Labour's nationalist blind spot

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There is at least one thing which unites former PM Gordon Brown with another former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and that is an astounding ability to see a huge difference between the constitutional position of Ireland on the one hand and that of Scotland and Wales on the other. It has long struck me as a curious blind spot. Brown told us last week that he sees it as entirely natural that Ireland will, one day, be reunited as a single country, but also that Scotland is “geographically, economically, socially, culturally linked to the rest of the United Kingdom”. The detailed basis for that assertion is, naturally, not detailed, but it leaves him in much the same position as Corbyn who seemed to support the right of all nations across the world to be independent unless they happened to be physically attached to England.

The argument about ‘geographic, economic, social and cultural’ links is remarkably similar to the basis which Putin uses in relation to Ukraine, although I’m sure that Brown would not welcome the comparison. There’s probably nothing that I or anyone else could say that would shift Brown (or Corbyn) from their position, because it’s ultimately not a position based on hard facts or evidence, but one based on a subjective feeling about what constitutes a nation and how we define that. To Welsh and Scottish independentistas, England, Scotland and Wales are nations, and the UK is a state, but to British nationalists, it seems that Britain and Ireland are ‘proper’ nations, whereas Wales and Scotland are some sort of ‘national region’ within a greater nation.

In truth, I’ve never been able to find a satisfactory objective definition of what constitutes a nation. Of course, things like history, language, culture, and geography play a part, but those things combine in all sorts of different ways across the world. Ultimately, no ‘nation’ exists unless its members feel it to be so, which makes nationality highly subjective. It follows that nationality (other than in the strictly legalistic sense of a passport-issuing authority) cannot be imposed on an individual, nor can an individual be told that (s)he cannot be a member of two nations (e.g. Welsh and British) at the same time. It also changes over time – here in Wales, we know that the number of people considering themselves to be Welsh rather than British has risen over recent decades, for example. Whether that reflects a change in their nationality or merely in their perception of their nationality is an interesting academic argument, but in terms of practical politics we only need to understand that it is happening.

The bigger question is whether the existence of a nation requires that nation to be an independent (in the everyday use of the term) unitary state. Nationalists (like Brown) tend to the view that it does, a tendency which tends to close minds to alternatives. Under Brown, or Corbyn – or Starmer or Burnham – Labour is very much a British nationalist party.

Referendums express disagreements - they don't create them

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The UK’s PM has seemingly managed both to acknowledge that the UK Government has a duty under international law to call an Irish unity referendum under certain circumstances as part of the Good Friday Agreement, and at the same time to rule it out. Maybe he’s practicing political contortionism in readiness for his upcoming meeting with Trump, but as a way of trying to please everyone whilst actually pleasing no-one, it’s almost a master class.

The circumstances under which a referendum becomes unavoidable are vague, of course: the duty on the Secretary of State to hold a border poll if it appears likely a majority would vote for Irish unification is hardly clear cut, and what ‘appears likely’ to one person can appear very unlikely to another, particularly if (s)he chooses to ape Nelson and hold the telescope to a closed eye. Given the history and complexities of Irish politics, perhaps the circumstances could never be other than vague, and the dangers implicit in a narrow majority either way are obvious.

But it was the rationale for taking the option off the table which caught my eye. Referendums, according to Burnham, are inherently divisive, and he uses those on Brexit and Scottish independence as evidence to support the argument. It is a simplistic analysis, though. A referendum might crystalise and put arithmetical numbers to a divergence of opinion, but they don’t make that divergence appear in the first place. After all, if there’s no pre-existing difference of opinion, there’s nothing on which to vote. As a corollary, avoiding holding a vote doesn’t make the difference of opinion go away. Whether the issue is Brexit, Scottish independence, or Irish unity, there are strong and deeply-held opinions on both sides. Whether a referendum is the best way of determining a majority view or establishing the ‘settled will’ of a population is a valid issue for debate, as are the timing and circumstances of any vote. But denying a population any democratic means of deciding between two views, and insisting instead on adherence to the status quo (which is what Burnham’s appeal to concentrate on cost of living issues amounts to) carries its own dangers.

On constitutional matters (much like on economic matters), Burnham – despite all his rhetoric about change – seems deeply committed to a belief that the status quo is the natural and inevitable order of things. It’s a fantasy; in the real world, the long reach of history shows how human-made boundaries and institutions are constantly changing and evolving. Those who attempt to stand against the tide of history eventually get swept away by it.

Rigging the rules

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Arch-Brexiteer and current Northern Ireland Secretary, Steve Baker, has argued this week that there probably should have been a requirement for a ‘super majority’ in the Brexit referendum, despite acknowledging that his side would have lost on that basis. He said, “… the reason I say that is if we’d had to have 60%, everybody would have abided by the result. If it had been a 60-40 result, it’s inconceivable to me that we would have had all of the political difficulty which followed…”. If there had been a 60-40 majority, one way or the other, it’s just possible that he might be right – acceptance of the result might well have been more forthcoming. I’m not entirely convinced, though; people who hold a strong view about the ‘right’ way forward – people like Baker, in fact – don’t change their minds just because they have failed to convince a sufficient majority at a point in time.

The bigger problem with a requirement for a supermajority is not what happens when the vote exceeds 60-40, it’s what happens when it does not. If, say 59% had voted for Brexit and 41% against, meaning that the proposition was ‘defeated’, is there not just the tiniest possibility that the 59% would argue something along the lines of “we wuz robbed”? Once it is known, through a public vote, that 59% of the electorate support a particular proposition, stuffing the genie back into the bottle is never going to be easy. There are those who argue that some sort of super majority should be required – whether in a public vote or a vote in a parliament – for a change to the constitution. There is obviously an argument based on ‘stability’ to protect against over-frequent changes, or swings back and fore over a period, although whether that's necessarily a bad thing is open to argument. It’s not easy to apply though in a state which has no formal constitution and where whether a proposition constitutes a change to the constitution or not is itself open to argument.

Perhaps most worrying of all is that he wants to apply the rule in relation to any future border poll in Ireland. His concerns about a decision based on 50%+1 are entirely valid; reunification based on such a slim majority would leave a large part (50%-1) of the population unhappy with the new status. It would obviously be better for the idea of reunification to achieve a much greater level of consensual support. And a rejection of reunification on the same basis would have a similar effect on the other part of the population. Again, it would obviously be better for the status quo to receive resounding support. But suggesting that a vote of 59-41 in favour of reunification amounts to a vote for continued partition seems very much more problematic to me. It highlights the big problem with the requirement for a super majority for change, which is that it gives the status quo, however that was arrived at and however much it is contested, an inbuilt advantage in any vote. Whilst it’s easy enough to see why supporters of the status quo would argue that to be a good thing, it’s not clear why anyone would consider it fair. Seeking to rig the rules in favour of the status quo doesn’t seem the most sensible approach given the historical background to Irish partition.

No way out for Sunak

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Poor Rishi Sunak. All the indications are that he has gone into the negotiations with the EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol with the honest but completely mistaken view that he was trying to make the agreement signed by his predecessor but one work, and that the way to do that was to be reasonable and reach an agreement which would benefit all the stakeholders involved. He’s now finding out just how wrong he was; the objective of those opposing the agreement – including those who originally negotiated and agreed it – is not to make it work but to destroy it. The man responsible for the original agreement has never concealed, from the outset, the fact that he never had any intention of implementing it. Indeed, he made it so clear that it’s easy to understand his surprise at the idea that the EU ever thought he was being serious. The EU were taken completely unawares, despite all the evidence to help them, to find out that they were dealing with liars all along. 

In fairness to the Brexiteers, they have been fairly consistent in saying that what they want is full access to the EU single market without following any of the rules which member states have to follow, on the basis that this would give UK companies a competitive advantage. They’re right – it would indeed do that. Which is why no-one other than the English exceptionalists behind Brexit (and their DUP allies) ever thought for one moment that the EU would concede such an arrangement. In essence, it’s what those in favour of a ‘pure’ form of free trade have always wanted – trade with no tariffs, no border controls and no rules. And they genuinely seem to be so divorced from reality that they actually believed that they could bludgeon the EU into giving them such a deal.

We don’t yet know the detail of what Sunak has or has not agreed, although it would be surprising if it was far away from what has been widely reported in the press. And from that reporting, it looks like it’s little different from what could have been achieved in the original negotiation had the UK side been willing to take the time to discuss and agree rather than make threats and then sign up in haste (to 'get Brexit done') to something that they were never going to implement. It’s unlikely, though, that anything that is agreed will be acceptable to the DUP or the Tory extremists if it leaves any trace of EU laws or rules in Northern Ireland, or any hint of controls on the movement of goods between Northern Ireland and the UK. It's equally unlikely that the EU will agree to any deal which does not uphold both those things. And that would lead us, inexorably, to the establishment of border controls on the island of Ireland. The Brexiteers would say that isn’t what they want (although the DUP would probably be delighted). They might even be telling the truth on that, but only because they’ve always believed two things:

·        Firstly (even if few of them have said it out loud), that the Republic of Ireland should know its place and follow the UK out of the EU, preferably re-joining the UK and swearing loyalty to the English monarchy at the same time. Their attitude towards Ireland is a bit like that of Putin towards Ukraine – it’s not a proper country and has no real right to a separate existence.

·        Secondly, that the UK’s departure would be the beginning of the end for the EU, which is still the end-game for many of them.

Where that leaves Sunak and his renegotiation is a big question. There is some doubt about whether he actually needs to put his deal to Parliament at all. Under the UK’s arcane system of semi-democracy, it arguably falls under the royal prerogative, meaning that ministers can just sign it and implement it. It would make him look frightened and weak, but he might prefer that to the alternative scenario where he puts it to parliament and it gets passed by opposition votes with a huge number of Tories voting against it. Rocks and hard places both leave him weakened, with the blond-headed shark circling maliciously. And both still leave the Conservative Party unmanageable and drifting as it attempts to reconcile the two irreconcilably opposing views on Europe which have destroyed so many of its leaders over the past three decades. In any functioning democracy, these two views would be represented by two different parties, but an outdated electoral system which polarises elections between two parties means that both try to manage differences within a broad church. Traditionally, that’s been more of a problem for Labour than the Tories, but it increasingly looks as if it might turn out to be terminal for the Tories. The coming implosion is almost too kind a way out.

Letting people determine their own future

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The British Labour Party has long suffered from a blind spot when it comes to the idea of national liberation. They have been enthusiastic supporters of the concept across the whole of the former Empire, arguing that it is for the people of the former colonies and possessions to determine their own future. But when it comes to England’s earliest possessions and conquests, here within the UK itself, their position is rather different. They’ve never quite been able to make up their minds about where Ireland fits in all this, though. Whilst Corbyn was a committed supporter of a united Ireland, Starmer has made it clear that he takes a much more unionist position and would campaign for the continuation of partition in the event of a border poll.

Whether that it the position of everyone in his party is another question – his shadow Northern Ireland Secretary said yesterday that the British Government should remain neutral on the question if a poll were to be called. As she put it, “It is only for the people of Northern Ireland to determine their own constitutional future”. It’s a sound principle, and logically it has more general application. I never understood how Corbyn could be such a strong supporter of a free united Ireland and still be such a strong opponent of Scottish or Welsh independence, and by the same token, I don’t understand how Labour can argue that the future constitutional position of Northern Ireland is entirely a matter for the people there to determine without interference from London, but the future constitutional position of Wales and Scotland is very much a matter for the London parties and the UK government to take a view on.

It might be argued that the ‘situation’ (a euphemism for decades of violence) in Northern Ireland is different, but there’s a danger in taking that view of indicating that, in some sense, violence pays. Another difference is that the British Labour Party organises and contests elections in Wales and Scotland, whereas it does not do so in Northern Ireland; that  would make it reasonable for the branch offices in Wales and Scotland to take a view and campaign on one side or the other, but it’s not much of a justification for the UK government or the English Labour Party to get involved. Doing so goes directly against the sound principle that the Shadow Secretary outlined yesterday. Still, no one should really expect the thinking of the Labour and Unionist Party to be any more logical, or any less muddled, than that of the Conservative and Unionist Party. Unionism always somehow trumps logic.

The start of hostilities?

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It is, and always has been, true that any signatory to an international treaty or agreement can decide unilaterally to repudiate that treaty and walk away from any responsibility it has under such a treaty. In that sense, it is entirely lawful for the UK parliament to rip up the Withdrawal Agreement which was signed just a few short months ago. But what is not true is that one party to an agreement can unilaterally repudiate parts of such a treaty and expect other signatories to abide by what remains. It’s a corollary of the EU mantra, ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’: once one part is disagreed, everything is disagreed. Claiming, as the UK government has done, that the UK parliament has the sovereign right to reject part of an agreement after signing it may be ‘true’ in terms of domestic law, but that sovereignty does not extend to obliging the other parties to continue to abide by their side of the bargain. Under the doctrine now being promulgated by Downing Street, no international treaty would be worth the paper it was written on if any country could unilaterally opt out of any bits it doesn’t like whenever the whim takes it. Unless, of course (and I don’t rule this out in the case of the current occupant of Number 10) one believes that the UK is so special that it has rights which don’t extend to other countries. After all, constitutionally, the sovereign power of Westminster comes from the monarch, to whom it was granted by god, not by the people.

The obvious retaliatory move by the EU27 would be to impose a hard border on the Republic’s side on the isle of Ireland. Indeed, if they want to preserve the integrity of the Single Market, it’s hard to see how they can avoid doing so. The UK can – and presumably will – decide not to have border posts on its side, and allow all goods straight in. (Although, under WTO rules relating to ‘most favoured nation’, doing that in the absence of a trade agreement means that they have to allow the same access for goods from all other countries in the world, unless they intend that their first act as a member of the WTO is to breach those rules as well. I suppose that’s something else that can’t be ruled out.) Perhaps forcing the EU to create a hard border is part of the game plan – I can already hear them saying “We never wanted this – it’s those wicked Europeans doing this”. It’s just possible that, in the circumstances, such a border might not provoke a return to violence: the extreme unionists on the one hand will be pleased that their status as an integral part of the union is being protected, and the extreme republicans on the other may be less willing to attack Irish/EU border infrastructure than they would be if the border posts were British. It’s a gamble, though – and not just in terms of potential violent responses: it might also push more people towards supporting reunification in Ireland.

Failure to establish controls at the border in the absence of controls between the two islands inevitably risks the integrity of the Single Market, and I don’t rule out the possibility that, insofar as there is a cunning plan here, it is precisely that. The Brexiteers have long believed that Brexit would bring down the whole EU edifice (indeed, Farage has often said – including, according to a recent report, in a meeting with Barnier - that “the EU will not exist after Brexit”). The ‘logic’ of Brexit was always the destruction of the EU – being just outside a large bloc like the EU never made sense. They expected that Brexit would start a stampede, but to date it’s had the opposite effect as other countries gaze on in stunned amazement. From that perspective, the proposed repudiation of parts of the Withdrawal Agreement makes eminent sense. But the EU would be entirely correct in interpreting it as a hostile act by an aggressive neighbour. Things look set to get a great deal worse.

Motes and beams

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When I first saw the story that Trump wanted to buy Greenland, my immediate reaction was to check the date of the story.  There are far too many ‘old’ stories reshared on the internet – this one surely was from April 1^st, wasn’t it?  But no, it was genuine.  The fact that the detail went on to say this wasn’t a priority for his administration, just some sort of vague suggestion was a little reassuring – until he cancelled his visit to Denmark and it became clear that he thought the whole purpose of his visit was to agree the details.  He also, it seems, took umbrage at the description of the Danish Prime Minister of the idea as ‘absurd’, claiming it was a ‘nasty’ comment.  It struck me as a rather restrained comment; countries buying and selling other countries over the heads of the inhabitants may have been done in the colonial past, but it isn’t acceptable now.

Closer to home, it seems that one of the proposals put forward by the PM to overcome the problem of the Irish border is that Ireland should leave the EU’s single market and follow the rules laid down by the UK instead.  The word used was ‘temporarily’, until such time as some other fix enables two countries in different regulatory regimes to maintain the integrity of their respective markets with no border controls, but since no such fix exists and there is no prospect of one  being developed, this would inevitably become a permanent arrangement.  And rather than try and agree this directly with the Republic of Ireland, the suggestion is that it should be negotiated with the EU who would then tell the Republic what they need to do.  What was that about buying and selling countries over the heads of their inhabitants?

How we all laughed at Trump’s ‘absurd’ suggestion!  But what, in essence, is the difference?  Playground bullies seeking to dispose of smaller countries over the heads of their inhabitants, not even beginning to understand what is wrong with their proposals – Trump and Johnson are increasingly two of a kind.  We often look at the US and wonder how anyone – let alone a significant section of the media – can treat Trump with any degree of seriousness, but looking at the way Johnson is treated here, it becomes a lot easier to see how it can happen.  The world, including the UK but excluding a large chunk of America laughs at Trump; the world excluding a large chunk of the UK is laughing at Johnson.  It’s just harder to see from the inside.

Just another stunt

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As I understand Boris Johnson’s somewhat belated missive to the EU27, he is arguing that a mechanism to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland be replaced by a mechanism to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.  The key difference is that the mechanism in the Withdrawal Agreement is defined, whereas his is not.  Why replacing a defined arrangement with an undefined ‘alternative’ one would be acceptable to anyone is one of the many unanswered questions, but ‘because UK’ is not much of an answer.

In his letter, he commits the UK to accepting a “legally binding commitment” to “not put in place infrastructure, checks or controls at the border” and vaguely hopes that the EU will make a similar commitment.  That makes it sound like a major and generous concession which it would be churlish not to reciprocate, but for a regulatory regime which seeks to abolish tariffs on imports and reduce the standards to which goods and services must be provided it’s very easy to remove controls with an area with higher standards and tariffs.  It’s considerably more difficult for the regime with higher standards to simply lower the gates and let anything and everything through, and the PM knows that.  It will always be those states which wish to maintain the highest standards which have the incentive – nay the requirement – to control the external borders of their market.

It’s probable, of course, that his letter wasn’t really aimed at the EU27 at all; making such a letter an open one and releasing it to the media at the same time as sending it to the EU looks more like a stunt aimed at the UK public than a serious attempt to negotiate anything, and I’m sure that that is at least a part of the truth.  At another level, though, it underlines yet again the real aim of the Brexiteers, which is to destroy the EU as an entity.  Keeping an entirely open border between a carefully constructed single market and a regulatory regime which seeks to reduce or abolish standards and controls can only end up one way – the integrity of the market would be destroyed, not least because the infamous WTO rules would require the EU27 to apply the same rules to the rest of the world as to the UK. 

Brexit, in isolation, has never made much sense, and it’s never been the sole objective of the Brexiteers.  As the first step towards destroying the EU and reducing the extent of regulation on employee rights, environmental standards etc it is a great deal more coherent as an objective.  They have always claimed that it was never the economic aspects of the EU which they didn’t like, only the political ones, such as the reference to ‘ever closer union’.  In truth, what they don’t like is that the EU has been a force for controlling capitalism (even if not to the extent that some of us would like) rather than allowing it to operate entirely unfettered, and that’s more about the rules of the single market than about political union.  It’s a curious irony for those of us who originally opposed membership of the EEC because it looked like a capitalist club that it has actually done more to control the worst excesses of capitalism than the UK would ever have done alone, and that the real promoters of unfettered capitalism have proven to be the domestic variety.

I don’t think Johnson’s letter has anything to do with negotiation; it has everything to do with justifying his position, blaming other people, and getting on with the job of dismantling the regulatory structure that the EU has jointly developed.  Those who accuse the EU of using the situation in Ireland as a means of keeping the UK under the EU’s regime are themselves trying to use the situation in Ireland to undermine the EU itself.

Invisible borders

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Some of the fantasists in the Conservative Party have, it seems, come up with a wizard wheeze to avoid a hard border across Ireland which, according to them, could be up and running within three years if work started now.  Given that work is not starting now, and that all government projects over-run, it might be available in about five to ten years’ time, I suppose.  The problem is that it does not, in fact, avoid the need for a hard border at all, it merely avoids the need for infrastructure on the border itself, by moving the effective border to farms and factories wherever they may be found.  Like all the so-called ‘alternative arrangements’, it confuses the issue of there being a border with that border being visible at a specific geographic location, as though it is the location of the border – rather than the obstacles it raises – which is the problem.

It gets worse.  Whilst the ‘plan’ does indeed propose a means of keeping the whole of Ireland in a single regime for many purposes, it does so by taking the Republic half-way out of the EU’s regulatory regime and putting it under the UK’s regime instead.  So, in the specific and oft-quoted case that the UK agrees to accept chlorinated chicken from the US, the ‘solution’ to preventing it going across an open border into EU territory in Ireland is that Ireland asks for and is granted an exemption from the EU’s rules on chlorinated chicken, and agrees to accept the same product itself.  In essence, it seeks to mitigate a border problem between the UK and the Republic by imposing a border of some sort between the Republic and the rest of the EU, because otherwise there is nothing to prevent Ireland becoming a back-door to the EU for non-compliant products.

The blithe, casual and arrogant assumption that this will ever be acceptable to either the EU or the Republic shows the extent to which the Anglo-British not-nationalists-at-all still don’t really understand the concept that Ireland is a sovereign state and not subject to the whims of its larger neighbour.  I’m not sure that they’ll ever get it.

Equal members of the union?

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One former Secretary of State for Wales has been sharing his pessimism about the future of his party this week.  Whilst I might share his view that his party could be about to tear itself apart, I see that more as a cause for rejoicing than pessimism.  Still, each to his own.

In the detail of his comments he made the observation that “When you go outside London as I was at the weekend you hear more and more people in the street saying we just need to leave without a deal.  I think we're in quite dangerous territory as a country where certainly a chunk of my party, a wing of my party is fomenting that kind of opinion. It's deeply, deeply irresponsible.” On that, I certainly do agree with him (although I wonder what has become of him that ‘going outside London’ seems to be exceptional).  And not just because of the potential economic consequences; the underlying attitude which allows people to hold such a view is deeply concerning.

It argues, in effect, that we can and should simply disregard the concerns of the Irish, on both sides of the border which the UK imposed on the island.  Indeed, May’s persistence in going back to Brussels to demand change to the backstop arrangements is part and parcel of the same attitude.  Egged on by Johnson, Rees-Mogg et al, she is effectively demanding that the EU sacrifice the interests of one member state in order to give a better deal to a non-member.  It shouldn’t surprise us; we already know that at least one senior Tory has openly been saying that “The Irish really should know their place”; and we know only too well that the UK government would willingly sacrifice the interests of Wales or Scotland (and the outlying regions of England too, come to that) in order to serve what they see as the ‘greater good’ but which we might choose to call ‘the south-east’.

I can understand how and why Anglo-British not-nationalists-at-all have become conditioned into such an attitude (although it’s rather more worrying that so many ordinary people are following them so readily).  They inhabit a world in which it is entirely natural that the biggest and richest get what they want and the interests of the smaller and poorer are brushed aside.  That is the way they would instinctively treat the outlying parts of their own ‘precious union’, and they really can’t understand why the EU is not simply putting Ireland in its place and doing the deal that the bigger countries want.  They don’t understand, in short, why the European Union doesn’t work in the same way as the British Union does. 

From the point of view of an independentista, however, the situation highlights, very starkly, the difference between the two unions.  A union based on historic incorporation and expansion is not the same as a union based on voluntary association by independent member states.  The latter, of necessity, will strive to protect and promote the interests of all its members when dealing with ‘third parties’ which is what the UK decided to become.  It could not be otherwise; if the interests of one of the smaller member states were to be sacrificed, the other small members states could no longer have faith in the whole and the enterprise would be endangered.  Just because the word ‘union’ is used in both contexts doesn’t make them the same thing at all.

But where does it leave Wales?

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It was reported over the weekend that a former president of the European Council has warned that a ‘no-deal’ Brexit threatens the breakup of the United Kingdom.  Like most independentistas, I tend to see that as a positive outcome rather than a negative one.  There are a few ‘buts’, though.

The most obvious danger to the continuation of the UK is the possibility of a second independence referendum in Scotland.  But what would ‘independence’ mean in such a scenario?  Many are assuming that it would lead to Scotland remaining in the EU whilst the rest of the UK departs, and there is little doubt that Scottish accession to the EU would be fairly straightforward to negotiate and agree, given that the country is already adhering to all the relevant EU rules and regulations.  However, there’s no guarantee that supporters of independence would want that outcome; the analyses of voting in the referendum suggest that a significant proportion of those choosing independence don’t want to be in the EU either.  More significantly, what would be the relationship between a Scotland in the EU and the remainder of the UK?  For all the reasons rehearsed time and again in relation to Ireland, there can either be regulatory alignment or there can be a hard border; there cannot be no border between the EU and non-EU regulatory regimes.  In short, Scottish independence post-Brexit either means setting up a border between Scotland and England, or else it means accepting the UK (i.e. England) regulatory regime, a decision which in turn rules out membership of the EU.  I’m not at all sure that a border would be an attractive proposition to the Scots, nor am I convinced that accepting rules laid down by England with no input to drawing them up is an attractive proposition either.

The second danger to the UK is the possible reunification of Ireland.  The demographics have been moving slowly but inexorably in that direction for generations, and it’s entirely possible that Brexit might provide the final bit of extra momentum to give a majority vote in favour.  However, it seems unlikely that any majority would be overwhelming, and if there’s one thing that we should have learned from Brexit it is that trying to implement significant constitutional change on the basis of a slim majority in a one-off referendum is not exactly a recipe for reconciliation and unity.  I tend to agree with the Brexiteers that the idea that Brexit and borders would necessarily reignite violence in the north of Ireland is overplayed by some (although the particularly crass remarks by Rees-Mogg about imposing border checks ‘just like during the Troubles’ last week seem almost designed to encourage that result), but I wouldn’t be so confident about a narrow majority in a referendum being used to shoehorn die-hard unionists into the Republic.  History isn’t terribly promising on that score.

Let’s assume, however, that I’m being unduly pessimistic on both scores, and that an independent Scotland joins a reunited Ireland as member states of the EU, overcoming all the far from trivial obstacles to such an outcome, and that they both become visibly successful states.  Where does that leave Wales which, by its voting habits to date, has more or less proclaimed that we’ll take whatever we’re given?  It’s easy to assume that observation of the success being enjoyed by near neighbours in Scotland and Ireland coupled with the economic damage of Brexit would lead to a growth in support for independence. But I suspect that it will not be anywhere near as simple as that.  Wales is much further back in the process; that final push generated by Brexit is nowhere near enough for a country which has come to believe the lie that it is too poor and dependent on others to ever take responsibility for its own future.  There needs to be a desire to take responsibility before the debate can really focus on the details such as how and when.  The default position looks like greater integration not greater self-responsibility.

A simple choice - alignment or borders

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The Irish border issue is at heart a very simple one, albeit often clouded and complicated by the recent past.  That’s not to say that the Good Friday agreement and the long period of violence before it aren’t important, nor that they do not make the situation in Ireland unique; it’s more about saying that they can obscure what is at base a very simple and straightforward question of more general application.  And that is this: where there is a border between two countries, there are only two options – the first is that the two are part of a single customs/regulatory regime, and the other is that there are border controls.  It’s possible, of course, to be part of the same customs/regulatory regime and still maintain border controls, and some countries within the EU choose to do that.  But what is not possible is to have different customs/regulatory regimes and no controls, because in such a scenario it becomes impossible to maintain the integrity of either of the customs/regulatory regimes.  And all of this is as true for a sea border as a land border; land borders are just naturally more ‘porous’.

From that point of view, there is nothing particularly unique about the situation in Ireland; the unique part is the strength of the drivers for seeking to avoid a border with controls.  The Brexiteers know all this, and know that their demand for a different customs/regulatory regime has the inevitable consequence of creating a border with controls.  All the talk about ‘smart’ systems to facilitate border crossings is about minimising the impact of those controls, not about avoiding them.  Their preferred solution, albeit one that only a few of them are prepared to advocate openly, is that the Republic accompanies the UK to the exit door; it’s the only way in which they can both maintain their red lines about regulatory divergence and at the same time avoid border controls completely.  After all, the two countries entered the EU together, and it was that simple fact which enabled the ‘Common Travel Area’ to continue after accession, even if it took the Good Friday agreement to abolish the physical controls at the border.

This is relevant in the context of yesterday’s post about the future of the UK after Brexit.  What is true for the border between the two parts of Ireland is also true for the border between Wales and England.  Ultimately, Wales can either be part of the same customs/regulatory regime as England, or we can have border controls along the Dyke.  As long as both countries are part of the EU’s Customs/regulatory regime, it’s not an issue.  Outside the EU, as long as both countries remain locked in alignment, again, it’s not an issue.  But if Wales were to become ‘independent’, our ability to choose to seek membership of either the EU or the closely-aligned EFTA/EEA would be effectively ruled out by the need to remain in alignment with England - unless we were willing to implement border controls between the two countries.  I can’t foresee a situation in which border controls make any sense for Wales, and given the relative size of England in any conceivable reconfiguration of the UK, that means that we will be ‘rule-takers’ most of the time.

It isn’t that which concerns me most, however; after all, as an advocate of continuing membership of the EU I have to accept that rules are made collectively and that there are some that we might not like (although we’d at least have an input before they were made, unlike at present).  The bigger concern is that if England decides to increasingly cut itself off from mainstream Europe, and try and pretend that the UK is still a great power ruling the waves, then we are going to be part of that, regardless of any nominal ‘independence’, or the precise way in which the UK is reconfigured.  That isn't the sort of 'independence' which I want for Wales.

What republic?

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Last December, the UK Prime Minister agreed a joint statement with the EU27 which said, in relation to a border across the island of Ireland, that “…in the absence of a later agreement, the UK will ensure “full alignment” with the rules of the customs union and single market that uphold the Good Friday agreement”.  Yesterday, the EU27 published a draft treaty to implement the December agreement in which one option (Option C) is that Northern Ireland remains aligned with EU rules in a number of areas.  I am struggling to see why the first of those was presented as a great triumph for Theresa May, but the other is something to which she says “no United Kingdom prime minister could ever agree”. 

Of course, my inability to see the enormous difference between these two things might be entirely my problem.  I am, after all, someone who still fails to understand the huge significance of swapping a burgundy passport for a blue one.  On the other hand, it is at least possible that I might be right and there is no real difference - other than that three months have passed since then, during which the EU was supposed to have forgotten what the UK agreed to last December, because it was, in reality, simply a negotiating ploy to allow talks to progress, and not something which they were ever supposed to take seriously.

There are two underlying problems highlighted by the Irish border issue.  The first is that the Prime Minister has managed to make three very clear promises:

·         She has promised the EU and the Irish that she will do nothing which necessitates a hard border across Ireland,

·         She has promised the DUP that there will be no border between the island of Ireland and the island of Great Britain, and

·         She has promised her own backbenchers that the UK will leave the Customs Union and the Single Market and make its own regulations and trade deals.

It is perfectly possible for her to keep any two of those promises; the delusion is to believe that there is any conceivable way of keeping all three.  The question which I find myself asking is why that delusion is so strong, not just for her, but for all the others who continue to insist that they can do all three.

That brings us to the second, and perhaps more important, underlying issue.  I believe that they really don’t understand that Ireland is an independent sovereign state, and continue to regard it as some sort of semi-detached part of the UK, inextricably bound up with the rest of us, with a leadership which is currently being awkward but which will fall into line eventually.  And at the moment, I’m not sure that the English nationalists running the UK at the moment, with their entire philosophical outlook firmly rooted in the days of empire, is capable of developing the understanding which will be necessary if they are ever to reach an agreement.  Mere facts can’t convince people who prefer their own ‘facts’, a perspective which means that the inevitable failure of the current approach will always be someone else’s fault. 

The cliff edge awaits.

Accidentally cancelling Brexit?

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Unsurprisingly, the Brexit fanatics are taking their ire out on the Republic of Ireland over the issue of a border across the island.  For those who have never really understood, let alone accepted, the idea that the Republic is an independent state rather than still part of, or a vassal to, the UK, this is only to be expected.  It overlooks the fact, however, that there is a sense in which what is being presented as an ‘Irish problem’ is only the specific and obvious example of what is in fact a generic issue.  That issue is, as Ian Dunt puts it here, that a divergence of regulatory regimes means that “you need to check that goods and services are of the required regulatory standard, that the correct tariffs have been paid and that products originated where they say they have”.  It only looks like a specific ‘Irish’ problem because it’s only in Ireland that there is a land border between the EU and the UK.

The solution proposed by May, guaranteeing no regulatory divergence between the North and the Republic, is a neat solution to the specific, but it does nothing to resolve the generic.  It merely shifts the issue from a line drawn across an island to a line drawn in the sea – it is the Brexiteers’ desire to opt out of the EU regulatory regime which causes the problem, not the Irish Government.  The only thing surprising about the opposition of the DUP to anything which effectively puts the North outside the UK regulatory regime – which is the apparently inevitable consequence of what the proposed agreement said – is that it did, indeed, seem to come as a surprise to May.

The call from Scotland, Wales and London to be given the same deal as Northern Ireland makes eminent sense politically.  As Nicola Sturgeon put it, “If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others can’t.”  Whilst I wholly agree with the sentiment, I don’t agree with the bit about there being ‘no good practical reason’.  For the reasons referred to above, putting Wales or Scotland in a different regulatory regime from that operating in England requires borders between those countries; and doing the same for London requires a border around that city.  Theresa May – or any other UK Prime Minister – is not going to ‘solve’ the problem of the Irish border by creating three new borders within the island of Great Britain.

There was one phrase in the proposed agreement which has received scant attention, and that was that the continued regulatory alignment would happen only "in the absence of agreed solutions".  I’m sure that May thought that would be enough of a fudge to be able to move on to the next phase, during which she and her team still fondly believe that they can negotiate a deal which gives the UK all the advantages of, and access to, the single market without being a member.  If they could pull that off, then of course the deal that she almost agreed to yesterday would become irrelevant; there would be no need for a border at all.  It would probably signal the end of the single market and possibly the EU itself (why would anyone want to remain a member if they can get as good a deal outside?) and for that reason alone it won’t happen.

There is, though, one other way in which May could honour the agreement she so nearly made yesterday, and that is to retain regulatory alignment with the EU for the whole of the UK – to remain a member of the single market and the customs union, cancelling Brexit "in all but name".  Did she effectively, albeit accidentally, come close to committing to that yesterday?

Delusion and reality

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One of the problems from which the delusional often suffer is that the real world has a tendency to intervene, and can’t always simply be imagined away. For Brexiteers, the hard reality that they are not going to persuade anyone to give them any new concessions by threatening to simply renege on existing financial obligations has been a long time coming, but there does seem to be an inkling of progress towards a more realistic position.  It’s not agreed yet, of course, and we don’t yet know the final figure.  It will almost certainly be higher than the headline figure being quoted, but a bit of skilful negotiation on both sides might be enough to hide the final total in a plethora of rebates, discounts and conditional payments.

There has also been talk for a while about progress on protecting the rights of EU citizens.  If it weren’t for the innate dislike that some people seem to have of all foreigners, this should have been the easiest of all to resolve.  All they ever had to do was to extend the rights of UK citizens to match those of EU citizens.  Again, progress has been hindered by an unwillingness to give the citizens of the UK more rights.  I think it’s called ‘taking back control’.

That leaves the one that the UK imperialists always thought was going to be the easiest of all to settle, and that’s the question of the border with the Republic of Ireland.  There was never any rational basis for assuming that it would be easy, but a failure to understand that the republic is an independent state, with full membership rights of the EU, rather than some sort of vassal state of the UK has blinded them to the fact that the EU 27 were always going to be more likely to unite behind a loyal continuing member than to abandon that member's interests in pursuit of a deal with a troublesome departing member.  The treatment being meted out to Ireland by some sections of the press well displays the lingering imperialism and exceptionalism which has dogged the UK for generations.

In purely logical terms, I have some sympathy with the position adopted by Liam Fox, which is that the nature of the border required depends on the nature of the trade deal between the EU and the UK, and might therefore be better dealt with in phase 2.  Or rather, I would have more sympathy if the UK government had not, during phase 1, removed from the table all the practical options which would allow an open border to continue, demanding instead that the EU come up with a proposal to avoid the logical consequences of Brexit for the border.

The key word there is practical, and how it is interpreted.  It has long been clear that the real objective of the Brexiteer ideologues isn’t simply to remove the UK from the EU, it is to abolish the EU and replace it with a purely economic relationship based entirely on trade.  How else can anyone interpret the demand for a trade agreement as good – or better – that the one we have, but without membership of the single market or the customs union?  Now if somebody believes – as I suspect that Fox does – that Brexit is just the first step towards that goal, and that the UK crashing out with no agreement on a future relationship will help to bring that about, then the position being adopted actually makes some sort of sense.  But to repeat the opening line, one of the problems from which the delusional often suffer is that the real world has a tendency to intervene, and can’t always simply be imagined away.

Intransigence and flexibility

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The position taken by the UK Government – that Brexit cannot be allowed to create an ‘internal’ border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK - is an entirely reasonable one for any government to take.  Even if it were not so, the reliance of the current administration on the votes of the DUP requires no movement on that question.

The desire of the same government to do nothing which unpicks the Irish peace process is an equally reasonable and sensible one; no-one in their right mind (although whether that’s a fair expectation of May and crew is a separate question) would wish to endanger the progress which has been made.  So avoiding a hard border across Ireland is an imperative for them.

And, given some of the wilder promises made by Brexiteers about freedom and independence, it’s understandable that ‘Brexit means Brexit’ requires departure from the single market and the customs union.

The problem for the UK Government is that the three positions - all in themselves reasonable and logical outcomes of the vote last year – are not concurrently achievable.  They can have any two of them, but will have to yield on the third.  It’s clearly an unpalatable choice, but it will have to be made.  Their position to date seems to consist of demanding that ‘someone else’ (i.e. the EU27) comes up with an imaginative solution of the type that they are themselves unable to either imagine or articulate, and that the other side’s unwillingness to do what they can't do themselves amounts to bully-boy tactics.  The default position - increasingly likely given the lack of any serious attempt to do otherwise – is a hard border across Ireland.  Like so much else of the 'negotiating' attempts of the UK, it's as though they are working in a vacuum, in a way which isn't going to impact on real people.

The obvious continues to elude them

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The stated aim of the UK Government in publishing ‘position papers’ in relation to Brexit is to start providing some clarity about what the UK actually wants.  On the basis of what they’ve come up with so far, it appears that they’re really no clearer now than they were 14 months ago.

Amongst their proposals to date are:

·       There should be a customs union which mirrors the existing one in all important respects except that the UK uniquely should be free to negotiate different trading arrangements with non-EU countries than those negotiated by the EU itself, because ‘obviously’ a country with a market of 60 million and no trade negotiators will get better deals than a market of 450 million with a host of experienced negotiators.

·       There should be something called ‘regulatory equivalence’ under which the UK basically mirrors all the EU regulations except that it also retains the right to vary them as and when it chooses.

·       There should be completely frictionless trade between the EU and the UK except that the UK should have the right to opt out of all the mechanisms and costs involved in managing that trade.

It amounts to little more than an elaboration of what we already knew – the UK still expects both to have its cake and eat it, and any attempt by the EU27 to prevent that will be portrayed as a deliberately punitive response.  The Brexiteers continue to believe in the fantasy that ‘they need us more than we need them’.

Yesterday, we had the latest thinking (although that may be too grand a word) on the question of the border between the UK and the Republic of Ireland.  According to the Northern Ireland Secretary, the proposal is entirely reasonable and should be accepted because of the trade involved on all sides.  This seems to be repeating the same mistake that the UK Government has made from the outset – they have a deeply ingrained mindset that tells them that trade is the only factor to be considered.  Once again, they show themselves incapable of understanding that for all the other EU countries there are a range of other factors to be considered – it isn’t only about trade and economics.  It’s a transactional approach to international relationships which fails to grasp the wider motivations.

One essential element of the proposals on Ireland appears to be a heavy dependence on IT as a way of managing and controlling border crossings.  The UK Government – of all colours and over many decades – has an appalling record on delivery when it comes to large new complex IT systems.  They almost never come in on time or budget (and closer examination of those that do claim to have met the time and budget would almost certainly reveal that it’s often a result of ‘descoping’ – delivering a lesser system than that original envisaged).  That in itself doesn’t augur well; but in this case, they’re talking about delivering a complex system the scope of which has not yet been defined, let alone agreed, within a fixed and immutable timescale.  Still, it will generate some good revenues and profits for one or two large IT companies, whose directors are likely to be laughing all the way to the bank.

There is, though, a cheap and easy way to maintain frictionless trade with the EU27, to maintain regulatory equivalence, to retain a customs union, and to avoid a hard border across Ireland.  I wonder how more position papers need to be ridiculed before they work out what that might be…

The problems are all somebody else's

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Amongst the many problems which the Brexiteers never really thought through is the question of the arrangements for the border between the UK and the Irish republic.  If the UK were willing to consider remaining in the single market and customs union, then the problem would be greatly diminished, but given the outright refusal of both the government and most of the main opposition party even to consider such an option, the issue could end up becoming one of the major obstacles to progress.

Initially, some in the UK Government seemed to be suggesting that the Irish Republic could carry out UK border checks in its ports and airports, seemingly insensitive to the way in which treating the Republic as being somehow ‘part of the UK’ for customs purposes would be received by an independent state.  Subsequently the UK Government has suggested some sort of ‘hi-tech’ land border across Ireland, a suggestion which has not gone down well in Dublin, which sees any reintroduction of a land border as being in danger of re-opening past divisions and damaging both parts of the island.  Their response has been to propose that the Irish Sea should become the border.

Unsurprisingly, the idea of imposing customs and passport checks between one part of the UK and another (effectively treating the north as part of the Republic for customs purposes) has not gone down terribly well with the DUP in the north of Ireland.  One of their responses has been to suggest that there are only two options – there will either be a hard land border, or the Republic will have to follow the UK out of the EU.  As an exercise in cold logic, it’s hard to fault that, although as an understanding of political reality it fails miserably, and would lead inexorably to the imposition of a hard border. 

But it also underscores the underlying attitude of many Brexiteers from the outset on two points in particular.  The first is that Brexit only ever made any sense at all as a precursor to breaking up the EU, and the second is that the problems caused by Brexit are somebody else’s – in this case, the Republic of Ireland.  It’s another example of the UK’s sense of entitlement and exceptionalism that the problems should all be resolved by others bending down before the might of Britannia.  

Maintaining the status quo

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Talks in Dublin this week underline the fact that Brexit has a number of wide-ranging implications beyond the question of terms of access to the EU market.  In particular, it raises some difficult questions about the status of the border between the two parts of Ireland, and how that will be managed.  The UK Government finds itself potentially between a rock and a hard place in trying to balance its different priorities.

On the one hand, the open border and freedom of movement between the Republic and the UK has been a vital element of building a lasting peace settlement on the island.  The consequences of reverting to a hard, controlled border are essentially unknowable, but it would be a brave person who gambled that the peace process is by now so well-established that it could survive such a step.  It seems inevitable that the two governments will seek a way forward which maintains the status quo as far as the land border is concerned.

On the other hand, given that the UK Government has chosen to interpret the referendum result as a vote, first and foremost, for control over entry to the UK, an open land border with a territory which is itself open for freedom of movement from the other 26 remaining members of the EU leaves a very large back door into the UK.  It’s a roundabout route, of course; but if it becomes the easiest route…

One suggestion put forward has been that border controls should be imposed between Ireland as a whole and the UK mainland.  Essentially, that would mean establishing hard border controls in places like Holyhead and Fishguard.  Those who simply want jobs at any price might see this as an advantage, of course; but from a unionist perspective in the north of Ireland it might look like treating them as some sort of ‘semi-foreigners’ – not likely to go down well.

Another has been that the UK should simply sub-contract its border control to the Republic.  Under this scenario, people entering the Republic would be subject to UK border controls, carried out by the staff of the Republic.  Why the Republic would ever want to agree to that is beyond me; and why anyone in London would think it was ever likely to happen is even more so.  It betrays an attitude which suggests that ‘London’ has never really accepted the idea that the Republic isn’t still part of ‘Britain’ in some sense which goes beyond the geographical, and as such, they will do what ‘we’ want.

In essence, nationalists will insist on free movement between the north and the republic; unionists will insist on free movement between the north and the rest of the UK; and the Irish Government will insist that the republic is an independent state, not part of the UK, and that it is not willing to be treated as the latter and make itself semi-detached from the rest of the EU as a result.  In the meantime, the UK Government is looking for a way to change nothing whilst changing everything.

There is a potential solution to all this, of course, which maintains the status quo.  Using Orwellian newspeak, the UK Government could simply declare that “Brexit means Remain”.  If that’s a step too far at this stage, how about an interim position of stating simply that “Status quo means status quo”?  Stranger things have happened.

Changing positions

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In March 2014, prior to the Scottish independence referendum, the then Home Secretary, Theresa May, said very clearly that if an independent Scotland and Greater England were to follow different policies on immigration, then border controls between England and Scotland would be inevitable.

Two days before the referendum on membership of the EU, the same Home Secretary pronounced with absolute certainty that border controls between the north of Ireland and the Republic would be ‘inevitable’ if the UK voted to leave.

Two weeks after becoming Prime Minister, she visited the north of Ireland and announced that border controls will definitely not be introduced.

What can we conclude from this (other than that her position on any issue is more likely to be based on the need for short term political advantage rather than any principle or strategy)?

The BBC’s reality check web site says that the truth about borders probably comes down to the detail of the terms under which the UK leaves the EU.  I’m prepared to accept that that’s a reasonable conclusion.  But since those terms are not yet known, we can only conclude that the latest statement from the PM can only have the same degree of credibility as the previous two – i.e. not very much at all.

At present, I can see no way in which there can be free movement between Ireland and the rest of the EU, free movement within the Common Travel Area between Ireland and the UK, and no free movement between the UK and the rest of the EU.  Going via Ireland might be the long way round from Paris or Berlin, but it looks like an easy passage.

Of course, if the negotiations result in continued free movement between the UK and the EU, the question doesn’t arise.  A lot of the ‘leavers’ might then feel that they’ve not gained very much though.