May has a solution... she’s just not telling

Bertie Ahern claims UK PM has alternative border plan ‘in drawer’ she’ll reveal when time is right for Brexiteers

BRITISH PM Theresa May has a Brexit solution but will only pull it out of the drawer when the time is right, former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern believes.

Mr Ahern – one of the main architects of the Good Friday Agreement – said the language used by Mrs May in her Brexit speech indicates she is further away than ever from reconciling divisions in her government on the Irish border.

And he warned those divisions and pressure from the Democratic Unionist Party make her attempts to bring clarity to the Brexit plans ‘impossible’.

Mrs May gave a key speech in London on Friday where she sought to outline her vision for a postBrexit relationship with the EU after rejecting its draft proposal for the North to stay in the single market and customs union to avoid the return of a hard border.

Mr Ahern said: ‘You heard her say, “I don’t want the hard border but at the same time I am not going to break the precious union.”

‘It is symbolic language, but they are the words she used, “precious union”, it’s the first time I heard her saying that.’ The former Fianna Fáil leader believes Mrs May avoided presenting a clear alternative to EU proposals on the Irish border for tactical reasons.

He thinks she has an alternative that will please Tories and unionists but won’t ‘pull it out of a drawer’ until the right moment.

She has already agreed three options, two of which involve an overall UK-EU deal, or a third, bespoke solution entailing invisible electronic checks, pre-customs clearance for large traders and waivers for small business. This is been referred to as ‘option C’.

However, she has been backsliding on option C and presented no alternative on Friday.

Mr Ahern believes the hard right of the Tory party and the DUP, which keeps her in power, won’t allow Mrs May to choose option C. ‘From her point of view it is almost beyond resolution,’ he said. ‘What I don’t get is if there was a deal on December 15 which said the C model is the one to go forward, and she now, coming up into March, hasn’t found an alternative model, how much longer do you give her?

‘If you asked me, I’d say the March 25 European Council meeting. I don’t think she should be allowed drag it into the future.’

Mrs May also said she would not let the UK’s exit from the EU jeopardise peace in the North. In her speech in London, she stated that both Britain and the EU had a joint responsibility to find a solution in divorce talks over how to avoid a hard border in Ireland.

But she insisted any hard border or a customs border in the Irish Sea which would break up the UK’s common market is unacceptable.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar yesterday said he was concerned about the lack of clarity on the border from Mrs May and remains concerned she did not fully recognise the implications of leaving the customs union and single market.

Mr Ahern claimed she seemed more focused on getting a message across to the British public and pro-Brexit Tories.

He said: ‘The one overall thing I felt very strongly that she tried to get across to the British public was how complex this whole Brexit thing is. How much it is affecting so many agencies, so many laws, so many regulations. And they’re just seeing how complex it all is. She might have been doing that for her own party and the public.’

It was, he said, also a rebuke to hard Brexiteers with simplistic proposals.

‘People might see that this is no easy thing,’ said Mr Ahern. ‘Jacob Rees-Mogg keeps saying you can do this and you can do that. So I suppose it was directed at him and others, and that did come across.

‘It seems that she and key officials have belatedly come to the conclusion that Brexit is extraordinarily complex for everybody, particularly the British.

‘It affects a far wider area than they ever thought. For their export markets for their goods, but also for their agencies.

‘I welcome that because for the last 20 months they’ve just been

‘How much longer do you give her?’ ‘I don’t think she should be allowed drag it out’

talking in vague terms about what they’d like. I think she herself has come to a clear view and clarified in their own minds that it’s big.’

However, Mr Ahern noted there was little clarity on the border.

‘She said nothing of a solution, she just said there has to be negotiation and she wants negotiation with the Irish. I would say that there needs to be negotiation with the EU. We need to be careful we don’t get ourselves boxed in.’