20th May 2022
Sensible conservative-unionists – and, no, that is not necessarily a contradiction-in-terms – used to abide by the maxim that politics was ‘the art of the possible’.
And one thing that the European Union did was make certain things possible, which otherwise were not possible.
With Gibraltar and Spain, for example, the border issue became less of an issue.
And with the island of Ireland, the border issue too became less of an issue.
Because both Ireland and the United Kingdom were both members of the European Union – and thereby both members of the internal market and customs union – a hard border, with infrastructure and bureaucracy, was unnecessary.
This created the conditions that made the Good Friday Agreement possible – though, of course, there were many other factors.
But now Brexit has come along, there is a problem.
There has to be a border somewhere where one entity is inside a pan-European internal market and customs union and the other entity is not.
Had Brexit not been so extreme – with the United Kingdom staying inside the internal market and/or the customs union (which is the position with some other non-EU states) – then the Irish border issue would be less of a problem.
But the Brexit which Theresa May insisted on, with the United Kingdom outside the internal market and customs union, meant there was going to be a problem.
May eventually realised this – and so she supported the ill-fated ‘backstop’ arrangement, which meant that – if there was no post-Brexit trade agreement – the cross-border arrangements of European Union membership would continue as a default.
But May’s proposal was rejected heavily by the House of Commons (including by ‘remain’ Members of Parliament).
That left one other option – the border in the Irish Sea, which was supported by the new Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and enshrined (ahem) in the Northern Irish Protocol.
And, as this blog has set out many times, Johnson here changed the policy, negotiated the Protocol, signed the withdrawal agreement containing the Protocol, fought a general election so as to get a mandate for the Protocol, and rushed the relevant legislation through parliament.
Johnson could have not done more, as Prime Minister, to have brought the Protocol into existence and to pass it into law.
But.
The Protocol is a solution to one problem but not to another.
It is a solution to the political problem of late 2019 where Brexit needed to be ‘done’ – and the Protocol was the only possible way to do so avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland.
But it is not a solution to the deeper problem of how Brexit is compatible with the on-going existence of the union that is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Either one has Brexit (at least without continuing membership of the internal market and the customs union) or one has that union, but one cannot easily have both.
This is not to say that a united Ireland is likely – there are many solutions to political problems that never are adopted.
It may be that the problem continues, and continues, and is never resolved.
But a united Ireland is the only ultimate solution to there not being a border somewhere in respect of the north of Ireland.
Of course, special arrangements would need to be made for the non-nationalists in Northern Ireland – and one would hope that those protections serve that community better than the (lack of) protections for the nationalists in the north of Ireland after 1922.
Having watched Brexit from the beginning, I am still bewildered why supposed unionists did not see this problem coming – and indeed strongly campaigned for Brexit.
The European Union provided a means by which Northern Ireland could have continued in the United Kingdom, regardless of demographic changes and the gradual fall in unionist support.
But some forgot that politics was the art of the possible, and they pursued the politics of the impossible instead.
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Patrick Kielty’s Twitter thread of 28th September 2018:
“Dear Boris Johnson,
There is no better Brexit when it comes to the Good Friday Agreement and Northern Ireland. As you still seem bamboozled by all this Paddywackery here’s a few pointers for your next stab in the dark –
Northern Ireland is made up of a majority of Unionists (as in the Conservative and Unionist Party) and, believe it or not, a rather large minority of Nationalists (as in Irish Nationalists).
These Irish Nationalists don’t see themselves as British but rather inconveniently as Irish (who knew?).
For over 30 years we killed each other because of these differences which means Northern Ireland is nothing like Camden or Westminster.
The Good Friday Agreement ended that violence by the following devious magic –
Unionists were guaranteed that Northern Ireland would be part of the UK until the majority voted otherwise.
The Irish was border was removed and the island linked so Nationalists could pretend they were already living in a United Ireland (yes, Tony Blair did sleight of hand much better than you)
Some of these Nationalists then accepted being part of the UK as their day to day lives were essentially Irish.
This cunning plan was sold to us on the basis that we were all part of the EU therefore fixation on nationality was so last World War.
Implementing the Good Friday Agreement was torturous (think Brexit with actual bombs, not metaphorical suicide vests) but we finally made peace. Yet 20 years later NI remains a divided society.
Thanks to your glorious Brexit vision Northern Ireland will become more divided as some form of economic border checks will become part of daily lives.
If those checks take place between NI and Ireland, the Nationalists who were once happy being part of the UK will change their mind.
If they take place in the Irish Sea some Unionists will be livid. However they’ll still support being part of the UK (the clue is in the Unionist bit)
Your Brexit lies have opened a Pandora’s box for Northern Ireland. It’s one reason why the majority of people in NI voted to remain in the EU (almost as if they knew more about the fragile equilibrium of their politics than you)
Barely mentioned before Brexit, a border poll is now inevitable thanks to your monumental ignorance.
When that poll is eventually held the Nationalists who were once content being part of a Northern Ireland within the UK and EU will vote to leave the UK to feel as Irish and European as they did before Brexit.
The poll will be much closer thanks to your Brexit folly and could easily be lost by Unionists, breaking up the UK.
Any break up of the Union will be your fault (a tad inconvenient as a member of the Conservative and er, Unionist party)
The EU is not responsible for your blundering lack of foresight. Like most people in Northern Ireland they were happy with the status quo.
By the time the penny drops that you can’t preserve the Union you want without the one you don’t, it will be too late.
You will be remembered not as the Churchillian visionary you delude yourself to be but the ignoramus who triggered the break up of the UK.
If there’s any justice all this will come to pass when you’re Prime Minister so you can finally swim in the constitutional sewage you’ve created (though we all know you’ll be in Nice with your trotters up).
Meantime, if you’re so concerned about keeping Northern Ireland totally aligned with the rest of the UK where’s your support for our same sex marriage and women’s right to choose? Your silence is deafening.”
(Whenever, over the centuries, an amicable resolution of the Irish Question, acceptable to all the key stakeholders has been found, almost always, those who have vetoed it have been the majority of the Tory Party of the day).
https://jodatu.wordpress.com/2021/11/11/there-is-no-better-brexit-when-it-comes-to-the-good-friday-agreement-and-northern-ireland/
“ I am still bewildered why supposed unionists did not see this problem coming – and indeed strongly campaigned for Brexit.”
You are not the only one. But too many Unionists were either reassured by the glib ‘cakeist’ promises of Leavers at the time or we’re in the thrall of the late Reverend Ian Paisley and his thunderings against ‘the Roman Harlot’, seeing the EU as a Papist plot!
(Other explanations are welcome but those are the most convincing I’ve found)
DUP’s failure to anticipate the problems Brexit would cause is not “amazing”. After all, all Brexiters, including May as DAG points out, campaigned and began exiting in blissful ignorance of the issue. This in spite of the EU declaring the Irish Border as one of its key – four? – conditions to a deal.
While not wishing to underestimate the pig headed stupidity of DUP, there is another explanation: they may have hoped that the border issue would collapse GFA which they have never accepted.
Either way, roll on secession.
Not sure about this:
“But a united Ireland is the only ultimate solution to there not being a border somewhere in respect of the north of Ireland.”
Surely another even more obvious solution, is reintegrating UK into the single market/customs union?
“and indeed strongly campaigned for Brexit.”
Because they thought that the hard border would have to fall between Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland (possibly because that particular strain of Unionism is much like that particular strain of Brexiteer that thinks “fog in the channel, continent cut off”, “send a gunboat” “carmakers and “champagne makers to the rescue” or such-like). Because they saw it as a way of of clawing back from the process that since the Anglo-Irish agreement has seen, in their eyes, continual concessions to the Nationalists. They thought it would slam shut the door that had been opened towards closer engagement with the South, and return things to how they’d have liked things to be. Back to the good old days (of blue passports…)
Oops
As a dispirited remained, I too cheered when Theresa May’s deal was outvoted. Now I see how ghastly the consequences of that turned out.
Yet I wonder if May’s deal would have worked, either? The same populist forces (inc the Daily Mail, Telegraph, Spectator) would have kept pushing our politics rightwards, with the lack of any real benefit to her Brexit (just a loss of influence and continual haggling with the EU) would have incensed both Brexiters and Remainers, keeping the polarisation going…
Theresa May’s deal was a Hard Brexit with the UK leaving both the Single Market and the Customs Union.
Theresa May made her announcement of Hard Brexit in her January 2017 Lancaster House speech.
1,000s of people in Britain are losing jobs to the Single Market, because we are outside of it.
That would still have happened under May’s deal.
The unionist parties presumably supported Brexit for similar reasons that they opposed the Good Friday Agreement – by having the default position of not wanting Republicans to have any decision making powers or consessions over the people of N.I.
Whatever the impact of such a position is secondary to the idea of changing from that root ideology.
I too have, from the start, wondered why in the world the dup would support brexit as the ongoing problems were so obviously inevitable.
Has anyone asked a sensible conservative unionist what they thought was going to happen and received a rational answer? I seriously would like to know, I’m as bewildered as you are
I think that given the size of the vote for Remain in Northern Ireland in 2016 some Unionists there must have voted for the status quo.
The DUP are not representative of the entirety of the Unionist community.
Something with which they are clearly having problems coming to terms.
Sooner or later this is where we will end up. The snag is the DUP and fellow travellers will not like it. Having been top dogs for 100 years they will come down in the world. Although the people overall will benefit provided they stop wasting time on sashes and marching.
However this idea came up in the FT some time back and comments from southern Ireland suggested they did not want Northern Ireland at any price – full of difficult stubborn people. That problem looks difficult, given the history I suspect the South will make the North suffer whatever schmoozing the politicians try.
The difficulty is the Unionist politicians will kick and scream because most of them will eventually lose their jobs. Be lucky to get on a parish council post unification. They may have to have their mouths stuffed with gold. As for Stormont Castle – too ugly a symbol of imperialism – one way or another dynamite may be the only answer. Unification may not be all that easy.
It is not just the “difficult stubborn people” (some are, and often the most noisy ones; many are not) but also the economics.
In 1922, the south was largely agricultural and poor, and the north was much more industrialised and richer. It has taken a long time, but now the north is largely deindustrialised and heavily subsidised by government, and the south has been forging ahead within the EU. So, does the south want to take on the economic burden of the north?
It is not dissimilar to the economic burden taken on by Federal Republic of Germany, on reuniting with the Democratic Republic. There were good social, political and historical reasons for it, but on the economic side, despite three decades of solidarity surcharge and enormous investment – many tens of billions a year – there are still clear differences between the east and the west of Germany. Give it another generation. The project to reunify Ireland into one nation will take as long. Give it 30, 60 or 100 years. The children or grandchildren will know nothing else.
I think Unionist support for Brexit now looks inexplicable only because in hindsight, the will and ability of the EU to prevent an Irish border seems obvious. I suspect that Unionists expected a Brexiteer Westminster government would insist on the entire UK leaving the EU, leaving the latter with no choice but to erect in Ireland whatever border controls they felt they needed to protect the Common Market.
The assumption that whatever extra checks Brexit necessitated would appear between Northern Ireland and the Republic (and not in the Irish Sea) would seem relatively believable for Unionists, and would naturally appeal to anyone concerned by a perceived gradual de facto Irish unification following the Good Friday agreement and removal of the old border. A chance to reinforce old certainties has long been attractive to some elements of Unionism, and the art of the con is to tell someone a lie that they want to believe.
Despite the neat symmetry between Unionist expectations of Brexit undermining their Nationalist neighbours’ links to the Republic, and the reality of it threatening their own links to Great Britain, I suspect that in the context of decades of violence any Schadenfreude on behalf of Remainers such as myself would be sadly misplaced.
I had always assumed that one reason for the Unionists campaigning for Brexit was because they wanted a hard land border . Their way of preventing the inevitable direction of travel towards a united Ireland.
Sorry, I meant the Parliament Buildings put up in 1932.
From my name you can see that I am not from around the borders. I would however point out that the single market is composed of four freedoms. For freedom of movement of people, capital and services the border is created between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Only freedom of movement of goods are limited by the Irish Sea border.
And those same stubborn DUP refused to support this plan because they didn’t want N.I. to be treated differently to the rest of the United Kingdom. Even though in effect they would be treated better. Cut your nose off.
As someone who moved from England to Ireland after Brexit (probably would have done so in 15 years anyway, but decided to get the hell on with it as it appeared that doors were closing) I have opinions but I am fairly neutral on unification. In no particular order, The Good Friday Agreement looks as though it should mostly persist in the event of a change of status of Northern Ireland. It would provide a framework to set up NI as a somewhat devolved region of Ireland, with protections for parity of esteem and probably a continuation of the rather dysfunctional Stormont institution.
The border that was agreed to be removed in the agreement was the “security installation” which were the line of dystopian watchtowers supplied by helicopters. There isn’t really anything in the text to prevent the existence of a normal border between two friendly countries, the goal was to normalise the security situation from a very abnormal starting point. The question is whether the UK government can now administer a normal border without escalating the security to the point of being “security installations” again. The Theresa May government thought they probably couldn’t. Johnson’s approach seems to always be to say that everything will be fine right up until it isn’t.
Borders have two sides. Ireland probably can reluctantly administer their side of a border to protect Ireland without an escalating security requirement. They are unlikely to do anything at all the border to protect the UK, so it will be an entirely open hole in the UK market if the UK chooses not to take back control of that bit of it’s border.
The only person who can initiate a border poll is the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and they must do so when it appears to them that the result would be a change of status. In practice this means that it is going to be called when the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland can no longer credibly claim that it wouldn’t result in a change of status. If there is a border poll that votes for the status quo there is a 7 year lockout on calling another one. It is absolutely not going to happen just because some opinion poll or election points to a possibility of a 50%+1 result.
Those seeking unification should really concentrate on the practical questions. Things like what happens to BBC NI? Would it go off air or could there be a continuation funded by RTÉ? What happens to PSNI, how in practice is that going to work? Will they just start being part of An Garda Síochána? Will they suddenly lose access to the police national computer? Is that bad? What about people in the prisons who were prosecuted by the crown prosecution service on behalf of the Queen? How does that work?
Some answers may be found in history, but they need to be explained to the electorate by those who think that unification is a good idea.
The division on the island of Ireland was never meant to last, was it?
It has surely survived like the fiction of a National Insurance Fund well beyond its use by date.
Those two political con men, par excellence, David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill might be amused to know that their National Insurance scam is still alive in 2022.
They would probably be aghast, if not horrified to learn that Ireland is still divided.
The separation of NI is not new.
T’was for a while part of Dál Riata.
It’s not the *only solution! The U.K. could also join SM and CU – or indeed rejoin the EU. But your point is well made, as always, and fascinating to reflect upon. Best wishes
“Of course, special arrangements would need to be made for the non-nationalists in Northern Ireland – and one would hope that those protections serve that community better than the (lack of) protections for the nationalists in the north of Ireland after 1922.”
In the event of a border poll leading to a united Ireland, one such mitigation would be for mainland GB to rejoin the EU in order to minimise friction across the Irish Sea border. I would argue that should be done to soften the blow for the unionist community in NI (notwithstanding the poor leadership that their elected political representatives have shown of late).
If any good can possibly come of this catastrophic act of national self-harm, it will be a united Ireland. And that carries tremendous risk for unionists and will probably take a long time to play out and to pay off. But what were they expecting? First of all, the DUP reps in May’s government provided the confidence and supply that allowed that government to function. They didn’t have to do that. They should not have done that and allowed her extreme policies to go ahead. It was never in the interests of NI to leave the single market. Now Sinn Féin have a majority of seats and unionists are refusing the power sharing arrangement. But, I’m sorry. You had to have seen this coming.
It’s over. Britain completely abandoned and betrayed the territory of Northern Ireland. The obvious issues there never even came up in the debates. Not once. It was only after the referendum result that someone put his hand up and said “by the way..”. Why are there even any unionists left at this point? Why would you want to be a part of this continued neglect? I believe it will happen, and it should. Trouble is that then Scotland will go. Maybe even Wales. Next thing you know it will be Cornwall. Boris Johnson’s legacy will be that he obliterated the Union. Nobody really wants that, and yet it would be fitting.
One needs to disentangle how we got here from what we do now. On the former the Brexiteers never embraced the brilliance of the constructive ambiguity of the GFA whereby there was a choice to be Irish or British. Built upon shared EU membership. Ending that and introducing a border ended that ambiguity.
Bertie Aberne has been reported as saying that any solution will involve an element of looking the other way . Which implies the parties between them constructing a new ambiguity to replace the one so wrecklessly cast aside . The current almost ‘pistols at dawn’ rhetoric from Johnson and Truss excludes that possibility
The de facto (charitable) Brexiter position seems to be that if a liberal (pragmatic) position on GB to NI goods “that are not intended to enter the EU” is taken by the EU (ie no check on these), the remainder should be so economically minor as to not require a border on the island. The less charitable view if that if the EU decides it cannot live with the size of any leakage into the Single Market, it would become a practical and political problem for the EU to enforce its rules, not the UK. The EU would have to take the political hits.
All sides know this.
Boris is playing this game in classic Boris fashion: lie, delay, shift blame, blame the EU’s rules (which have not changed), position the DUP’s weakness as the main threat to peace, lie some more about “doing nothing to undermine our respect for the EU single market”, shift more blame … Ultimately, play for time. In time, everyone adjusts to “facts on the ground”. Pressure for more “pragmatism” slowly but surely grows on the EU over time.
I don’t think May’s backstop would have faired any better. It would have allowed Brexit to occur via a withdrawal agreement, but would have prevented any trade deal from being negotiated that respected May’s red lines and the backstop without winding up with a border in the Irish Sea just as we have now.
The other solution, of course, is for the UK to join the customs union and single market.
“May’s proposal was rejected heavily by the House of Commons (including by ‘remain’ Members of Parliament).”
And here we are.
No party and no group covered itself in glory in that period, but I would really like to know whether the people concerned were
a) banking everything on a Remain option somehow winning
b) allowing their antipathy to Corbyn’s Labour to override a realistic assessment of what was possible, in the hope that a defeat for Corbyn might somehow result in a Remain government
c) allowing their antipathy to Corbyn’s Labour to override everything else, on the basis that a victory for Johnson would actually be better than a victory for Corbyn, Brexit or no Brexit
a) and b) both seem wildly unrealistic, and c) seems criminally irresponsible. Is there an option d) that I’m missing?
We wouldn’t even be here if not for Corbyn. His ambivalence was obvious to everyone at the time and his failure to sincerely push for Remain is the what I blame for the referendum result more than I blame Cameron’s naive expectation that he could count on Labour’s support for making the case. I remember him going on The Last Leg and answering “about 70%” when asked how much he backed staying in the EU. We got exactly what Corbyn wanted, which was to leave the EU and to make it seem like the fault of the Conservatives. Never mind that the very next day he was calling for Cameron to invoke Article 50. We got where we are because most of the House of Commons turned out to be cowards unwilling to look as though they were acting against the “will of the people”. Conservative rebels like Dominic Grieve, Phillip Hammond, and Oliver Letwin risked everything, lost, and became my heroes.
Tim Farron’s Liberal Democrats could have made their 2017 election manifesto a vote to remain. Instead they promised to have another effing referendum on it! They lost my vote. Cameron should have tried to dissolve Parliament and call another election as soon as he lost the Brexit vote, then made the Conservative manifesto a vote to remain. Let Corbyn’s true colours show. We are where we are now because a non-binding political referendum on a binary choice with nothing at all about implementation was elevated to the status of some sort of biblical covenant with the people of Britain.
Hi All, I’m from N Ireland – I’d describe myself as a Nationalist-Republican. Here is my take on an un-tried approach to our “dreary steeples”, in my post “Venn Land”. I hope you find it interesting, and maybe also the SLF link at the end : )
https://ayenaw.com/2021/02/06/venn-land/
I think your succinct analysis is correct, but perhaps unsatisfying in one respect: you ask why Unionists did not foresee this problem.
In case that’s not intended merely as a rhetorical device, here’s a prima facie answer. I think it’s obvious that they did foresee it, and hoped that a hard Brexit and its inevitable border (real, virtual, physical, solid or liquid) would force further division and entrench the partitioning of the island.
Surely that must have been the intention, not least because the DUP traditionally, in fact since time immemorial (in their case, not more than about 6000 years!), opposed the GFA.
Having talked about this a few months ago with some Northern Irish friends who’re nominally catholic, they think the NHS is the biggest impediment. Specifically, the lack of anything like that in the republic. Apparently raising money for medical bills for family members living in the Republic is a common thing they have to do. No matter how much they might like the idea of a united Ireland, the thought of a large bill when insurance doesn’t cover everything scares them too much.
Unless the EU can find not only the money for the Republic of Ireland that the UK currently subsidises NI with, as well as some more to allow the Republic to make their healthcare system more UK-like than USA-like….
Indeed so, and for a long time, people in the Republic living reasonably close to the border have travelled to Northern Ireland for medical treatment. Of course, for a large area, particularly Donegal, the nearest big city and big hospital is in Derry/Londonderry.
Although the NHS in Northern Ireland performs badly, it is still better than the piecemeal mess in the Republic. And yes, it could be enough to prevent a border poll ending with the unification of Ireland.
“No matter how much they might like the idea of a united Ireland, the thought of a large bill when insurance doesn’t cover everything scares them too much.”
That is a common misreading of the situation.
The more serious the medical condition, the more comprehensively private insurance covers it. Any pain (and it is relatively minor) is in the excess to be paid at the beginning – and any payment is tax deductable – and in the deprivation involved in not having a private room to oneself if one isn’t paying for a top tier plan.
It’s also worth pointing out that the private insurance premiums are “community-based” so don’t discriminate if one is unlucky enough to have bad health.
There is a lot of myth-making around the difference between RoI and NI healthcare systems. Up to 50% of people (including everybody over 70) in the RoI qualify for medical cards based on means-testing. That is the equivalent of having the NHS and in fact those people can get an appointment with their GPs a lot faster than people in NI can. Typically same day / next day in the RoI. For what it’s worth many carry private insurance AND medical cards.
Those with medical cards get prescription medicines for a nominal prescription charge of €1.50 for the under 70s or €1 for the over 70s.
A further chunk of the population is supported by being given a GP card which enables anyone holding it to visit their GP free of charge. This includes all children up to and including the age of 7.
The RoI’s healthcare system really isn’t very USA-like. Community fundraising for medical bills does indeed occur, but generally only in the case of some unfortunate with a life-threatening condition whose only hope is to go to the US for treatment, with all of the costs that such a journey entails. One could posit that the only reason it doesn’t happen in the UK is that British people don’t dare to dream of accessing high level American medicine.
Having said all that, the Irish system is under stress and needs to be improved. But the UK’s NHS is by no means in a different league.
The basis of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) – it has long seemed to me – is that it was a fudge allowing the people of Northern Ireland to be ‘British’ or ‘Irish’ as they chose, and thinking they were in the country of their choice: with all the all the detail of power sharing, etc. being how this be managed in a territory that remained part of the United Kingdom (of GB & NI) – and what made that fudge possible was that Great Britain, Northen Ireland and (the Republic of) Ireland were all in one Union (i.e. the EU). And without that union embracing all of both the British Isles (the islands of GB and Ireland), then the consequent requirement for a border somewhere in the British Isles created a destabilising threat to the GFA – the Protocol is an effort to deal with this, any change to or replacement of the GFA merely changes the rules of the (attempted) solution without resolving the problem.
But there seems to me to be a fundmental flaw in the GFA: that there would be a Border Poll ‘when and if’ it was appropriate, and ‘when and if’ it was voted for, there would be a United Ireland – without, as I understand it, any real thought as to what this might mean (a 32 county republic, or one where 6 counties had autonomy, with a foreign country (Great Britain) having rights of special status and influence?). Which was fine when ‘when and if’ could be seen as ‘never’; but now it is ‘sometime’ in the foreseeable (and apparently not too distant) future – and the discontent (and propensity to violence) of the community then finding itself the wrong side of the intra-British Isles border are likely to prove as strong as of those who were previously the wrong (but now right) side of that border. Whether overall that will be a resolution of the problem, or merely a redefinition of it, only time will tell.
I suspect that “the problem continues, and continues, and is never resolved” is in fact the likely resolution of the impasse. It requires unionists in NI to be realistic about the Irish Sea border, which isn’t in the nature of the DUP or TUV, but the UK needs to find a way of persuading them, or else accept the gradual slide towards reunification. However there is no reason why a sea border can’t be made reasonably pain-free. It can certainly be more pain-free than a land border imposing the same rules, as some checks get carried out just to take a vehicle onto a ship. Unionists can either accept that, or else provoke a crisis which leads to a united Ireland.
Plus, if they accept a sea border initially, there may well come a time in the distant future when a UK government wants to rejoin the Single Market & Customs Union, meaning the border issue largely goes away. It would be somewhat ironic if that happened too late to prevent the DUP triggering reunification.
If my 90 plus, sadly departed, mother in law can change tack from OUP voter to SDLP anything is possible in The 6 Counties. Mr Johnson could see his legacy being the breaking of the Union.
it seems to me that it’s all very simple, you’ve got 4 options:
1. Have a border in the Irish Sea and the Unionists will have to put up with it.
2. Have a land border and everyone will have to put up with that.
3. Reverse Brexit and the problem goes away.
4. Have a united Ireland and the problem goes away (this implies 1).
There is no option 5 – just muddle along making things up as you go along because that’ll please no one and annoy the EU and the US just for starters and convey the message that the UK tears up agreements when it suits the government of the day. But that’s what is happening.
Logically the division of Ireland back in the 1920s was never sensible particularly as it was on religious grounds and was a time-bomb waiting to go off as it did 40 years later. The Unionists have had everything their way for far too long and now Sinn Fein have overtaken them as the largest party
Time to call it a day and reunite Ireland. And reverse Brexit whilst you’re at it. And get rid of Boris. (Making fairy godmother work overtime here).
Not sure that the division of Ireland wasn’t the least bad option in the circumstances of the day.
There are two more options, though somewhat unlikely.
5) Ireland decides that independence was a mistake and rejoins the UK. This is, of course, technically a form of United Ireland.
6) Ireland leaves the EU, so only the UK and Ireland need to agree terms for their shared border, which can differ from what is required for the EU. In particular, the UK and Ireland could agree a customs union which does not need to implement any EU rules.
I suspect that some unionists when voting to leave would have thought option 6 was possible if they thought that leaving would be so good for the EU that other countries would be tempted to follow.
The NI problem illustrates the failure of Democratic Unionist leadership most starkly. It is clear that supporting Brexit was a stupid move on their part but they did just that, but then, having seen that the majority in the Province wished to remain part of the EU, they doubled down on their mistake and continued to support Brexit even though they were told, and must have known, that was the surefire way of promoting a united Ireland.
There are in fact two solutions to the present crisis. A united Ireland or the UK rejoining the EU. I would be interested to know which the DUP would now choose.
The question is, does Ireland want to be reunited with the north, Ulster Unionists and all. Maybe better to wait for a change of government in the UK.
One of the issues regularly overlooked in Britain is the significant demographic change in Northern Ireland. Those citizens identifying with the nationalist tradition are no longer a minority – indeed in younger age groups they are a majority. That is not to say that without Brexit reunification would have been inevitable. Indeed the success of the GFA pre Brexit may have encouraged many nationalists to stick with the status quo. Brexit changed all that. Not just the practical problems it creates for the GFA but the language and attitudes of British politicians reminiscent of pre GFA days have made the identity issue once again a major factor. One of the greatest ironies is that at a time when unionism is on shakier ground that it has ever been since the formation of the 6 county statelet those who which to retain the union have by their actions and words done more than anyone to advance the cause of reunification.
I hope what I am about to say does not come to pass, but it could.
It is correct that one logical solution is a united Ireland, though because SoS gets to blow the starting whistle on the necessary referendum I don’t think that is likely for many years.
It is also correct that another logical solution is full Rejoin, or perhaps one might achieve the same ends with EEA/EFTA.
However another logical solution is to implement a land border between NI and RoI and implement full EU civil border controls there (just as in Dover/Calais). And since that would attract the attention of violent people then it would also require a full security presence (police & armed forces) and of necessity would become very heavily militarised. And so too would the entire NI province – for by then ther GFA would be in flames and direct rule of the province would be the reality. And the UK would be an international pariah, and the WA would likely be suspended in almost every respect, and the NI hinterland, i.e. primarily England would also be suffering unpleasant consequences.
On that – equally logical – pathway the DUP and their ‘ilk’ would have won the next round (but likely not the one after), at a terrible and obvious price. This is exactly what they are playing for, and is precisely why they are and were Brexit supporters.
So to appease them, the current game is to keep on fudging and to try to keep the GFA and the WA alive and a wet border going. Which is why the EU (and RoI) are being so patient, and this of course is what motivates Johnson et all to keep on pushing ther luck. Whilst equally Sinn Fein are showing incredible message control so as not to be at fault when the nigh-on inevitable breakdown occurs.
But there are other wild cards in the stack. Events have a habit of happening. Scotland gets a say in this as well. As does the USA, who have not fallen for the “nasty EU giving punishment beatings” trope.
So who knows which way this will go, but to say that the only logical outcome is a united Ireland is to ignore the other equally logical outcomes. It just depends on which constraints one chooses to respect or ignore.
(and I have said all this pre-referendum)
“However another logical solution is to implement a land border between NI and RoI and implement full EU civil border controls there”
That’s really not a solution, though, as such a border would be effectively impossible to implement. The EU absolutely wants to avoid this situation.
There is another way this pans out: the EU tells Ireland to begin preparing to implement the border that they really do not want.
They then begin incrementally to deploy every sliver of leverage they can muster to compel the UK to adopt a position compatible with a more desirable outcome; there will very be few limits or objections to such an approach from Member States as, by that time it will be abundantly clear that the UK leadership does not accept the reality of the situation, is not really prepared make the compromises required by any acceptable solution, cannot in any case be trusted to implement any agreement that may be concluded or to respect its commitments, and will crassly treat any concessions offered as trophies victory to be paraded as triumphs in the parochial media.
It should go without saying that the leverage available is ultimately more than formidable: here commences the trade war.
Like you, I have seen this as a likely potential outcome since before the referendum, and at least since late 2017 as the most probable destination.
With regards to Northern Ireland Unionist parties supporting Brexit, it wasn’t so much that they couldn’t see the impact that it could have caused under the extreme conditions (leaving the customs union and single market). They could see it clearly. They thought that the divergence in customs rules could be used to prevent (or at the very least complicate) any future attempts to unite the Island of Ireland. Please note that the parties that supported Brexit did not sign up to the Belfast agreement. They did not support it for several reasons, though the option for reunification was chief amongst them. They believed that if the UK left the EU then Northern Ireland would leave as well and that they could potentially get the customs border on the island. They did not believe that a UK prime minister would cut off part of the sovereign territory in order to get Brexit done. In the end these parties ended up with the worst possible Brexit for them – one that makes a United Ireland more possible than it would have been beforehand.
FYI no third country is in the EU’s customs union, which is a single customs territory without internal borders; hence no customs formalities between EU MS (since 1/1/93). The customs union agreements between the EU on the one hand and San Marino, Andorra and Turkey on the other do not bring those countries inside the EU’s customs territory but set up 3 separate customs unions, each consisting of 2 customs territories, that of the EU and that of e.g. Turkey, with customs formalities between them.
Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein are neither in the EU’s customs territory (obviously), nor “in customs union” with the EU but are in the EU-EEA-CH Single Market. This has no effect on the requirement for customs documents in trade between them, which require customs declarations supported (if preferential tariffs are being claimed) by certificates of preferential origin; exactly as in the UK-EU Trade & Cooperation Agreement. It does, on the other hand, affect other supporting documents e.g. in relation to technical standards.
The operation of a 2-territory customs union and/or multi-territory Single Market would be impossible without aligning certain policies between the territories concerned and/or vis-à-vis third countries. Which the UK currently does not wish to do…
Mr. Frost asserts that a collapsed Stormont proves that the Brexit
Protocol is undermining the Good Friday Agreement.
Mr. Frost deliberately is confusing a DUP stunt with a constitutional
crisis. There is no general unrest; and the Protocol enjoys a mix of
support, resigned acceptance and indifference (even surveyed DUP
voters rank it as a mere number 10 in their list of real-world
priorities).
A collapsed Stormont merely proves that the Stormont veto can be gamed to pick a populist, Boris-saving row with the EU.
Under the current Stormont rules, either traditional main party (but, farcically, not the constitutionally-centrist Alliance party) can collapse local democracy for any or no reason.
If Sinn Féin wished to be as cynical as the DUP, it could, for
instance, collapse Stormont in protest about British rule (or about the sale of Channel 4, or about the price of peanuts). Following Mr. Frost’s circular logic, we then would be obliged to accept that British rule itself (or the sale of Channel 4, or the price of peanuts) is “undermining” the Good Friday Agreement.
One suspects that, if Sinn Féin pulled such a move, Mr. Frost would
not be calling for a British withdrawal (or for a cancellation of the C4 sale).
In such circumstances, one might expect that he would do then what he ought to be doing now, namely seeking to reform the Stormont veto by, for instance, confining its use to devolved matters and by recognising the existence of the constitutionally-centrist Alliance party.
Does the DUP owe the Treasury £1,000,000,000? If not, how much of Theresa May’s bribe should it pay back, now that it has bitten the hand that fed it.?
During the referendum campaign, one Michael Gove said “If we vote to leave, the Union will be stronger”.
This may be an example of at least one moment in his life when he actually meant what he said.
But almost everything he and his colleagues have done since then has seriously undermined the unity of his own country.
Within and between almost every part of it.
Meanwhile, the Union that is within Europe has if anything got stronger.
“Having watched Brexit from the beginning, I am still bewildered why supposed unionists did not see this problem coming – and indeed strongly campaigned for Brexit.” Yes, this is a poser. There are multiple dimensions to the answer.
1. Some NI Unionists did see the danger of Brexit and a quite substantial minority voted remain in the referendum. NI voted by 56 per cent to remain and not entirely on sectarian lines, with some nationalists voting leave.
2. There was no great enthusiasm for the referendum in NI. NI had the lowest turnout in all of the UK. The campaign was lacklustre and followed the lines of the debate in the rest of the UK. So it would not be entirely accurate to say that NI Unionists in general campaigned strongly for Brexit. Some individuals did.
3. It was generally assumed in NI (as elsewhere) that remain would ultimately come out on top, so there was little consideration of the implications for NI of a leave vote. That only came after the vote.
4. DUP leaders smart enough to appreciate that Brexit might be bad for Unionism had little incentive to challenge the party’s long history of abusing the EU as an easy target (e.g. Paisley campaigned for the European Parliament in 1979 under the slogan of “your pound in Dublin’s pocket”.) It would have taken a major effort to explain to the party’s supporters that membership of the EU was in their interests. And why bother, when votes in NI were unlikely to determine the outcome?
5. A more profound answer may be found in the unwillingness/incapacity of dominant communities to accommodate subordinate communities (before it is too late from their perspective). But spelling this out would make for a very long answer.
I think for most Irish people, there is an assumption that one day there will (again) be a united Ireland. The vast majority don’t want this to be achieved by violence and hope that a formula will be found that is comfortable for Unionists. I suspect that Britain also works effectively on the same assumption. There is no direct equivalent to the Conservative, Labour or Lib Dem parties in Northern Ireland and British people have always been quick to label Northern Irish people as “Irish” rather than “British” when it suits them. The trade protocol issue is headed in the same general direction. A significant majority want to keep the protocol with the best amendments possible. Surely the British Government will have to respect this majority, however they get there in the end? I am equally mystified at the DUP supporting Brexit.
“Having watched Brexit from the beginning, I am still bewildered why supposed unionists did not see this problem coming – and indeed strongly campaigned for Brexit.”
In 2013, just after Cameron’s ‘Bloomberg Speech’ a friend asked me what I thought would be the consequences.
Having not thought the issue through thoroughly in the light of this new context I decided to stick to what was, to me, the very most obvious point:
“I can’t think of anything else more likely than a bitter campaign over membership of the EU (let alone a decision to leave) more likely to lead to an independent Northern Ireland or eventual reunification with the Republic.”
Ho hum…