Brexiters should know consequences of ignoring Ireland

Posted by Jim on October 17, 2016

By Brian Feeney (for Irish News)

Charlie Flanagan tells us the Irish government will seek ‘legal
recognition of the unique status of the north and the circumstances on
the island’.

However, he was talking in terms of the free movement of people and
goods on the island.

That seems to be what the Taoiseach’s planned ‘All-Island Civic
Dialogue’ seems to be concentrating on too.

(You daren’t call it an ‘All-Ireland Civic Dialogue’ in case you offend
unionists who aren’t turning up anyway).

Most experts think that will be a tall order. In the last week the
indications are that other EU members are lining up to make negotiations
as difficult as possible for the British government after Theresa May
and her ministers’ aggressive and provocative remarks at her party’s
rally in Birmingham.

The Conservative Brexiteers really know how to make friends and
influence people. May and her immediate xenophobic entourage are the
only people who count.

That’s clear now. Our proconsul, her local little Englander Sir Echo, is
her political lapdog who has worked with her during his years at the
Home Office where her authoritarianism was evident in every statement.

Our proconsul takes care to use exactly the same words as May, for
example ‘no borders of the past’, without having a clue what that means
in the future or how it will be implemented.

What we know for sure is this. May and her braying conference place
immigration at the top of the agenda.

Control of numbers means leaving the single market and probably the
customs union too. She, and of course her local lapdog, witter on about
the Common Travel Area, deliberately confusing it with free trade in
goods which it certainly isn’t.

How the two are going to be equated in Charlie Flanagan’s ‘legal
recognition’ is a mystery when Britain leaves the single market.

Puzzling enough as that conundrum is, there’s another more profound
political conundrum.

How do you retain the right to pursue the aspiration towards Irish unity
to be operated by a border poll as provided in the Good Friday Agreement
when the north isn’t in the EU? So far only the Taoiseach has made a
passing reference to this problem in an important speech a couple of
weeks ago.

Suppose post Brexit, in a decade with an inevitable nationalist voting
majority here especially as economic hardship bites, suppose people did
vote for Irish unity: how would that work when the north isn’t in the
EU? How does it join?

The Taoiseach compared the problem to West Germany’s position after 1989
when the wall came down. It joined with East Germany which was admitted
automatically after 1990 to the EEC as it then was.

Could the north do the same and if so, what would the Scottish
government think if the same arrangements weren’t available to Scotland?
Would other EU members agree? Would Spain want similar arrangements to
incorporate Gibraltar as their price?

Charlie Flanagan and the Irish government need to start thinking about
how they incorporate such a process as the German one into the ‘legal
recognition of the unique status of the north’ instead of just talking
about trade.

The Irish government goes on about how a hard border will cause
difficulties for the peace process. Fair enough.

What will cause incomparably more difficulty is if the carefully worded
deal in the Good Friday Agreement about how to advance Irish unity
peacefully and democratically is casually set aside unilaterally by the
British government with no concern for the inevitable consequences.

Let’s state quite simply what they are. A boost for republican
dissidents, destabilisation of Sinn Fein’s political position and
general nationalist outrage that a British government has once again
reneged on a deal, in this case an international agreement.

The Irish government has to start making these points explicitly because
the Brexiteers in this horrible British government care nothing of the
consequences for the north of their rush towards a UKIP-lite position.

Cutting immigration is the number one priority in order to steal UKIP’s
clothes and undermine Labour. Dublin should remind them of the
consequences of ignoring Ireland.