No way around the Brexit Irish border

Posted by Jim on August 7, 2017

History shows, however, that while the British have an excellent record in partitioning other countries, they have never introduced the idea into their own. Even the Scots recently failed to partition Britain. … In any case, the Good Friday Agreement clearly states that the existing Border can only be removed not by the will of the Irish people, but by the consent of those in The North alone.

Patrick Murphy.Irish News.Belfast. Saturday. August 5, 2017

If Brexit means Brexit, then The Border means The Border. The Dublin government and northern Nationalists can complain all they want, but in accepting the legitimacy of political partition, they must now accept that Brexit means economic partition.

A rather harsh view, you say, and you have a point. But in addressing the reality of the post-Brexit border, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that some form of economic partition now appears inevitable.

We have had three broad proposals on how to manage that inevitability: the DUP’s “frictionless” border, the Dublin government’s idea of the Irish Sea becoming the new border between Britain and all of Ireland, and the SDLP’s concept of special status for The North (which was later adopted by Sinn Féin and, just this week, by the Joint Dáil/Seanad Committee on Brexit).

Someone once said that the only true science is physics – everything else is just stamp collecting. In political terms, all three proposals are stamp collecting in that they largely fail to address political partition.

No one, least of all the DUP, appears to know what a frictionless border would look like. Cross-border movement of goods could be speeded up by computer tracking, but how will the frictionless border affect people? Will cross-border commuters be stopped and searched and will Irish News sports journalists now take a full day to reach Clones?

Will the frictionless border also apply to what used to be called unapproved roads, which are minor roads without customs posts? (The bit I liked about unapproved roads in the past was that many of them had signposts pointing out where they were. I could never work out why.) Will unapproved roads be monitored? If so, how?

The Dublin government’s idea of having the Irish Sea as the new border is rather clever, in that it proposes to economically partition Britain rather than Ireland. History shows, however, that while the British have an excellent record in partitioning other countries, they have never introduced the idea into their own. Even the Scots recently failed to partition Britain.

In any case, the Good Friday Agreement clearly states that the existing Border can only be removed not by the will of the Irish people, but by the consent of those in The North alone. Presumably that same rule applies to its economic re-location.

Undeterred, the Irish government has more recently moved their proposal up a gear by hoping that Britain will change its mind on Brexit – a wonderful example of imagination working faster than the brain.

That just leaves the third proposal – the SDLP’s concept of special status for The North. It is a priceless idea in that the only person who could possibly disagree with it would be someone who knows what it means.

It appears to suggest that The North should somehow remain within the EU, while the rest of the UK remains outside it. So would The North be subject to EU law or UK law?

Would farmers receive UK subsidies or EU subsidies? (Both would be nice.) The concept of special status suggests that the economy can be somehow divorced from government – a theory which tends to overlook the small matter of taxation.

In supporting the proposal this week, the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Brexit did not add much clarity to the idea. In fairness, the Committee did at least identify the issue of partition, but in suggesting that the way ahead was another New Ireland Forum, it appears to have been more a gesture than a serious attempt to address nationalism’s acceptance of partition.

Oddly the report also placed significant emphasis on the re-unification of Germany as a possible model for Irish unity. German unity came about through the collapse of communism. Are the Report’s authors seriously suggesting that Unionism is also about to collapse and that thousands of unionists will come streaming through the peace walls looking for a new society?

If Ireland wants to avoid economic partition, the only reasonable solution would appear to be an end to political partition. The problem is that, having opposed it for 75 years, nationalists agreed to political partition a mere 19 years ago. Of course they did not foresee Brexit, but history might have taught them that Britain has a long record of regarding treaties as temporary.

Now northern nationalists and the Dublin government appear to be saying that political partition is good, but economic partition is bad. Well, Brexit means that if you support the first one, you get the second. Who in nationalist Ireland will take the lead in addressing that point?