony Blair to help turn things around in 1997/98. That work by Tony Blair was especially good, but it was also, in its way, something of an atonement for the years of British indifference and misunderstanding.
British Labour’s greater affability at times was often not much more use to Ireland.
In fact there are strong arguments to be made in favour of the Conservatives in this regard. The Sunningdale Agreement, surely the model for the ground-breaking 1998 Good Friday Agreement, happened on the Tory watch.
Ireland’s other big interest in modern relations with Britain has been the various manifestations of what we now know as the European Union. This country could not join until France’s Charles de Gaulle departed the scene, and that opposition to the UK blocked us.
But even after the Conservative leader Ted Heath brought Britain, coat-tailed by Ireland, into the bloc, Labour raised retrospective doubts. Mr Heath’s successor, Harold Wilson, caused an after-theevent referendum on British membership in 1975.
Later, for a long time the Conservatives appeared to be the Euro-conflicted ones. But at its heart Labour always was equally divided about EU membership.
For many, it was the failure of British Labour to get the “Remain” vote out in the midlands and north of England in June 2016 that caused the narrow “Leave” win.
British Labour is as much at odds about Brexit as the Tory party.
Mrs May has neither much knowledge nor empathy for Ireland. Yet the only de facto UK-EU land border is here. But this election was a bid for certainty in the upcoming negotiations.
And Mrs May was our best bet.