Brexit vs. the Irish Question
Nov 7, 2018
MICHAEL
BURLEIGH
Brexiteers have given no serious thought to what
withdrawal from the European Union will mean for Northern Ireland and its
relationship with Great Britain. If they had, they would have known that there
is no way to bring twenty-first-century reality into line with their
nineteenth-century delusions of grandeur.
LONDON – On
Brexit day – March 29, 2019 – the HMS Buccaneer Britannia will set sail in
search of the riches of the “Anglosphere.” But there is a hitch: Someone has
forgotten to raise the anchor, which remains planted firmly in Ireland.
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This isn’t
surprising. Of all the Euroskeptic Conservative politicians I know, not one has
ever mentioned Northern Ireland, let alone the sovereign country to the south
of it. The only thing on the Brexiteers’ minds is the quest for parliamentary
sovereignty and liberation from the supranational “superstate” in Brussels.
This
blinkered view may simply reflect ignorance. Even an erstwhile “Remainer” like
Karen Bradley, the current Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, recently
confessed that, “[…] when I started this job, I didn’t understand some of the
deep-seated and deep-rooted issues that there are in Northern Ireland.” In
other words, until very recently, she has been incurious about one of the
central issues of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British history.
Conservative
politicians who find themselves in such a position would do well to know that
conflicts over the “Irish question” have resulted in more than 3,600 violent
deaths. They might also benefit from knowing that successive Conservative prime
ministers, from Edward Heath to Margaret Thatcher to John Major, struggled and
failed to resolve the issue before it was put to rest by the 1998 Good Friday
Agreement.
In addition
to military decommissioning, the Good Friday Agreement brought together
antagonistic communities by mandating smooth trade between Northern Ireland and
the Republic of Ireland, under the aegis of the EU customs union. The fact that
55.8% of Northern Irish voters backed “Remain” in the 2016 referendum partly
reflects this astonishing achievement.
Anyone with
an ounce of foresight should have known that the status of Northern Ireland
would become a stubborn conundrum at the center of the Brexit negotiations. In
fact, the problem is so intractable that conspiracy-minded Brexiteers now
suspect EU negotiators of using it to delay or stymie Buccaneer Britannia’s
glorious departure.
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Ironically,
many in the EU also think that a plot is afoot. The EU has long insisted that a
legally binding divorce settlement must be concluded before there can be any
discussion of future UK-EU relations. But now Britain is suspected of
exploiting the Irish question to insinuate a detailed “political declaration”
about future relations into the formal exit agreement.
The key
problem is the so-called Irish backstop, which would prevent the establishment
of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the
absence of a wider deal on the future of UK-EU relations. In December 2017, all
parties concurred that such a backstop was necessary to preserve the peace
under the Good Friday Agreement. But there has been disagreement over the
translation of this into legally binding language. Failing an agreement, “the
territory of Northern Ireland would be part of the customs territory of the
European Union.”
For its
part, the UK government insisted that it can address the border issue by
remaining in close alignment with EU customs rules and deploying
customs-monitoring technologies that have yet to be invented – which is to say,
by magic. Yet the Irish government has insisted that every detail of the
backstop be nailed down and included in the legally binding withdrawal treaty.
But this
preliminary agreement immediately posed a problem for May, whose majority in
the House of Commons depends on ten Democratic Unionist MPs from Northern
Ireland. And, because her own party and the cabinet are divided on the kind of
Brexit they want, the Irish Republic and the rest of the EU are in the position
of spectators to a colossal act of national self-harm. If the province were to
remain in the EU’s customs and regulatory orbit, there would have to be a
border in the Irish Sea. That would jeopardize not just the workings of the
UK’s internal customs union, but also the constitutional integrity of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Worse, the
fudging language invited a “we, too” riposte from Scottish nationalists, who
rightly argued that if special arrangements were going to be made for Northern
Ireland’s Remain majority, then the Scots, who also voted to remain, should be
offered a similar deal. Failing that, they would demand a rerun of the 2014
Scottish independence referendum. This time, however, Scottish nationalists
would not have to worry about the Unionist argument that independence implies a
de facto withdrawal from the EU.
The EU
rejected British offers to remaintemporarily in the customs union after Brexit,
because that would allow the UK to enjoy the benefits of tariff-free trade
without having to permit the free movement of EU citizens. On this occasion,
the EU once again suspected the UK of using Northern Ireland as a Trojan horse
to gain an unfair advantage, and the Brexiteers accused May of capitulating to
the extortionist gangsters in Brussels. May’s “Brexit secretary,” David Davis,
immediately resigned, and he was soon followed out the door by then-Foreign
Secretary Boris Johnson (who needed a moment to consider his own prospects of
replacing May).
Negotiators
have since been exploring the surreal idea of a “backstop to the backstop” in
the event that the first backstop ends up being “time-limited” instead of
“all-weather,” to use their deadly jargon. Emphasis has now shifted to how the
entire UK can remain in the customs union, with the proviso that “one day” it
might be able to escape. But the basic point remains: Predominantly English
Brexiteers have given no serious thought to the Irish question, nor even to the
likelihood that crashing out of the EU might take the UK back to the dark ages.
Many of them would rather lose Northern Ireland and Scotland than forgo Brexit.
Instead,
they have been busy constructing a fanciful world of limitless possibility,
based on a national mythology featuring Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh,
the British Raj, and standing “alone” in 1940. Psychologically, some of them
seem to be reliving an imaginary war with our closest neighbors and trading
partners.
Most
sensible people live in the present. And wherever one looks, from Trump’s trade
wars to Russia and Moldova vowing to block Britain’s post-Brexit accession to
the World Trade Organization, reality is ineluctably crushing Brexiteers’
fantasies of English importance.
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