Brexiters Irish Gambit Backfires

During the EU Referendum, a number of people, including me, pointed out that Brexit would pose serious problems in relation to Ireland and the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Leave campaigners, including hard-line leavers such as the then Northern Ireland Secretary, Theresa Villiers, said that no such problem existed that there had been a common travel area long before either Britain or Ireland had been in the EU (this latter fact, of both not being in the EU, is of course, where the difference and the problem now resides, but which the Leavers seem not to have understood, or pretend to not understand), and the media were happy to simply accept such assurances as good coin, particularly as they preferred to concentrate on the spats between different Tory celebrities on either side of the referendum, than to examine, in detail, the actual issues involved. Well, the Irish border clearly now is an issue, and it is the issue that some of us, always said it was!

Even in recent weeks, the Tories, and the Tory media have tried to downplay the actual issue of the border. It was much easier for the Tories, and the Tory media to talk in simple, and naive terms about the real issue in the Brexit negotiations all being about money, about the EU trying to get their pound of flesh from Britain, as a cost of going forward into the second stage negotiations. And, of course, that played into the Brexiters narrative that well, this just shows how much the EU needs the UK to plug the gaps in EU finances, and how desperate they will be to do a good deal with the UK for trade. It was, of course, obvious nonsense. The EU is a $14 trillion economy, as against the $2 trillion UK economy. When it comes to financing its budget requirements, or when it comes to a question of who needs who, it is quite clear that the UK needs the EU far more than the EU needs the UK.

But, the real issue never was the money, as I set out several weeks ago. I pointed out there that for Theresa May there was a political problem in getting her party to go along with a larger Brexit divorce bill, and with making concessions over the ECJ as regards Citizens Rights, but, essentially, provided she could create a sufficient coalition behind such concessions it was technically easy to resolve. A Brexit Bill of €50 billion over five years is not devastating to Britain, and is only probably about what it owes, and has committed to whilst being a member. Nor is making the necessary concessions over EU Citizens Rights anything that causes problems for Britain to agree to. By contrast, everyone in the Tory Party says they want there to be no border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Not only that but Labour say that too, as do the Liberals, the SNP, the DUP, Sinn Fein, the SDLP, the Irish government, and the EU! In practice, I suspect that there are some in the DUP, and probably in the Tory Party itself, and certainly within the ranks of dissident Republicans and Loyalists who would not be unhappy about a return of the border, and the return to the sectarian struggles of the past, before the Good Friday Agreement.

There are undoubtedly Loyalists who see direct rule by Britain as the next best thing to a Loyalist parliament in Stormont, and they undoubtedly have like minded supporters in the Tory Party. Indeed, there have always been Labour MP's that have cultural and family ties to the Loyalist community in Northern Ireland. Brexit fits naturally with such a reactionary nationalist, and Loyalist mentality, and a return of sectarian conflict would be just an excuse for a return to such Loyalist supremacism in the North of Ireland, backed up by a redeployment of British troops to the streets of Northern Ireland, to “keep the peace”, as a natural conclusion of the colonial delusions of such reactionaries.

Such reactionaries are a small minority, even within the Tory Party, but the problem is that whilst the idea of “no border”, is, therefore, politically easy to obtain verbal support for, it is impossible to achieve technically given the conditions that Theresa May, has allowed the hard line Brexiters to impose on her from the beginning. The hard line Brexiters like Bojo, Fox and Davis always believed that just by threatening to leave the EU, they would get the EU to offer up concessions, in the same way that Thatcher had won the rebate, and that Blair had succeeded in getting the opt-outs from the Social Chapter, and Brown had got (through Blair) the opt out of the UK from joining the Eurozone. Bojo had even talked about having two referenda, a second one after the EU had been forced to make such concessions. In effect what this amounted to, was Britain having cake and eating it, once more, of having all the benefits of being in the EU, whilst opting out of all of those aspects of it that were detrimental to the Tory agenda. That is still, in fact, the delusion that guides the negotiating stance, such as it is, of the Brexiters.

Because the Brexiters live in this delusional world, in which Britain is still some significant global colonial power, they continue to delude themselves that the EU needs Britain to cover its budget, that the EU needs Britain for its trade and so on. At each stage, they have had that delusion exposed, but, at each stage, they simply go further into the rabbit hole. The gambit of the Brexiters over Ireland was to use it as a Trojan Horse. They saw no problem in agreeing to the two-stage negotiating process, because they thought that the EU would compromise over the budget etc., and they believed that when it came to it, they would be able to say to the EU that resolving the border question depends upon agreeing Britain's future trading arrangements with the EU. In other words, just as they have used the 4 million EU citizens living in Britain as a bargaining chip, during the stage 1 negotiations so they would hold the people of Ireland, and the continuation of the peace process to ransom, in order to get a trade deal with the EU.

For the reactionary nationalists, the logical conclusion of this process, is that the progressive demolition of borders within Europe, which enables the coming together of workers across the continent to pursue their common interests, is reversed, and borders once more are established, dividing workers once more on national and ethnic grounds. A good example of that, was the comment of Kate Hoey, yesterday, on The Daily Politics where she ridiculously predicted that Brexit would also lead to people in the Irish Republic also voting to leave the EU. The extent of such reactionary delusions is shown by the fact that not only did the people of Northern Ireland vote overwhelmingly against leaving the EU, but support for the EU in the Republic stands at around 80%!

The hard line Brexiters, and their supporters in the Kremlin and the White House, obviously thought that they were on a roll, as first Brexit was voted through, then Trump won in the US, and it looked like other reactionary populist elements such as Le Pen, Wilders and so on, were in the ascendant. Hoey's delusion that Brexit might spread via Northern Ireland into the Republic, is simply a manifestation of this global vision, of this strand of reactionary nationalism. But, the delusion has also been exposed in the reaction to it. The real momentum in the US does not reside with Trump supporters, but with Sanders supporters, just as the momentum in Britain does not reside with Nigel Farage, but with Jeremy Corbyn. Its only a question of time, before similar forces emerge in Europe, as they already have with Podemos, and Syriza, and the Left Bloc in Portugal, that supplant the conservative forces such as Macron, and so on, and provide a radical social-democratic alternative to reactionary nationalism.

But, the issue of the Irish border cannot act as a Trojan Horse for the Brexiters given that they have already created the conditions in which that is impossible. The Brexiters argue that resolving the issue of the border requires settlement of Britain's future trading arrangements with the EU. Well yes, that would be fine, if those discussions about those future trading relations were going to be about Britain remaining in the single market and customs union, and the terms for doing so, but Theresa May, under pressure from the hard Brexit wing of her party, has already set ,as “red lines”, the starting point that Britain is going to be outside both the Customs Union and the Single Market. In which case, the only thing in those trade negotiations that could have provided a solution to the Irish border, has already been rejected by the Tories!!!

The only way that could work is if the EU were to say to Britain, you do not need to be in the Single Market, you do not have to be in the Customs Union, you do not have to accept the jurisdiction of the ECJ, you do not have to accept any of the four freedoms of free movement of people, goods, services and capital, but you can continue to trade with the EU in the same way you do now! There is absolutely no way the EU, or any other similar institution would agree to such an arrangement, and it is the delusion of the Brexiters that anyone would.

The Brexiters might say that a free trade deal, such as Canada's free trade deal with the EU allows third countries to trade without tariffs, and without Canada being inside the EU Customs Union, or Single Market, but that is not at all the same thing. First of all, Canada does not have a border with the EU, and no one is suggesting that EU citizens can move freely to Canada or vice versa, which would be the case with no border in Ireland. Nor does free trade mean that goods and services may not be subject to other limitations, which in the current global economy are more important, such as commitment to common standards, and so on. Canadian goods will not come into the EU unchecked, and vice versa, and that means that even with a free trade agreement, trade is not frictionless across borders, and that is true in the EU, where borders exist with non-EU countries, such as Norway, where such free trade agreements exist.

The Brexiters thought they would be able to hold the people of Ireland to ransom, as a means of forcing the EU to go into stage 2 talks without Britain resolving the question of how there could be no border in Ireland. They thought it would force the EU to have to provide Britain with open access to the customs union without being a member of it. They thought that Ireland would support that gambit because much of Ireland's trade is into the North, and into Britain. They thought wrong.

If a border is reintroduced in Ireland, a lot of the investment that has gone into the North will migrate South as, especially foreign, investors worry about a return of instability and violence in the North. A lot of exports from the Republic to Britain passes through the North, often having passed back and forth across the border several times first. It will be likely that this cross border trade will be reduced considerably, and that finished products will be exported directly out of the Republic to Britain. Moreover, as an increasing amount of value creation now, is in services, and as the republic has developed a lot of its economy on the basis of high-tech industries, the question of physical transportation becomes less relevant, as does distance. The Republic can export a lot of high value, high-tech production, by the Internet, and the same is true for a lot of high value service industries, for example, in finance etc. Moreover, although the UK currently represents a large part of the Republic's trade, that can quickly change as Britain exits the EU, especially as the UK economy is in relative decline, and the EU is currently growing rapidly once more.

The Brexiters now have a couple of weeks to come up with a solution to a problem they have created for themselves, and to which there is no solution, within the red lines that Theresa May has set down. As the Irish government has said, and as I have said in the past, the reality rather than the Brexiters delusion is that if you want there to be no border in Ireland, then either Britain as a whole, or Northern Ireland on its own, has to remain in the Customs Union. Labour at least has left that option open, and so it could legitimately argue a real solution could only be concluded under the second stage negotiations. But, in reality, Theresa May could never have put forward such a compromise, because it would have blown the Tory Party apart. Moreover, in reality, Labour's stance makes no real sense either, as I have set out previously.

Yes, it makes sense if you want to avoid all of these problems such as the Irish border – and the same is true of the border between Spain and Gibraltar – and all of the other problems that arise as a result of being outside the Customs Union and Single Market, but then the question arises, if you are going to be still inside all of those institutions, still bond by their rules, still have to contribute to the budget and so on, why would you do that, whilst denying yourself, the right to vote on the formulation of all those rules and so on, by remaining a member of the EU and its political forums itself! The reality has always been that there is only a choice between hard Brexit and no Brexit. The reality is simply imposing itself over the delusion.