Ireland in 2020... and a future that is truly terrifying

Border controls. A collapse of Irish exports to Britain. Mass unemployment. Pay cuts. Strikes. The departure of the multinationals... our writer’s dystopian view of life here in the wake of a Brexit

HINDSIGHT, the old saying goes, comes with 20/20 vision, so let’s propel ourselves forward to 2020 and take a look at the landscape. It is four years since Britons decided they’d had enough of Brussels meddling in their affairs and voted to leave the European Union.

The argument was won not on the economy, or the social benefits membership conferred, but on fears of further immigration. The Vote Leave campaign, while accusing those on the Remain side of launching what they called Project Fear, themselves played on a much deeper fear, the xenophobia that affects all island nations. Pull up the drawbridge, they said, and take back control of our borders, and it worked.

But it created a problem that many had foreseen, and many more had dismissed. In the Nineties, the island of Ireland voted by a massive majority to implement the Good Friday Agreement, and the physical border between the Republic and Northern Ireland was dismantled. Where once you could queue at Newry for an hour as you made your way from Dublin to Belfast, there was now no tangible sign that you had entered a different jurisdiction; only when you saw the speed signs switch from kilometres to miles did you realise you had crossed from one country to the other.

The Leave advocates said that the Common Travel Area would survive – after all, some EU countries have a border with a non-EU neighbour, and they told us it would be like Norway’s relationship with Sweden, and Switzerland’s relationship with France, Italy and Germany. What they forgot, of course, was that Norway and Switzerland, while not in the EU, were still signatories to the Schengen Agreement, so free movement was protected.

BUT when Britain left the union, the European Commission decided that the border on the island of Ireland was an open and undefended frontier. Four years after voting to leave, and two years after the divorce was granted, the British government was still negotiating a trade deal with Brussels. With import duties in place on all its exports until the terms of free trade were agreed, there were border checks on lorries and trains that might be using the Republic as a back door to avoid excise duty.

Migrants who wanted to enter Britain illegally had realised that the best way to do so was to fly to Dublin or Shannon, travel to Northern Ireland, take a ferry to Scotland and then disappear within their own communities, so Britain reluctantly decided the border was necessary too, and the security towers, road barriers and wire fences were reinstated.

For its own part, Scotland had listened to all the arguments from Westminster about taking back sovereignty and had heard them, and was preparing for another referendum on independence that was projected to carry by a two-thirds majority.

The Welsh, who felt they had more in common with their Celtic neighbours than they did with their Anglo-Saxon leaders, also were muttering about exiting the United Kingdom because Westminster had for so long sat back and allowed the coal and steel industries to wither and die.

But while the post-Brexit Britain argued over its own future, it was Ireland that suffered most. The immediate effect of the vote was brutal. Sterling dropped in value by 10%, and Irish exports suddenly became much more expensive. Orders slowed initially, then evaporated when Britain, looking to the Commonwealth and making trade deals of its own when unshackled from the collective policies of Europe, starting importing salmon from Canada and lamb from New Zealand, severing all ties with Irish producers.

Imports from Britain to Ireland were cheaper, but when Westminster dispensed with all the job protection provisions imposed by Brussels, British companies tried to apply the new rules on their Irish workers, slashing pay rates, increasing hours and placing all their employees on short-term contracts. A wave of strikes saw retail sales collapse, and shop workers joined those in the agriculture and fishing sectors on the dole queues.

WITH no EU money flooding into Britain, many of the cross-border initiatives created and funded by European contributions collapsed. Even the Shannon-Erne Waterway was now policed, as smugglers had been using it to trade in goods that suddenly had become more expensive.

As Irish job losses mounted, there was a growing movement that said Ireland, too, should leave the European Union and strike its own deals with important export markets such as Britain and the United States.

The uncertainty made many multinational companies based here nervous, and they slowly but decisively started to relocate their operations to continental countries, sending 50,000 more to the dole queues.

Emigration to Britain, for so long the safety net that protected us when times turned bad, was no longer simple. With a new points system in place, the Irish who wanted to move to London, Birmingham or Manchester had to prove their skills were actually needed, and fewer and fewer were passing the test.

Globally, Britain slipped down the league of major players. President Trump had started to dismantle Nato and completely ignored the United Nations as he stepped up the bombing of targets in the Middle East and Asia. Britain, anxious to protect its seat on the Security Council, took the side of the UN, and Trump retaliated by imposing huge duties on all imports.

When a million people lost their jobs in England alone, the opportunities for Irish emigrants were further reduced, and with Trump’s new exclusion policies in place, the United States was no longer an option either. Now, only Australia and Canada offered the Irish a new home, but their Commonwealth ties meant they gave preference to those fleeing Britain after mass unemployment.

FOUR years after Brexit, Ireland was in crisis. Unemployment hit 20% and tax revenue dried up but Germany and the European Central Bank refused to offer any relief on Ireland’s debt and continued to suck billions out of the economy to settle the bill for the folly of the bubble years at the start of the century.

The far left won the 2018 election after the collapse of the flimsy coalition cobbled together by Fine Gael, and decided to hike tax rates while pouring money into public services. Now, in 2020, the IMF was back, trying to sort out the mess.

It all sounds fantastical, doesn’t it?

Well, of course, the answer is yes. Some elements of this scenario might happen, or maybe none at all.

Britain may vote to stay in Europe – or, if it leaves, maybe the Brexit campaigners will be proved right and it will thrive as it stands alone and forges a path to its own future unfettered by petty rules and regulations.

But here’s the problem: nobody knows. We are in uncharted waters and we are right to be nervous. If Britain leaves, the EU will be sundered but, in the short term at least, it will take the hit.

Ireland will not be so lucky. The British may learn that pursuing an isolationist strategy affects them in ways more profound than they ever imagined, but Ireland is likely to suffer more on the sidelines if John and Jean Smith opt for life under Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the brave but fragile new world he helped to shape.