Varadkar’s tough border stance is a gamble
‘LEO VARADKAR is endangering more than three decades of goodwill built up between London and Dublin.” These are the words of David Trimble, one of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement.
The Noble Peace Prize winner also said that “senior politicians – some of whom were partners in the peace process – have sought to spread fear about a return to violence. They have warned about a breakdown in community relations and talked up threats to the Good Friday Agreement”. He dismissed concerns about a return to violence as “scare tactics”.
In a report published this week, Trimble went on to accuse Michel Barnier, the EU’s lead negotiator in the Brexit talks, of “reckless intransigence”.
The former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party claimed that it was Ireland and the EU, not the UK, which would cause a hard Border on this island.
Regardless of whether one believes these comments to be factually and/or analytically flawed, they represent a widely held perception among unionists. It is important at least to understand what informs these views, particularly when the different sides in the Brexit debate have become increasingly embedded in their respective echo chambers.
These issues – the risks to peace, Dublin-London relations, and the post-Brexit Border – are much too important to be allowed to become the stuff of the sort of slagging matches that are so common in political discourse.
Start with the risk to peace. The commonly held view in the Republic is that communities in Border areas would be incensed by any infrastructure on the frontier, and that dissident republicans would likely attack whatever infrastructure was to be put in place. Destroying hated Border posts could widen the appeal of dissidents, thereby strengthening them. As they became more potent, they would clash on a more frequent basis with security services in the North. The cycle of violence would restart.
Trimble is not alone in seeing ulterior motives in the setting out of this scenario, particularly as the British government has committed to putting no infrastructure on the Border which could be targeted for attack.
It should also be said that while no risk to peace should ever be ignored, it is highly unlikely that young people would kill and be killed over the sort of inconvenience faced by those who live on the Swiss-French border or the Sweden-Norway frontier. Border posts are not to our era what basic civil rights were to the generation coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s.
Unionists, whose natural suspicion of the motives of all Dublin governments is well developed, have become even warier in recent times. Much of that is to do with the Irish and EU side pushing a “backstop” Brexit proposal that could cleave Northern Ireland out of the UK’s customs union and single market and keep it in the EU’s versions of those trade-enhancing mechanisms.
Again this week, the Taoiseach reiterated his insistence on having British agreement on this backstop. If London does not agree to it by next month, Varadkar said on Tuesday that the EU will offer no exit terms to the UK, resulting in it crashing out of the EU in 10 months’ time.
Taking this hardline approach has not just alienated unionists, it has come at the cost of causing a further deterioration in Dublin-London relations.
In comments in the Dáil on Tuesday, the Taoiseach said that his Government’s proposal to prepare a joint position with the British government on restoring Northern Ireland’s devolved institutions has not been accepted by London. These joint proposals, he suggested, could provide a basis for the parties in the North to reach a compromise and go back into government after a period of more than 15 months in which Stormont has been suspended. Such a proposal is hardly radical, particularly given that the parties in the North have been unable and unwilling to agree among themselves over such a protracted period.
So why does the British side now appear unwilling to engage in the sort of co-operation on Northern Ireland that has been a feature of relations with Dublin for at least a quarter of a century?
The answer is likely to be partly down to a general lack of bandwidth in London, as Brexit sucks up so much oxygen in Whitehall.
Nor is the reliance of Theresa May’s government on the DUP at Westminster irrelevant. This dependency is not making the British government eager to be seen to be dancing to Varadkar’s tune.
But there is also the general deterioration in relations between the two governments, or, as the Taoiseach himself put it on Tuesday, “the context in which we are operating is perhaps as bad as it has been for many decades”.
Finally, what about the Border? Trimble’s remarks come from the foreword of a report on the Border published this week. It was authored by a retired Irish diplomat, Ray Bassett, and a former adviser to Trimble, Graham Gudgin.
IN it, the pair claim that a frictionless Border in Ireland is achievable without the UK and/or Northern Ireland alone remaining in the EU’s customs union arrangement. While they are simply wrong on this, and the authors’ grasp of the detail of international trade issues does not appear strong from the content of the report, they are right in their claim that “the Irish Government is playing a calculated but risky game by demanding that Northern Ireland remains within the EU customs union and by threatening to use its veto in the negotiations”.
Whether this tactic is successful will depend more than anything else on who wins the ongoing war within the British Conservative Party.
Betting everything on the outcome of an ideological battle within a political party in another country is indeed a big-risk gamble for an Irish government.
These issues are much too important to be allowed to become the stuff of the sort of slagging matches that are so common in political discourse