Citizens on all sides poorly served in Brexit talks to date

I sup­pose I bet­ter write some­thing about Brex­it. In fact, in the months to come we are all going to have to focus a lot on Brex­it and this blog will return to the issue on many occa­sions. But I have been some­what reluc­tant to write on it to date.

My reluc­tance does not stem from any lack of inter­est in the mat­ter, still less from any lack of appre­ci­a­tion of the mas­sive ram­i­fi­ca­tions of cur­rent Brex­it ‘nego­ti­a­tions’. No. My reluc­tance here stems from two things. One is the sheer breadth of the issues and con­ver­sa­tions that need to not only hap­pen, but to man­i­fest them­selves in a whole series of trade agree­ments, cus­toms arrange­ments and treaties. And the sec­ond is that, in hav­ing that dis­cus­sion, it is nec­es­sary to do so in a way which may seem crit­i­cal of the par­ties involved for, to date,  the ‘debate’ at a polit­i­cal lev­el has been some­what sur­re­al.

Let’s begin today by look­ing at the main posi­tions of the pro­tag­o­nists so far. They appear to be, in no par­tic­u­lar order, the Euro­pean Union, the Gov­ern­ment of Britain and North­ern Ire­land, the elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple of North­ern Ire­land, and the gov­ern­ment in the Repub­lic of Ire­land. The real­i­ty how­ev­er is that this issue will have last­ing and pro­found effects on the peo­ple, the cit­i­zens, of Ire­land, Britain and the Euro­pean Union. So how well are those peo­ple being served in the process to date?

THE EUROPEAN UNION

I well remem­ber the night of the Brex­it count. A knife edge vote that swung this way, then that, and result­ed in a very tight, but pro­found, out­come – Britain had decid­ed to leave the Euro­pean Union. The rela­tion­ship between the Euro­pean Union and Britain had always been fraught, and not just from Britain’s side either. Many now for­get that Britain’s ini­tial appli­ca­tions to join the then Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Com­mu­ni­ty (EEC) in 1963 and 1967 were vetoed by France. Charles De Gaulle explained this by sug­gest­ing that the British econ­o­my was ‘incom­pat­i­ble with Europe’, and that he sus­pect­ed that Britain retained a deep seat­ed hos­til­i­ty to the pan-Euro­pean project. It was Edward Heath’s Con­ser­v­a­tive Gov­ern­ment that ulti­mate­ly brought Britain into the project in 1972. An uneasy ‘union’ was born. When Britain vot­ed to leave the EU on 23 June 2016, it was but the lat­est of many trysts that coun­try had had with the notion. In fact, there has hard­ly been an elec­tion in over 40 years there where Europe wasn’t a mas­sive­ly con­tro­ver­sial issue. There had even been a pre­vi­ous ref­er­en­dum that vot­ed to ‘Remain’ in 1975, and of course Britain also refused to join the sin­gle cur­ren­cy project.

But whether the Euro­pean Union likes it or not, the mas­sive con­ti­nent-wide sup­port for a peace­ful alliance of nations cre­at­ing a social project of mutu­al ben­e­fit to cit­i­zens is sim­ply not trans­lat­ing into wide­spread pub­lic sup­port for what is now a mil­i­tarised eco­nom­ic union pur­su­ing aggres­sive poli­cies of neolib­er­al­ism, and behav­ing in an increas­ing­ly anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic man­ner.

One would have hoped that, in addi­tion to the under­stand­able frus­tra­tion at EU lev­el with the down­right dis­hon­esty that char­ac­terised the Brex­i­teers’ cam­paign­ing, the EU would have found this a moment for nec­es­sary crit­i­cal self-analy­sis too. For is there not wide­spread pub­lic con­cern across much of Europe with the cur­rent direc­tion of trav­el? For exam­ple, are peo­ple not tir­ing of an elect­ed Euro­pean Par­lia­ment being rou­tine­ly ignored by an unelect­ed Com­mis­sion?  Is the EU not increas­ing­ly look­ing like eco­nom­ic impe­ri­al­ism where banks have sim­ply replaced tanks? And does the 2008 eco­nom­ic cat­a­stro­phe and the resul­tant bul­ly­ing by the EU of Greece, Cyprus and – whis­per it – Ire­land not sound some type of alarm about whether a ‘one size fits all’ eco­nom­ic mod­el is not just being used as a big stick to pun­ish small­er, less, pow­er­ful, nations?

Put blunt­ly, is the EU cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing a deep­er union-wide democ­ra­cy, or erod­ing it? An EU analy­sis of these ques­tions and suit­able reforms that go beyond ‘brit-bash­ing’ is sure­ly required as even a min­i­mal response to Brex­it.

BRITAIN VOTES TO LEAVE

Notwith­stand­ing my crit­i­cisms of the Euro­pean Union, the fact is that Britain did not vote to leave it in order to swing back towards social­ism, or an alter­na­tive to neolib­er­al­ism. On the con­trary, much of the ‘leave’ cam­paign was con­struct­ed by the far right using nation­al­ism and race hate as elec­toral bat­ter­ing rams. Brex­i­teers like Bill Cash, who cam­paigned with­in the Tory par­ty for a ref­er­en­dum for years and who ensnared a gullible David Cameron into con­ced­ing one, are overt­ly on the ‘far right’ of even neolib­er­al Europe. They sit on their seats, and in their estates of priv­i­lege, know­ing that they are well-pro­tect­ed from the eco­nom­ic effects of their jin­go­is­tic rav­ings.  That mas­sive sec­tions of what used to be the work­ing (as in, they used to have jobs and indus­try to work in) class fell for blunt emp­ty nation­al­ism is a sad­ly pre­dictable con­se­quence of the hol­low­ing-out of indus­tri­al Britain, not only by Thatch­er, but by her suc­ces­sor Tony Blair and his ‘New Labour’.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly almost two years on, while the EU fin­ger wags furi­ous­ly, the debate in Britain con­tin­ues to be con­duct­ed in these terms. Just lis­ten to Jacob Rees-Mogg – if you can bear to. With a Prime Min­is­ter now utter­ly lack­ing in author­i­ty, and a riv­en Tory par­ty steer­ing the ship of state head­long into a glac­i­er, one can only hope that Labour get into pow­er soon and that their recent sen­si­ble posi­tion­ing regard­ing the required cus­toms union is a por­tent that sense may yet pre­vail.

Here’s an inter­est­ing thought. Do you sus­pect that even Leo Varad­kar and Simon Coveney now wish to see Jere­my Cor­byn in Down­ing Street? I do.

NORTHERN IRELAND

While all this goes on, reports sug­gest that it is the peo­ple of North­ern Ire­land who will suf­fer eco­nom­i­cal­ly more than any oth­ers post-Brex­it. These reports make no dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between Orange and Green. They do not dif­fer­en­ti­ate between those who sup­port mar­riage equal­i­ty and those who don’t, or those who want an Irish lan­guage act and those who don’t.  And the eco­nom­ic effects of Brex­it on the peo­ple of North­ern Ire­land will not dif­fer­en­ti­ate between those who admire Arlene Fos­ter, or those who think she has seri­ous eth­i­cal ques­tions to answer about the Renew­able Heat Incen­tive over­spend.

The DUP have over­played their hand. There­sa May can­not deliv­er an open bor­der in Ire­land with­out a cus­toms union, and the EU can­not agree to one with­out the oth­er. To sug­gest oth­er­wise is to con­duct the debate in an atmos­phere of unre­al­i­ty. What is more, it is an unre­al­i­ty that every­one is aware of yet is play­ing along with any­way. And, if the DUP’s ‘real’ posi­tion turns out to be that they could well live with a ‘hard’ bor­der despite their protes­ta­tions to the con­trary, that must be seen in the con­text of Sinn Fein hav­ing viewed Brex­it in the exact oppo­site way. Since the day of the vote, they have viewed Brex­it as a sort of ‘tro­jan horse’ for a bor­der poll as envis­aged by the Good Fri­day Agree­ment.

The DUP and SF have so far not man­aged to work togeth­er, even on Brex­it alone, in the com­mon inter­ests of the cit­i­zens in North­ern Ire­land as a whole. Such a polit­i­cal con­sen­sus has nev­er been more nec­es­sary, and it is to be hoped for everyone’s sake in the com­ing months that it is not as remote as it seems.

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND GOVERNMENT

Things are not as good as cer­tain sources would have us believe in the Repub­lic either. To begin with, what was pre­sent­ed as an ‘agree­ment’ on the Irish aspect in phase one is noth­ing of the sort. In addi­tion, I can’t get my head around a conun­drum which has been on my mind for almost two years now. What is going to hap­pen if (I think it may be a ‘when’)  what emerges is as fol­lows  – we either have bor­der-free, tar­iff-free trade with the EU, or, we have  bor­der-free, tar­iff-free trade with Britain?

But we can’t have both.

What hap­pens when the fan­ta­sy notion that every­one in this mess can have every­thing they want, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with their neigh­bours hav­ing the exact oppo­site, dis­solves in the smoke and mir­rors that it is? We in the South have not had a sin­gle dis­cus­sion that I have heard about that poten­tial out­come. We haven’t even posi­tioned our­selves between both sides as we ought to have, instead lin­ing up with the EU in a par­ti­san man­ner which may yet come back to haunt is. After all, if the hard bor­der we are deter­mined to avoid hap­pens any­way, it will be on this island that it will hap­pen. And, when it comes to installing it and pro­tect­ing the needs of the EU big guns, don’t be sur­prised if – just like after the crash of 08 and the aus­ter­i­ty that fol­lowed – it is the EU which is again pun­ish­ing us to save the over­all project.

ENDS