Irish Politics and Brexit Failure William Kingston A ‘no-deal’ Brexit obviously means a hard border in Ireland, and with the election of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the danger of it has greatly increased . Irish policy-makers consequently need to learn and reflect on how much they contributed to her failure. An over-playing of the Irish hand seriously hampered the British negotiating stance. The UK, in fact, has little need to put up a barrier on the border, since any future imports from the EU are likely to be more expensive than those from elsewhere, but Brussels would have to have one. Once cheaper food starts to be imported into Britain, there will be money to be made from moving it into the EU. Only a hard EU border on the Irish side can physically stop this, and French farmers, not to speak of our own, would insist on it, and instantly. Instead of seeking to tie Britain’s hands in the negotiations, therefore, Irish policy should have been to do everything possible to help them get the best possible deal. Unfortunately, what happened illustrates yet again that those who negotiate for us lack awareness of one of the most crucial components of all deal-making, and also do not seem to be able to learn from their failures. The most important key to successful negotiation is to ensure that the other party also profits from the outcome. This means never pushing whatever strength one may have to the limit. Irish policy-makers instead appear to use their power in any situation with its maximum force. As Noel Dorr showed in his recent book, Sunningdale: the Search for Peace in Northern Ireland, we have been here before in the Sunningdale Agreement. There were two components in this: power-sharing and the ‘Irish dimension’. Power-sharing was introduced and had started to work. However , given the violent history to which it was a partial response, it needed a long period to bed in. There was no urgent need to invoke the Irish dimension , but the Agreement had put the power to do this into the hands of Liam Cosgrave’s government, which used it and brought the roof in. The result was the Ulster Workers’ strike, the destruction of Brian Faulkner’s brand of moderate Unionism, the irresistible rise of Ian Paisley and the DUP, and many more years of bloodshed. William Kingston Studies • volume 108 • number 431 272 Studies_layout_AUTUMN-2019.indd 40 21/08/2019 09:14 In the same way, when the British electorate voted for Brexit, the Irish government had power related to the negotiations because of its land border with the UK and the goodwill of EU States and especially of Britain. It has been altogether overlooked that at no stage did London even threaten to play its strongest card against us, which is the Common Travel Area. Again, the Irish power was used to the limit, without understanding of the possible consequences, in respect of the preconditions for negotiating future terms of trading between the parties. Once it became known that the EU intended to lay down preconditions before trade matters could be discussed, it was in this country’s interest to keep the border issue out of them, so as to push dealing with it into the substantive phase. Such Irish influence as there was should have been used to limit preconditions to the two that were quite capable of being dealt with without any reference to trade. These are the position of citizens from the EU who are living in the UK, and vice versa, and the amount of alimony to be paid by Britain in the divorce proceedings. Instead, as with Sunningdale, the power in the hands of the Irish government was used to the limit, to make a border without checks a third precondition . This certainly did not happen on the initiative of the EU – there was no reason why they should think it up. Incorporating the Irish demand that Britain give assurances about the border in advance was then presented as a triumph, when in fact it was a diplomatic failure. Lecturing the British that ‘the onus is on them...
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Apr 12, 2024
Irit Hershkowitz + 1
Open Access
