Middle Ireland is convinced Brits will leave EU with a whimper and fine to give May a fig leaf…

I’ve been reluctant to get too involved in talking about Brexit till it happens. Much as I hate it personally, it has undoubtedly been host to an awful lot of foolish speculation on both sides of the Irish Sea.

In deference to both Donald Tusk and Colum Eastwood, there really is a special place in hell for any so-called Republicans who voted for it, on the calculation that the disruption it would herald would also bring about a united Ireland sooner rather than later.

Whatever the matter of principle, the realpolitik deriving from the abstentionism of Sinn Féin’s seven MPs has given the DUP and Conservative arrangement a free pass, pushing all the work back on UK Labour, the SNP, the Lib Dems and Plaid.

Judging by Mike Russell’s opinion expressed on The View last Thursday, and short of any direct criticism of its absence in Westminster its ongoing boycott of Stormont is certainly not welcome by Scotland’s ruling SNP government.

As for the deal itself, it has never been clear to me, at any stage, where any of these negotiations were going. And I’ve been very reluctant to buy in to any one view because it always seemed to me that it would end in a fudge.

The idea of a backstop was always reasonable, but only if everything else was going to be reasonable. Foster’s Brussels intervention at Christmas 2017 made it crystal clear that any kind of permanent land grab on Northern Ireland by the EU would be ultra vires.

That such a move might have been tolerated likely had two separate but related causes.

One, the idea put about by extreme Eurosceptics that Brexit can only mean absolute freedom to strike any trade deals they so wished. And two, that in order to realise this Eurosceptic fantasy the UK had to leave NI behind.

The reality of a 52/48  split was always likely to give rise to much less glamorous outcomes than either of these. Furthermore, despite what the Taoiseach told NewsTalk a day or two ago, much of this has been spun for domestic reasons rather than out of statecraft.

Pat Leahy in yesterday’s Irish Times outlines some class of compromise:

The EU and the Irish will not undermine the backstop, but they will try to make it more palatable for the British. The British, for their part, must get some concession which changes it. The substance of these matters is not yet resolved, but both sides know what they have to do.

Andy Pollack outlines a position which until now has been the reserve of a very few southern commentators like Dan O’Brien and Eoghan Harris:

…relations between Dublin, London and Belfast seem to me worse than they have been for most of the past 30 years. The Irish government’s unwavering insistence on the backstop has contributed to this.

In Britain the backstop has emerged as the most hated element in Theresa May’s draft Withdrawal Agreement, overwhelmingly rejected by the House of Commons.

The danger has now become that if the backstop precipitates a no-deal Brexit, we will end up with the very border the backstop is designed to avoid.

As the crisis which ended this incarnation of Stormont I wrote in an OpEd for the Irish Independent that:

At a time when the UK is preoccupied with Brexit, the US is bracing itself for Trump and the new politics of the Republic is struggling to get anything agreed never mind done, mollycoddling the pampered politicians of Northern Ireland is an indulgence none of them can afford.

The Blairs and Aherns, with their long-term peace objectives and abundance of resources, are long gone.

In fact, after two years of helplessly splashing around in the traditional blame game (facilitated in some part the Taoiseach’s playing domestic southern politics with the democratic failure in Northern ireland) the two governments must quickly recover focus on the long term.

Eoghan Harris describes that dangerous narrative drift in typically dramatic terms in his Sindo column this morning:

What matters more is the long term lethal legacy of the green fever which Leo Varadkar did nothing to vaccinate us against. This fever has caused some commentators to bang on about border polls and talks as if a United Ireland was around the corner,

The 1918 generation thought a Republic was around the corner too – but found nothing but death and destruction and a deeply divided Ireland.

But he also states:

While Middle Ireland went briefly a bit green in the golf clubs at the sight of Leo and Simon, all macho, standing up to the Brits, enough was enough.

Deep down, Middle Ireland sensibly believes that the British will leave the EU with a whimper and are fine with a few fig leaves from us to help sell the Withdrawal Agreement.

 

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