The year is 2025 and the prime minister, David Lammy, has just phoned the Sinn Féin leader, Mary Lou McDonald, to congratulate her on victory in Ireland’s unification referendum. The deputy prime minister, Nicola Sturgeon, tweets that she hopes Scotland will follow suit in the referendum she secured at the last election for taking the Scottish National party into coalition with Labour. Gerry Adams gives the dedication as a statue of Jacob Rees-Mogg is unveiled in Crossmaglen. The Tory leader, Amber Rudd, refuses to publicly blame her predecessor Boris Johnson for the breakup of the union but, like the rest of what’s left of the country, she knows the truth.
As anyone involved in the Good Friday agreement will tell you, principles guarantee no deal. It’s why the current Brexit negotiations between the UK and itself are going so well. Theresa May has red lines, the European Research Group (ERG) has absolute red lines, the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) has blood-red lines, and Jeremy Corbyn has blurred lines featuring Pharrell. If they all hold firm, we’re heading for a hard Brexit. And a united Ireland.
We were always going to end up here because Brexit has never been about Nissan X-Trails or the shape of your bananas. It’s only ever been about sovereignty. For the gammons and bowler hats on the team, the final destination has always been the top of the white cliffs of Dover dressed as Dad’s Army, straddling Dysons.
Northern Ireland has always been about sovereignty for a different reason – almost half of its population see themselves as Irish. How very rude. Yet as Brexiteers preach about their precious union, Irish nationalists in the same country are meant to park the union they want and just work out how the chicken crosses the border.
Last week I was back in my home village of Dundrum, County Down. It lies in a constituency that in the past has elected both Éamon de Valera and Enoch Powell, but when talk in the pub turned to Brexit, the same truths were repeated again and again: nothing good can come of this for Northern Ireland. And: we knew this would happen.
Most people in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU because there have only ever been two options post-Brexit – customs checks at the Irish border or in the Irish Sea. Each would cause divisions just as we were bridging the gaps (in spite of our politicians). Depressingly, there’s no way through this.
As the prime minister Maybots her way through the charade of alternative arrangements, there’s only one thing you need to know – there are no workable alternative arrangements. If there were, you’d have heard of them by now. The details of this technological masterpiece would already be a double-page spread in the Daily Mail with Rees-Mogg mocked up as Alan Turing under the headline “Enigma cracks Enigma – spirit of Bletchley takes back control”. If an alternative arrangement that worked actually existed (or was likely to exist in the next couple of years) Brexiteers would have already accepted the backstop, knowing they could easily replace it with their idea during the transition. The fact that they won’t bet on themselves tells you all you need to know about what they have in the locker.
Yet none of that matters when you’ve inoculated yourself against reality. It’s why the ERG continues to cup its balls and cough while looking at a picture of Winston Churchill. “Did you feel that, too? We need a clean break.” Meanwhile, Corbyn complains the clock is being run down, but knows his last hope of a general election is when time’s up. To those outside the Labour party he’s become the José Mourinho of Brexit, sticking to a system that has lost half the dressing room while a people’s vote remains benched like Paul Pogba for daring to be more popular than the manager.
All of this could have been avoided if the majority in Northern Ireland had been listened to during the referendum campaign. But as Nigel Farage and Johnson trumpeted their migrant-free magic kingdom, we were Kevin in Home Alone – only remembered at the baggage carousel after the plane had landed. It’s why the minutes of the first meeting between Michel Barnier and David Davis will never be released. “So, what do you propose for your land border with Europe?” Polite laughter. “We have a land border with you guys?”
Even at this late stage, it remains the unanswered question – how can you take back control of your borders when the only land border you have can’t be put back in place? The fact that more than 70% of people in Northern Ireland voted to give up control of that border via the Good Friday agreement so they could live in peace remains totally ignored.
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What is the Malthouse compromise?
When Conservatives say they care about Northern Ireland, they actually just mean the freehold. Like a stable block with planning permission, they know the extra square footage adds value but they’ve no intention of actually developing it. Just as long as they can see it from the big house, they’re happy. As for those who live in the stable? If Brexit has proved anything, it’s that many Tories don’t give a stuff about the people of Northern Ireland – not even the unionists. If they did, they wouldn’t dream of a hard Brexit because it only guarantees one thing – a border poll.
That’s one that will be decided not by Sinn Féin or DUP votes, but by the moderates in the middle – nationalists who once felt Irishenough post-Good Friday agreement and those pro-European unionists applying for Irish passports. The inevitable economic downturn and border circus of a hard Brexit might just be enough to swing those floating voters and Northern Ireland out of the union. So, why would any member of the Conservative and Unionist party take that risk? Because no matter what they say in public, they’ve never honestly believed Belfast is just like Finchley.
All notions of a border poll could easily have been damped if, post-Brexit referendum, the DUP had accepted that Northern Ireland was a special case. Like they insisted it was when they asked George Osborne to drop Northern Ireland’s corporation tax to mirror the Republic back in 2014. Or how same-sex marriage and abortion laws are different to the rest of the UK thanks to a veto by the DUP in the Northern Ireland assembly (apparently, it’s also in a confidence and supply arrangement with the Lord Jesus). But that was never on the cards because, for the DUP, Brexit is about proving they’re biologically British, not adopted. It means the party will always order what Johnson and Farage are having but, unlike them, actually eat it.
Of course, special status for Northern Ireland would mean some form of “dreaded backstop” (pause, pearl clutch, continue), but when a country has more than 300 land border crossings and only five main ports to the mainland, where would you rather try to do the “dreaded paperwork”? And, let’s face it, any customs check that can take place in the middle of the Irish Sea while a lorry driver hoovers a fry-up on the ferry then has a snooze in his bunk has to be a good thing. Cue sash-shaking Brexiteer rage. “Don’t you understand Northern Ireland would then become a rule-taker not a rule-maker?!” Because apparently, it’s all about rule-making – as the Stormont assembly, where rules should actually be made for Northern Ireland, remains in mothballs since 2016 because the DUP backed out of a deal with Sinn Féin to restore power sharing. So we’ve reached the fatberg in the sewer of principle. We’re told that the DUP has the government over a pork barrel and unless the backstop goes, it will bring the house down. But as time runs out, it’s actually the Tories who have the political wing of the Old Testament surrounded.
On the one side is May’s deal (complete with backstop). On the other is the ERG and a hard Brexit. If the DUP buckles on the backstop, party members will walk away with their UK sovereignty between their legs. For those of us who have their early albums, this isn’t going to happen.
Which leaves just one option. The DUP holds firm and jumps off the cliff with the ERG, knowing a hard Brexit is the only scenario that guarantees a hard border in Ireland, a border poll in Northern Ireland and the perfect economic storm where it could lose that vote. By trying to be the most British person in the room, the DUP could actually end up the most Irish.
Whisper it quietly, but the best outcome for the DUP is actually a people’s vote. They’ll scream red, white and blue murder if it happens but privately breathe a sigh of relief. Like Boris Johnson, they never wanted Brexit but wanted to be seen to support it. A second referendum offers an escape from their worst nightmare, while allowing them to reluctantly go along with “the will of the entire country”. Very unionist.
For Northern Ireland as a whole, another EU referendum is also the only way out of this mess. Not to save face. But to save peace, prosperity and a shared future. It’s wrong that Northern Ireland should take one for the team so that others can have their version of Brexit. It’s now time to act, or Northern Ireland might decide the team is no longer worth playing for.
The Guardian
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