The hapless
progress of the Brexit negotiations continues. I do not mean the
almost childish nonsense
of May’s new wheeze. Instead I’m talking about the Irish border.
It seems, if you read most of the UK press, that out of the blue this
new obstacle has been sprung on the UK at the last minute. Some of
the press talk about surprise,
while the Guardian talks
about it ‘emerging’. Some have even decided to cover up their
ignorance by inventing
conspiracy theories. With political commentary in the UK largely
reflecting the beliefs of the UK side, then this also means that this
surprise extends to our negotiating team.
In reality there is
nothing to be surprised about. The Irish border was one of the three
issues to be dealt with in the first stage. As the UK government has
consistently said they are leaving the Customs Union and Single
Market (CU/SM), and have failed to convince even themselves that they
can invent a new magically invisible border that can police countries
that have different customs and regulatory regimes, it was only
natural that an EU paper
would suggest that Northern Ireland stay in the CU/SM to avoid a hard
land border.
So why did the UK,
and its media, seem to forget about this third issue, when even I had
flagged
it up as the critical issue a couple of months ago. What I think
happened is that the Brexit side convinced itself that, because a
hard border would only arise as a result of different trade regimes,
then the border was really a trade issue and so should be in stage 2.
In other words the EU had simply made a mistake in putting it in
Stage 1, and would therefore quietly forget about it.
That reasoning was
part wishful thinking and part delusion. Wishful thinking because, as
I wrote back in September, it is a problem with no obvious solution
that Brexiteers would accept. And delusion because the UK side
continues to imagine that the EU is governed by Franco/German
interests, and why would these countries be concerned about what
happens in Ireland. What it completely failed to understand, and what
the EU had understood, was the importance of the border issue to the
people on both sides of it. It was an important reason why Northern
Ireland voted to Remain.
But I wonder if
there is something deeper behind the UK attitude. For too many people
in England, the ‘troubles’ in Ireland were a quarrel in a strange
country between people of whom we know little, to paraphrase Neville
Chamberlain.
As a result, there is little comprehension of why a hard border should be
such a big deal. You would think memories of bombs going off in
England’s cities would change that, but I’m not sure it did,
anymore than more recent terrorism has led to a better understanding
among English people of tensions within Islam. In contrast, most
people in Northern Ireland would move heaven and earth not to go back
to those times.
Even while all this
might be true, it is no excuse for the same attitudes to be held by
our political leaders. John Major knew better than this, as did Tony
Blair. Only the arrogant disdain for different realities displayed by
Brexiteers can explain a mistake of the magnitude of ignoring the
border issue. I suspect any politician that lied the way the
Brexiteers lie, or lived in the alternative reality they appear to
live in, would not have survived long in UK politics two decades ago,
whereas now it has become a criteria
for holding high office.
At the end of the
day there is little difference between Brexiteers who tell people
that new trade deals with countries outside the EU can make up for
trade lost with the EU, and Republicans who say scrapping Obamacare
will extend coverage and their tax bill reduces taxes for most
people. In both countries when the ability to gain office is
determined by how well you can fire up or charm a base, because a
large part of the media will then assure you have a good chance of
winning elections, is it any wonder the political system fails to
select for competence, understanding or respect for wisdom and
knowledge.
There is a simple
solution to the problem of the border. It is for the UK side to
commit to only negotiate new trade arrangements that would be
consistent with a soft border. [1] That would mean staying in the
Customs Union and parts
of the Single Market, but it could leave open the possibility of
negotiating over the remaining parts of the Single market and perhaps
free movement. Anyone who tells you that this concession by the UK
side does not respect the referendum result is once again lying:
Leave won precisely because they ruled no arrangement out. Any red
lines erected after the referendum carry as much weight as the Prime
Minister currently has authority.
Already we have many
people in the UK saying why should we adapt our policies to keep the people of Ireland happy. This is the Chamberlain type attitude
that I talked about earlier. The Irish border is at least as much our
creation and our concern as it is of anyone else. Maintaining peace
within the UK should be any government’s top priority. The
fact that it has failed to make it onto Brexiteers to do list tells
you as much about their outlook and competence as you need to know.
[1] Whether the UK
will be forced to take this position I do not know. I stand by what I
wrote
recently that there will almost certainly be a deal, one element of
which will be a transition where we stay in the EU/SM. Indeed I
understated my case there. First, there can be no such thing as no
deal. As Davis has explained,
there are things that have to be sorted to keep planes flying and the
like. He has described this as “some sort of basic deal without the bits we really want”.
What that remark shows is that the ‘no deal is better than a bad
deal’ line is simply a bluff and he knows it. The bad deal is no
deal. And finally there is parliament. I know it has been pathetic
until now, but that does not mean it would sign off on the worst
possible kind of Brexit. But what the border issue will most likely
show is that it is unlikely we will get to a deal involving
transition without cabinet resignations.
