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Belfast protests. Paul Faith/Bloomberg via Getty
The ferry from Scotland to Northern Ireland, on 11th July 1989, was full of bandsmen, going to march the next day. On The Glorious Twelfth, Protestants celebrate their victory, in 1690, over the Catholics at the Battle of the Boyne — and stick it to the Taigs. The battlefield actually lies to the south of Northern Ireland, in a nation created 100 years ago today — when 26 counties broke away from the UK to become the Free State and Eire and Ireland. Ironically perhaps, Brits choose to commemorate the battle in the part of the island not yet lost.
The bandsmen and the Boyne — and this illogicality — ended up opening the book I was travelling to Northern Ireland to write. The Glass Curtain is about the Troubles. Not the Troubles of Belfast or Derry, but the Troubles of Fermanagh, a rectangular county with a national border on three sides, where the IRA and the British State were at war. We call it the Troubles but trust me, it was a nasty, dirty, vicious civil war.
But I was travelling to Ulster at the fin de siècle, the end of history. When our temporary home there became permanent, I believed the Gods were smiling on us, because I could see, with my own eyes, the place changing for the better. First the Single Market came. (The EU did nothing but good for Northern Ireland, which opted to Remain in 2016.) Then the Good Friday Agreement was negotiated. It was a fudge, but in Ulster we were disgusted and ashamed by all that had happened and all we had done; only the GFA would bring the prisoners home, and only their homecoming would end the war. Then, at last, the Police Service of Northern Ireland replaced the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a source of Republican rage for generations. Eventually, Sinn Féin supported the police.
With this drawn-out, painful process came the feeling that finally, finally the Irish question had been solved — and it had been solved because we’d plumped for the evolutionary rather than the revolutionary solution. Yes, the status quo would be maintained and Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom, but at the same time it would mutate into something else, a Hiberno-British hybrid that everyone knew was really Irish, really part of Ireland, but which had Royal Mail post boxes lying around. Partition would remain but it wouldn’t matter anymore. It only mattered that jaw-jaw had prevailed over war-war — and therefore everything was going to be grand.
The day before St Patrick’s Day, last year, I left Dublin, where I work, and went home to Fermanagh. I stayed there, in lockdown, until St George’s Day this year, when I set off for Belfast. There had been several nights of rioting there, protests against Westminster’s Northern Ireland Protocol — which established the so-called Irish trade border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, following the UK’s departure from the EU. Loyalist fury was expressed with messages painted on walls and gable ends, on placards and posters. They were everywhere — on bridges, railings and lampposts. Some were complicated, like the politics: a lot of writing superimposed on a Union Flag; others were simple: “We’re British, NOT Irish.”
What the placards told me — what they’d tell anyone who bothered to pay attention — is that Loyalists and Unionists believe the Protocol is going to lever them out of the country in which they were born and shuffle them into a country where they do not want to live; it will transform them from being British subjects to being Irish citizens. “There cannot be a border down the Irish Sea,” said Arlene Foster in October 2018. “A differential between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK — the red line is blood red.”
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SubscribeI suspect that the English no long care to be honest. We’ve got Brexit. We’re perfectly happy to let the Irish, Scots or Welsh have their own exit if they want one. A majority of the English Electorate grew up with the Troubles. Northern Ireland is just some place they shoot British solders as well as each other, and then hound soldiers through the courts fifty years later, even though terrorists have apparently been given an amnesty.
If they want to stay, that’s fine but in the North of England people might ask why the UK spends more per head on the periphery than it does in the North.
Speak for yourself by all means.
We are absolutely incandescent and have been ever since Martin Selmayr, the EU’s top civil servant, said Northern Ireland must be the price for Brexit.
First Mrs May lost the 2017 election through her stupidity and arrogance. Then, intimidated by the EU and the IRA, she took responsibility for the EU border and Single Market. She had accepted the EU sequencing which was against the Lisbon Treaty. The withdrawal and the future relationship were supposed to be settled at the same time. But the EU wanted our money and leverage from the Irish border, and they prevailed. She didn’t understand what Brexit was, thinking it just meant staying in the EU without the compulsory immigration. So then she arranged for the whole country to stay in without a say.
When she was finally defenestrated, there was a full blown Traitors’ Parliament, led by a bent Speaker, and passing illegitimate directives. The most damaging was the “Surrender Bill” which prevented Boris from negotiating us out of Mrs May’s mess. All he could do was a fudge with Varadkar and hope to undo it later. At that point the British interpretation of the NIP was very different from the EU’s. Then the Biden regime came to power via a rigged election and we are now stuck with a pro IRA President fouling things up.
The only hope is that Raab and Frost can shift things now the EU Parliament has ratified. But it is just a hope.
Boris won the election and 80 seat majority. He could have done whatever he wanted to.
You can’t have been paying attention at the time.
Boris was stuck thanks to May’s capitulation. That he managed so much after her is a miracle. We owe him thanks for a great job. Personally I’d have chosen WTO and scrapped the WA.
I remain mystified at why Britain didn’t go to WTO and then ask the EU if it would like access to the UK market.
The EU will never permit free movement of services – a major part of the original problem – and the fact that they have not recognised IDENTICAL MIFiD regulations as “equivalent” tells you everything about the EU approach.
Frankly, I’d like to see the UK call out the EU’s hostility by withdrawing from NATO and letting the EU fend for itself entirely.
Germany would sit on its hands and allow Russia to take the rest of the Ukraine and maybe the Baltic’s again as long as they can buy Russian nat gas and then resell it………
A good description of what happened. May did so much damage to this country and had no leadership skills however good she was at her last job. Boris won a decisive election victory on the back of Brexit but now we end up with a mess in NI because he doesn’t seem to care. Now that Covid seems to be coming to an end this problem really needs to be sorted to rescue NI from this chaos.
Mrs May probably the most idle a useless Home Secretary the UK has ever had.
I’d laugh and laugh if the UVF started letting bombs off in Brussels.
Wonderful idea!
How much would you laugh if the bombs were in England instead?
They were – in the 1970s.
A few were (though by their opponents, not by the UVF). But Jon Redman is gloating at a prospective renewal of that sort of lunacy!
It really is despicable.
Well said indeed.
Well put. Perhaps UnHerd should ask you to respond the writer, who clearly has a very anti English bent and fails to grasp the history all that well.
Starting with Unionists being Scots – ironically – in NI, not English.
Also enjoyed how he claimed the GFA followed the single market when actually it was the other way round (not that they were linked, however much the anti-English lobby would like to claim.)
I agree that the government seems to care little for NI. They have shafted them over Gay marriage and mass abortion. NI Ireland is the only UK country that stood up for their moral principles but the UK chose to force their questionable morals onto NI. It appears also that the EU have stolen NI from Britain but Britain doesn’t care enough to do much about it. I can see a unified Ireland if Britain continues to drag their feet which might not be a bad thing. If we go on like this we will just be England (a highly multicultural country) and not Great Britain. It certainly does not bode well for the future.
The Protestant community in England is livid. The way that the Union is being thrown away is a disgrace. The 50% of the Scots who value the Union and all it offers, the Welsh, and the majority of those in Northern Ireland, are being treated like detritus to be thrown away by all the mainland UK political parties.
But they’re people, some are our personal friends, and this complete lack of care for them enrages us.
The “50% … of Scots” are remarkably quiet whilst the other 50% are busy telling the English how much they hate them.
Frankly, the Act of Union made England and Wales subservient to Scotland under a Scottish King. The English get regular doses of socialism thanks to the overweighting of representation in Scotland and to top it all off, Scotland gets to spend English money at a rate to make a Labour government blush.
How any Englishman can wish to preserve the Union that has served them so poorly for so long, I have no idea.
I’m from the “South” and I read this article and comments with interest and concern. In the comments it’s obvious which “side” is being articulated. It ignores that 50% of the residents don’t agree and have never agreed with this opinion. Open borders has been our salvation until now. I agree the border down the Irish Sea is no solution in fact it is a serious political problem that is not sustainable. It not a matter of the EU being more flexible. It’s about The politicians of both sides in the North sitting down and trashing out a workable solution with politicians in the South. But that is a problem in itself. Are there any politicians with the leadership skills necessary to make this happen? If there aren’t then I foresee with dread the Noth sinking back into the political turmoil of 40 years ago….stop looking to Westminster and Brussels for solutions…let’s see all politicians in the “North” shoulder their responsibilities and finally come up with an obvious and sustainable solution to the issues.
I agree. This problem was weaponised by the EU who shoulder the blame for breaking the GFA. Johnson was left a poisoned chalice by Mrs May and those Remainers in Parliament who were doing their best to overthrow our democratic vote to leave the EU.
The EU has a lot to answer for.
All true, but we must not forget that Johnson flat out lied to NI unionists who are also citizens of the UK about their future status.
He had a different interpretation of the NIP from the EU. His mistake was to think the EU was as reasonable and pragmatic as he was. Lots of people make that mistake.
You are right. Having spent 29 years on the Brussels scene It is not appropriate to try and fudge anything with the EU Institutions. In my opinion NI must remain a part of the UK operating under common law not European Law
I think it is more a case of Boris believing the deliberate ambiguity in the NI Protocoal and WA could be used to keep the worst at bay, and also that much of both could be replaced by provisions in the TCA. This did not happen and since he caught Covid he has lost his mojo. Also, remember we had a rogue Remainer parliament that had tied his hands when he went to Brussels to negotiate, with measures like the Benn Act. He had an impossible task. It was only after winning the election that he could have improved on it and he could not have counted on winning without first getting a deal. A desperate situation.
My view is that, no matter what a deal might say, the EU will always do its best to suppress the UK’s economy, weaken the UK by sowing internal division and by circumventing it in international arena. It is not an ally. It is a bullying competitor, much in the manner of Russia or China, but not yet as openly aggressive.
True – but I can’t see how Brexit could have happened without taking this route.
Its also hard to blame the EU for spotting a sucker in Theresa May, and using her to get agreement for something untenable that had to be undone by her successor.
The ‘no hard border’ stipulation that apparently existed within the 1998 GFA signed between the UK and Éire, sponsored by the EU and US, was a complete fiction.
There is no stipulation whatsoever alluding to the presence of a land border on the island of Ireland despite entirely fallacious claims to the contrary, only a commitment to the removal of military installations along said border.
Ireland and the EU, and frankly so did the UK, all well knew that any failure to agree would likely require Éire and the EU to erect said border in order to protect its single market as the UK had already expressly said it had no intention of ever doing so.
The UK should have held its nerve and sought to protect the rights of its citizens. It failed utterly miserably to do so and should be ashamed of itself.
Correct. It’s not in the GFA. It was in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.
I don’t think the EU spotted a sucker in Mrs May. She decided for herself that the UK would be better of remaining in the EU. She deliberately opted from the start for a comprehensive intimate deal with the EU, it was to be true BRINO. Then in her Florence speech in September 2017 (a week after Juncker’s state of the union speech) she committed the UK to supporting the European Project, participating where it could. She came back to the UK and set up her back channel to Brussels through Olly Robbins, transferred from DEXU for the purpose, and by-passing her Ministers, whom she kept in the dark.
Mrs May was no mere sucker. She was a traitor and she used the NI Border as her own weapon of choice to dismiss every constructive proposal out of hand. She insisted time and again that the ‘border problem’ was insoluble other than by conceding to rule by Brussels.
That is terrible and could lead to the break up of Britain. We are tiny countries but together we are stronger.
The biggest “Celtic” nation is Scotland, which has roughly the same population as a single English county: Yorkshire. The Republic’s economy is roughly the size of the economy of Greater Manchester.
England is weakened by subsidising and constantly pandering to our Celtic appendages who respond only with complaints, abuse and giving succour to our opponents.
Breaking up Britain is long overdue and will be to England’s benefit.
The EU is not responsible for British bungling here. The northern Irish border was not even mentioned during the referendum debates. The U.K. then claimed it didn’t want a border in Ireland nor on the Irish Sea, which is clearly absurd.
When the Tories were in government with the DUP they couldn’t agree on the protocol, when elected without the DUP the Tories threw Northern Ireland to the wolves. Now it’s back again. It really has nothing to do with Northern Ireland but with the U.K. trying to wrangle out if agreed international protocols.
I think it is the case that the EU is using every weapon that it can find in order to attack the UK. That includes N.I. I now view the EU as an unfriendly foreign power.
That’s probably an understatement seeing the way they are behaving. If we have left the EU then we should leave intact with our territories including NI which is part of Britain.
Northern Ireland isn’t part of Britain though that’s the problem.
Isn’t it also possible that Brexit is a mess??!! That it was badly thought out. In some cases, not at all. And that the EU is just a handy scapegoat?
Brexit a mess? Why is the EU acting so badly? The blame can be placed at the feet of a treacherous Theresa May, a Parliament working against democracy and the EU hell bent on revenge.
The EU is now overtly a hostile foreign power.
Yes to an extent, but that doesn’t negate my point that the EU is hostile. It is a pretty rum deal when BJ looks like the only grown-up in the room.
Not if your a flag shagger no…
Quite right. It was inevitable. No matter what any agreement might say, it is imperative for the EU to do all it can to prevent the UK from making a success of Brexit. If it fails in this objective, the European Project is at risk of ceasing to exist.
FvP, I think the issue is the fact that the EU insists on a border for customs and quality control – a type of hardish border; whereas the UK, having nothing to fear from having an open border, doesn’t see the point. There is a report kicking around from the EU itself (unfortunately I’ve lost the link) which states that – with a little goodwill on both sides – it is possible to use technology to control the goods coming into the single market thereby alleviating the need for a ‘hard/hardish border’. The U.K. Government’s claim that it doesn’t want a border is therefore not absurd at all; a country needs no more than a line across the road, if it so chooses. The need for a border has always been an E.U. one.
Ultimately, it is an intractable problem driven by intractable people
Brexit means Borders. The idea that you can leave an economic union like the EU and not have borders is pure fantasy. Saying that the UK won’t impose a border but the EU might is dishonest waffle. One of the biggest selling points for Brexit was to control immigration. Borders!!
No. Goods trade and personal travel are quite separate. The Common Travel Area of the UK and Ireland pre-dates the EU by many decades and is still in existence.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/common-travel-area-guidance#:~:text=The%20Common%20Travel%20Area%20(CTA,is%20not%20dependent%20on%20it.
Have a look at non-EU goods arriving in Trieste destined for elsewhere in the EU.
Quite true. The EU has its own smart borders project to replace paper forms with electronic systems. Although viable for whole of the the EU there is one exception for political reasons: not feasible in Ireland!
Isn’t the EU Smart Borders pilot about movement of people (into the Schengen area) rather than goods?
https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/borders-and-visas/smart-borders_en
The electronic border was dismissed by the EU and particularly Varadkar. The previous Irish incumbent had been working on this project as a means of solving this problem. It shows how keen the EU and the Irish have been to get one over on the UK. The current Mr Martin seems to be more sensible.
The EU is about to trash the Irish economy very shortly by setting their tax rates. Niot that I feel sorry about this.
Leo Varadkar’s problem is that he thinks politics is just an extension of debating societies in Trinity College, Dublin. If the EU saw a sucker in this mess, it was certainly him and some of his Fine Gael party colleagues. Micheál Martin is showing more savvy (and already did while leader of the opposition – but remember he was a minister in the government which negotiated the GFA while Varadkar was barely out of school), but he is in a difficult position as a leader of a party, Fianna Fáil, which is collapsing in the face of Sinn Féin inroads.
It’s not absurd. The republic should prioritise the relationship with the UK and NI. They should accept a border with the EU
Yes. And leave the EU as well. Like the tail of the English dog!
You mean we left but left our tail behind so the EU can punish us through it.
I thought England was by far the largest of the countries of the British Isles. It used to be.
With the tax affairs of Ireland about to be ruled from Brussels Ireland may very well soon wish it had never heard of the EU.
There was a bad Irish habit of hiding behind Britain at difficult EU meeting and the particular prize for that is Ireland’s feted Corporation Tax rate. Now Irish officials need an alternative strategy.
That is rather like saying that the side that wins a battle is not responsible for the other side’s defeat.
As you say this problem was weaponised by the EU. If the Ulstermen are going to make trouble they should go to the source and make it in Brussels. I doubt that the EU elites will like it up ’em!
The EU is NOT responsible for Brexit. This is your mess.
The EU has no conscience. It is a technocratic government. It gained a weapon in the WA & NI Protocol. Now it intends to use it. If it does not the UK threatens to become an existential threat to the EU merely by succeeding outside the EU. It would be quite illogical of the EU to allow that..
I’d say the EU has already shot its bolt. The future does not look good for the EU.
You’re a long Britain created this mess in Northern Ireland 100 years ago and yet you just blame the EU
Does Southern Ireland particularly want to be joined with the North? It would change its political balance a great deal. Also a lot of people from Southern Ireland have duel British/Irish passports-surely this would end if it becomes a united EU Ireland?
Interesting question. What would happen to the Common Travel Area, which pre-dates the EU and still continues.
We will inevitably see. The GFA provides for a United Ireland only if a majority in both parts vote for it. Demographically, there will be a Catholic, nationalist majority in the North soon and if this does not vote for unity at 51%, it will eventually achieve the majority as it will continue to increase. I have argued elsewhere that an early referendum might be more in the unionist interest than a later one. The next question is whether the Republic takes the north. I think that the question is if there is a silent majority in the 26 counties that will vote against unity, because I don’t imagine too many public figures in the state would want to put themselves across as unionists if the North is going to vote for unity.
I cannot see Ireland, particularly post impoverishment following the EU setting tax rates, welcoming the North into the Republic.
I often wonder if this plays a part: most people I ask in Ireland what it is to be Irish lead with or place highly “hating the Brits”. By which they mean the English really.
If you define yourself with hate, it doesn’t sell well. Ireland and the Irish are so much more than this, but sell themselves short with such hatred.
The big question is whether Ireland can afford to be united, I would see any “no” vote to unity being ran along these lines.
Can you explain to me, if you don’t mind my asking, why do the people who own and inhabit 26 counties begrudge the other people their 6 counties?
It’s an Island. One piece of land.
So is Britain
Have you said the same to Wee Nicola?
Which just shows that it is not really about an island being one country. More about three nations on one island although England is no longer one nation but a nation of many different cultures.
By that definition should we say goodbye to Wales and Scotland? Also does this ‘its an island’ have a geographical size as there are all sorts of land divisions in Europe that are quite recent-shouldn’t we just ‘squash’ them all together ?
What squash them together with China, Russia, and India etc. because they are on the same piece of land? These countries are ethnic nations proving that countries are ethnic nations not just land masses with sea around them.
I wasn’t being serious you know? It was the earlier comment that said everyone on the same land block should be one country. However a lot of countries in Europe , either geographical or political are fairly new,, just like the present North & South Ireland.
Lots of islands are two countries. The IRA have made sure that protestants are not welcome on the island.
There are only four in the world actually
So is the greater Europe/Asia area, and South America, and North America.
As a historical note, two of the six counties voted in 1921 to join the South. The British Government drew a line round the six because they represented the largest area which could still be Unionist-controlled using the large Unionist majority in the other four, telling the South that the boundary was temporary and it would all be sorted out in a future final negotiation, and then reneged on that in the mid-1920s and presented the South with the fait accompli of a six-county NI.
A century later, demographic change in NI means that the Unionists probably wish they could hand the two Nationalist counties back and focus on the four, which might gain them another generation of Unionist majority which in the six counties has essentially evaporated in the first two decades of the 21st century.
This is a very republican version of what happened. You don’t mention the ethnic cleansing of Unionists which has gone on in the border lands. You could have said Southern Ireland wanted to break away from the rest of us and the North didn’t. And it is worth remembering the original plan was for 9 counties, the old Ulster, which would have given a 55%/45% majority to the Unionists. This was considered too narrow.
It should have been sorted out with a re-partition. Mrs. Thatcher’s government, at the height of the troubles, did consider re-partition to create a smaller, more solidly Unionist, Northern Ireland with a straighter, more logical, border (google: “map, proposed repartitions of Northern Ireland”).
The proposal, though, included a Stalinesque forced population exchange which was thought impractical for political reasons, among others – imagine the US reaction! So it was not proceeded with. A pity – a solidly Unionist NI with no fears for its future and a hard border with the Republic would have solved a lot of headaches right now.
The Anglo-Irish Treaty did establish a Boundary Commission that could have given big parts of the six counties to the Irish Republic. It was probably a mistake to entrust a task like that to a border commission rather than a popular referendum. However, all is not lost. You could still have a referendum today. Better late than never. Probably a lot of the problems of the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic become more tractable if the border isn’t so long, the number of people in the Northern Ireland entity is smaller, and the number who would rather be part of the Republic is considerably reduced. This is, of course, just a temporary fix. Ireland’s long-term future should be as part of a federal union of the British Isles. Never mind all this talk about it all being one island. It’s all one archipelago.
That’s interesting. The policy of Sinn Féin at its foundation in 1905 was a dual monarchy between Britain and Ireland on the Austro-Hungarian model. The majority nationalist consensus, which voted overwhelmingly for the Irish Parliamentary Party until 1918, was for a home rule parliament in Dublin which would have been within the British Empire. Events forced a different outcome. Anyone is welcome to canvas for a federal union between Ireland (united or otherwise) and Britian (unitary or devolved) within the present day Irish Republic, but I doubt they will get very far.
Spot on 100 %
The state of N Ireland was negotiated and created by the then British Government in 1921. At the time, albeit accompanied by armed revolt, the democratically expressed wish of the majority of the whole population of Ireland was for a unitary independent state. The subsequent geographic entity of N Ireland was constructed in order to block that majority decision, to maintain a British state on the island, and to provide a permanent unionist majority. Now that that majority is no longer guaranteed, the question of the desirability of maintaining N Ireland in its present form in order to assuage the emotional aspirations of a loyalist minority, becomes paramount. The political and economic history of N Ireland shows a failure of statehood, and its continuation brings no viable benefit to the population, loyalist or nationalist. A renegotiation of governance in Ireland could bring huge societal benefits, re-aligning a relationship with the neighbours in Great Britain, which had been poisoned by the conflict.
But the state was created by Britain, and is still maintained by perfidious assurances from HM Government, and we will only be able to seriously address our futures when HM Government stops being a culpable protagonist and engages in honest discussion.
I think your history is somewhat selective. Remember the Home Rule Bill? Overtaken by the war and then by violence. Without the violence a different solution might have been possible.
Anyway, the idea that in the present atmosphere, with the bullying and incompetent EU (now supported by the incompetent Joe Biden) being determined to stick it to the UK and a major player, the chances of achieving a fair settlement in Ireland are next to zero. Take the EU out of the equation and a solution would be easier to find. Before Varadkar, good progress on the border was being made through the structures established by the Belfast Agreement. That is what we need to get back to.
Roughly half of the population of the 6 counties are nationalist. They want to join the 26 counties. I live in Dublin. Frankly, we’re not ready for a united Ireland. London pays an extraordinary amount every year to keep NI afloat. We are not ready to take that over. There is no question of begrudgery. But when the majority in NI decide they want unification, we have to take it on. And we will.
Interestingly there is a growing amount of debate in Ireland (North and South) on how unification would work, how any referendum would be managed, and what sort of state would result in the even of a vote for unification. The goal is, I understand, to avoid an unplanned and chaotic Brexit-like process, and to ensure clarity on what people are voting for.
Well, as per my reply to Kathleen Carr above, its not about the inhabitants of the 26 counties actively seeking the 6; it’s rather that at such time as a majority in the 6 decide they want to join with the 26, the 26 will decide for themselves whether they want to accept them or not. I don’t think the outcome of such a referendum is easily predictable, but I do think the opponents of Irish unity will fight it with their hands tied behind their backs.
Following the EU referendum, the UK and Irish governments set up a working group to find practical ways of managing the border issues that could then be presented to the EU as a fait accompli. When Varadkar took office he abolished this working group and encouraged the EU to weaponise the border. No doubt this was in part prompted by Anglophobia but also by the notion that this would make Ireland the EU’s teacher’s pet. As the vaccine debacle in February showed, and this week’s argument about taxation reinforces, the EU sees Ireland as just another peripheral member state to be bossed around and taken advantage of. Perhaps the Irish will come to realise who their friends really are. If not, disappointment awaits.
“Perhaps the Irish will come to realise who their friends really are.” To coin a phrase, you must be joking. The English are there to be hated. Would you like me to draw you a diagram?
Hated thanks to Irish myths
I have long held the view that if the EU would stay out of it, the UK and Ireland could sort it out. All the mechanisms and structures are in place for the two to do so through the Belfast Agreement – to which the EU is not even a party. The CTA pre-dates the EU and continues.
There was good progress on border issues until Varadkar became the Taoiseach. I strongly suspect that Varadkar did a deal with Brussels: allow Ireland to keep its tax haven, and not be taken to the ECJ as the EU has been threatening, in return for weaponising the border and stuffing the Brits. Together they found, much to their surprise, that Mrs May was a Remainer intent upon keeping UK as subject to EU government as she could. To this end she by -passed her ministers and set up a back channel to the EU via Olly Robbins, following her speech in Florence in September 2017. She was a traitor. The border came to be her weapon of choice to dismiss out of hand all solutions to the border in order to give the EU all the leverage it needed not only over Northern Ireland itself but over the whole of the UK.
The NI Protocol is arguably itself a breach of the Belfast Agreement. Nevertheless it is capable of being used to produce a practicable solution. it is a question of political will to make it work. There is no need for the EU to carry out umpteen times as many checks on goods entering NI from the UK as it does on any other EU border. The EU is deliberately stirring up trouble. It is probably more than content to see increasing violence from any party. the EU’s purpose is simply to damage the UK by any and all means. As for Ireland, its tax haven is doomed. The EU will legislate for tax harmonisation. The deal I suspect it made with Varadkar has served its purpose. Ireland has had its day in the spotlight seeming to control events and sticking it to the Brits, wearing the green. Now it must pay.
You are implying a level of intelligence to Leo Varadkar which I don’t believe is there. Someone above suggested the EU saw Mrs May as a sucker; I believe it was rather Dr Varadkar who took that role.
The ‘Irish Question’ has been around for about 100 years now. (I mean this particular Irish Question, not the great number of earlier questions).
There is no doubt in my mind that England is to blame for the problems in Ireland. But this is history and the problems continue. It seems to me that England can’t magically solve these problems and never could. Only the people in Northern Ireland can really solve them.
It is not true that England caused the same problems in Scotland or Wales. Scotland’s kings took over England, not vice versa – so SNP politicians are to blame for that one. In Wales there isn’t really a problem or no more than in Yorkshire and Lancashire – the dominance of London.
A couple of articles today are about London. To me, London is wealthier than the rest of the UK. Let us talk about the problems in Leeds or Birmingham for a change.
We have had leaders of Irish extraction in England
Leonard James Callaghan was born at 38 Funtington Road, Copnor, Portsmouth, England, on 27 March 1912. He took his middle name from his father, James (1877–1921), who was the son of an Irish Catholic father who had fled to England during the Great Irish Famine,
Yes, it is obvious that there never has been, and never will be, any good faith, on the part of the EU. Thus, as you say, we simply need to invoke that clause, and be free of the Withdrawl Agreement in 12 months. More people need to be aware of this clause.
Sorry accidental flag. Fat thumbs!
The EU should be Taken to international court for violating 2365 of UN Act on Sovereignity in Independent countries,The tory Theresa may&Boris Johnson should be Sacked for agreeing to redrawing 1922 border with blair’s 1998 surrender..
It seems to come as a surprise to you, but the EU and, more particularly, the people of Ireland, opposed Brexit. (Not that the Republic of Ireland had any say, one way or the other) This was an English idea pushed through after a marginal majority in a referendum. Subsequent political machinations in Westminster have given little cause for confidence in good faith on the UK side. Accusing the EU of bad faith in relation to the problems in Ulster is rediculous.
The brexiteers have won all elections after the referendum hands down. Not least the EU assembly vote where the novel ‘Brexit Party’ annihilated allcomers, for being insufficiently brexity.
You are unspecific about the English machinations, forget the Welsh choice and the indifference of many, non-voting Scots. On the other hand the EU’s evil machinations are clear. I say evil because they break the delicate agreement between the communities in Northern Ireland and jeopordise the peace, which is exactly what they proclaimed to be aiming to protect. They have used the border as a lever for their own ends and interpreted the Protocol in the most pedantic and unsympathetic way possible, regardless of the risk to citizens’ lives. That is evil as well as hypocritical.
Brexit was always going to be very difficult for Northern Ireland. The success of the Good Friday agreement was in the ambiguity in the way that it was written. It allowed all sides to take what they wanted to believe in it and ignore the bits that they didn’t want to address.
Leaving the EU has torn that curtain of ambivalence down and has forced people to recognize that you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
To a certain degree NI has been politically used as a football between the EU and the UK but it’s probably closer to a difficult child in a divorce which neither parent really wants, but that doesn’t stop them for using it for their own interests.
What role would you ascribe to Ireland in this complicated ménage-à-trois?
Mrs Doyle from Father Ted: ” go on you will, you will, you will.
To use your earlier analogy, to me, Ireland seems to be like the other partner who’s currently enjoying great sex with the EU and who secretly can’t quite bring itself to admit that, despite the expected posturing to the contrary, it doesn’t really want the troublesome kid on the scene cramping its style and denting its carefully cultivated easy going image either.
Like many others, Ireland will soon need to be careful picking up the soap in the EU showers.
Absolutely, the EU used Northern Ireland to shaft Britain and will use anything, anytime to shaft Ireland without a care.
Child abuser
If Ireland can get on with NI as one country you would have a solution and be able to leave England out of it. England would suffer having the EU all around them but Switzerland seems to manage it.
Switzerland has its own problems with the EU.
Let me suggest two possible solutions.
The first is that Ireland unites and – since that seems to be its preference, even in the north – remains a detached outpost of the EU, physically separated from that trading bloc by a trading partner which isn’t part of it. Prods who don’t like it can be offered a small bribe to go and live in Scotland (whence came many of their ancestors, and which I’m told is keen to encourage immigration).
The second (and my preferred) solution is that the whole of Ireland becomes part of Greater Britain, outside the EU and enjoying the continued benefits of a shared language and historical, economic and familial connections. There are details to be resolved about the extent of devolution, but Dublin would need to retain its own parliament – it might even have more power than it does now as a minnow within the EU (as we’re now seeing with Brussels’ insistence that it raise its levels of Corporation Tax).
Of course politics and history mean that neither of my brilliant solutions is likely to bear fruit, but can anyone suggest anything better?
The second option would indeed be an excellent solution. As for the ‘Prods’ leaving for Scotland, I’m not sure that this is the kind of immigration that Scotland would welcome. The ‘Prods’ are too white and too British.
Also would we get to send the Irish Catholics back
Scotland already has more than its fair share of religious bigots (see Ethniciodo Rodenydo’s comment below).
Plan B or your second option is in effect a return to the situation in 1801, and a splendid idea.
The original (1730’s) Parliament Building still stands although now used as a Counting House for some Irish Moneylenders (I forget which).
It was also Sinn Féin’s preferred option when they were founded in 1903. One Monarch, Two Kingdoms, rather similar to the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary.
Yes, a fine Palladian building which could easily revert to its intended use
Republic of Ireland Chose to leave The Commonwealth in 1949 a big Mistake,as england is its best customer,likewise for celtic Wales &Scotland
If it was a big mistake then what price did they pay?
What other country in the entire world benefits from an arrangement as one sided as the Common Travel Area?
Well said. The CTA made sense so long as the Irish Free State was a dominion of the Crown, but as soon as it became a Republic in 1949 it should have become just another foreign country with no special access for its produce or its surplus labour.
The CTA made sense, not because of the form of government in the Irish Free State (as was), but because of the common history and culture, and more importantly because of the extensive movement of people between Ireland and Britain, and most importantly, because of the complex web of relationships across the land border between Northern Ireland and the Free State. Those crucial factors continued after the establishment of the Irish Republic, and continue today. The establishment of the EU single market strengthened the cross-border commercial, culturel and political relationship, as did the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement.
Brexit has… complicated this on a number of levels.
That was due to the then Taoiseach, John A. Costello, having a fit of pique during a state visit to Canada. The Orangemen in Toronto provoked him.
A splendid idea for all except for Ireland where the GDP per capita is almost twice that of the UK
Only thanks to ludicrously low Corporation Tax, and for how much longer?
GDP is an exceptionally poor marker to use in relation to Ireland.
Scotland is peopled by the Irish who invaded Scotland. The planters were just going home to Ireland.
What about the U.K. re-entering the Single Market? Problem solved!
I was looking for a democratic solution, not one that denied it
We voted to join the single market in the first referendum by a much larger margin than we voted to leave the EU federation.
The Single Market didn’t exist in 1975.
No one voted to join the Single Market (which was created in 1993). Major just signed us up without asking us. In 1975 we voted on joinng a trading bloc – that was the story – though if anyone bothered to read the Treaty of Rome they would have understood exactly where the EEC was heading. But the politicians lied then, as they lie today.
Here’s an interesting fact for you: the UK ‘s trade with the Rest of the World increased faster than our trade with the EU from 1999 on. By 2015 our exports to the EU were just 44% of the total (from a high of around 55%) and this despite the fact the EU had grown in population by 100 per cent since the ’75 Referendum as a result of enlargement. The picture is the same on imports though less marked. Considering the EU market is on our doorstep and there were no tariff barriers, why was the trade growth so much less than with others?
Perhaps it’s because trade thrives on complementarity not proximity. It will take time and education to show up the myths associated with the Single Market.
We could always democratically decide to re-enter the Single Market.
After all, as we were told during the referendum campaign, the vote was about leaving the EU not leaving the Single Market.
Because chump why would we (UK) want to join Eurozone trade where since 1973 Uk has been in Trade arrears(Red) for 45/47 years?..
Because, twit, they’re our next door neighbours, and it’s best for all concerned if we get along, especially in trade, otherwise we’ll all be poorer
There’s “getting along” and there’s getting shafted. I think I know the difference.
I like the second option but it is completely impracticable as long as Sinn Fein continue to wink and a nod see the rifle as a weapon of choice. The Republic has never itself dealt with the problem of the IRA, which has not gone away, but simply gone quiet. Any attempt to implement your option 2 would see that IRA immediately cease its quietness.
So your first option it must be, though that risks the north resorting to the rifle. But that would at least have the advantage of being the problem for the united Ireland to sort out and not the English.
There are quite a few English prepared to arm the unionists to prevent them being coerced. Like last time.
It would interesting. to the Irish Army dealing with the UVF and UDA.They are the reason goods are sailing in from Stranraer as pre 1.1.21.Any EU “officials” from France or Germany stationed in Belfast to enforce their petty rules?The EU in it’s Potemkin village absurdity is irrelevant in the21st century.The Emperor is naked,the tiger only paper.Btw absorbing N.I would bankrupt Dublin.
Anything better? Yes. Draw a line from the Wash down to Bristol and declare everything below it the state of Southland. At a stroke Southlanders would be free from all the moaners and could get with giving ourselves more of the wealth which we create but currently have to hand over to others.
Excluded from Southland, the Scots could have the oil revenues and the Euro (good luck with that), the Welsh can see how they get on making a living from their main exports of doilies and lava bread and Northern Ireland, already the world centre for Balaclava production, could look to expand into other areas. I have not yet come up with a final plan for those areas of England north of the line and I am willing to hear proposals from other Unherd correspondents.
In Northern England, we would be delighted to lose the entitled third raters who have ridden the golden conveyor belt of privilege to positions they would not have achieved on their own ability (as Dominic Cummings put it, Boris lacks the competence which Britain deserves). And we would not be ruled by the City of London, which regards selling off British businesses to foreigners as “generating wealth” because it generates fees for corporate lawyers and Mergers & Acquisitions specialists.
Putting the EU border in the Celtic Sea is the obvious solution, and Southern Ireland recognizing that most of her trade is with the UK and America.
I find it fascinating when people propose solutions that they themselves admit will never work.
-“ The first is that Ireland unites and – since that seems to be its preference, even in the north”
There is around 25% support in N. Ireland for reunification. Do you suggest the other 75% should be forced out of the UK? Can you imagine what that will lead to?
Reuniting ROI with the UK would have, at a guess, maybe 3 or 4 percent support in the south and 50% would probably fight to the death to prevent it.
The IRA were just about defeated when Blair decided to stick his oar in and we’ve been paying the price ever since.
The only way to defeat a bully is to stand up to them, the only way.
And that applies to the EU and SF equally. Nothing else will work.
A recent Ashcroft poll found 51% of NI support unification if 6% don’t knows are included. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/slight-majority-for-unification-in-northern-ireland-poll-1.4015170
In what sense do the “don’t knows” support unification?
You only quoted the first half of my sentence. The majority I was referring to was for remaining in the EU, not for reunification.
On the latter, the last survey I saw was 47% in NI who wanted to remain part of the union and 42% who wanted reunification. As we all know the boundary was rigged to ensure a Protestant and unionist majority in the north, but demographics will turn that round eventually.
I didn’t propose a solution that I admitted would never work. I proposed a solution which I acknowledged would probably never happen. Not the same thing.
Given that no feasible border could ever satisfy everyone, couldn’t you make the case that it was actually the democratic thing to do, to have a border that ensured a large majority of its inhabitants felt themselves to be on the right side of it?
The IRA had been comprehensively infiltrated and roundly defeated. Blair made a craven capitulation on all fronts to a defeated enemy and allowed a foreign power to have a say in part of our country in the future. Hence the South’s impertinent interference now. It is incredible. But then everything he did is incredible.
Blair’s “craven capitulation” was endorsed by a referendum in Northern Ireland (by a larger majority than the Brexit Referendum, interestingly enough). Notwithstanding your personal assessment of the security situation, all sides in Northern Ireland, and the Irish and UK governments, judged that concessions were needed to achieve peace.
The peace is not perfect, but countless lives have been saved. One hopes that brinkmanship around the Northern Ireland Protocol will not undo this.
The peace is a very long way from perfect. The majority that voted for the GFA, myself included, naively expected republicans to play fair. What we got in return for compromise was a rewriting of history and SF continuing to be run by the IRA army council.
The NI protocol is a case in point, the Irish Sea border contravenes everything that the GFA was supposed to protect, but that’s ok because it suits a nationalist agenda.
Countless lives have been saved perhaps, another way of putting it is that the IRA stopped murdering women and children because they were given what they wanted without having to go to the bother of getting their hands dirty. Their implicit threats of violence hang over the whole island. A peaceful society will never emerge from such a birth.
Eventually, when England gets its own Legislative Assembly & Scotland/Wales demand further power, the UK will transform to The Federation of the United Kingdom.
Then the EU will eventually collapse and Ireland will join the new Federation of the British Isles.
Peace at last.
Peace indeed, but not in our time
“and Ireland will join the new Federation of the British Isles”………….and I will win the lottery on Saturday!
This “Federation of the United Kingdom”: would it involve the continued outward flow of English money? I think it would, so no thanks.
Agreed, such largesse must cease immediately.
The recipients are universally ungrateful, and like a ‘substance abuser’ continually bleat for more and more.
We must jettison these beggars for once and for all.
We ‘owe’ them nothing!
I am not ungrateful Charles: I will be forever grateful that it causes such pain to bitter little men like you. It’s just a shame that you and your ilk will all be dead soon. Slainte! p.s. please send more money.
Spoken like a true beggar. Thank you for being so frank.
Maybe they should establish the Democratic Republic of Threadneedle Street, so the Banksters can make their own rules, make loadsamoney, and not pay any taxes to support the freeloaders in the Home Counties.
Well England wouldn’t be the richest nation so perhaps not
So: was it worth the UK staying in the EU so that we could keep Northern Ireland?
To ask the question is to know the answer.
The author is right. Decades of insult to the English have made the English flex their electoral muscle and finally, finally, finally vote for what’s best for the English. What is the actual benefit to England of being in a union with Northern Ireland, by the way?
Thanks to a lot of things, but mainly thanks to Blair, we now have a constructive English nationalist government for the first time in 300 years. Like the horrid, bent little regional parties of the minor countries always have been, it’s focused on what’s best for England. These nasty, racist, parasitical little cesspits can all go under the bus, frankly.
Every Labour government inflicted on England has relied on Scottish “voots”; none has ever won a majority in England, and now thanks to Blair never will.
I abstained in the Brexit vote, but if I’d realised it was a chance to get shot of Scotland and Northern Ireland, I’d have voted Leave.
A federal system for the whole of the British Isles is a logical solution. But it couldn’t be a stable one with one of the 5 main parties ie England being so large compared with the rest. There would have to be moves to devolving governance to the English regions somehow, and there the dominance of London and SE in England is another obstacle. Can future articles and discussions also comment on this issue of how to remove the domination of England in the UK and of London and the SE within England. And also include consideration for the other islands that have their own independent governance arrangements eg Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man.
That amounts to saying that the answer to the problems of NI and Scotland lies in destroying England as it currently is. No thanks, we can manage just fine.
I think I will settle for independence for England, Leaving NI and Scotland to do whatever they want.
That’s more like it.
It is an interesting thought experiment to consider a federal UK, and yes the problem is what to do about England, approximately 80% of the total. A first step would be somehow to get away from the reality that whoever is Primeminister of England is also the UK Primeminister.
Many in England are frustrated by the over-dominance of London and the Home counties, and governance by a narrow elite of Etonians. Yet it is hard to imagine England being split after 1,000 years as a unitary state, fun though it is to imagine re-establishing the Heptarchy.
Eileen, there is a lovely shiny building in St James’ Park, in Newcastle upon Tyne; it was designed and designated to be the political seat of the ‘Northern Assembly’. The wonderful Mr Blair tempted, nudged, and cajoled the people of the North East to take part in a referendum for a ‘Northern Assembly’, the people – those who could be bothered to take part (like me) overwhelmingly threw out the very idea; and very sensibly, too.
Although there is a Mercian Independence movement, so who knows….
Blair should tried retrospectively for High Treason.
No country in the world trades on WTO terms. They all have deals which give them better terms than the WTO version.
But I am forgetting, Boris said “F*** Business”.
No, exactly wrong. A federation must explicitly recognise the supremacy of England among the constituent countries, and its dominance must be properly reflected, otherwise England gets milked by racists in Scotland and wherever else. No, no, no.
Cake and eat it time. Independence and the continued supply of English money. Very funny.
Divide England into bite-sized regional chunks for eventual consumption by the EU, whilst maintaing the outward flow of English money. No thanks.
Blair was dividing the UK into regions for the EU so he could be President of Europe, hence devolution. Blair’s hand poisoned everything he touched
You should ask your English government to deliver English independence.
England is not ‘dependent’..never has been.
What English government? England is under direct rule from Westminster.
I’m using your own words back at you.
Not quite true about every Labour government relying on Scottish votes. The following elections produced majorities for Labour even if you cut out Scotland entirely:
It does dramatically reduce the number of Labour governments, however. And if Scotland were to leave then it would make future Labour administrations vanishingly rare.
Demographics,and racial Change Would Not happen Now..Lib-lab-Cons-Green-Plaid-Snp ARE the problem..
Worth remembering though, Blair only forced though student loans for English students, with the support of the Scots MP’s. Who were promised that the English would pay tuition for the Scots students, as well as their own children.
That is why the left want to break up England and always have. Lots of little Burnhams and Khans is what they want ruling us.
Because those people are elected by the local electors. They don’t have someone two hundred miles away imposed on them by parasitic bankers from the Home Counties.
This gets my vote for the best and most realistic comment so far.
Labour won most votes in England in the 1945, 1950, 1951, 1966, October 1974, 1987, 2001, and 2005 elections.
Labour won most seats in England in the 1945, 1966, October 1974, 1997, 2001, and 2005 elections.
Quite a few of the staunch Northern Irish Proestants actually moved there from Scotland in the 19th century & confusingly Catholic Irish moved to Scotland- so have a sort of swap?
Scotland only voted ‘Remain’ because of their Irish contingent
I didn’t know that-I thought it was the old sentiment of auld alliance. I know the divisions cause problems with some football supporters.
The vote was 62:38, I believe.
That’s a lot of the population you are going to have to imply have no valid view (24% of the votes cast), before you can get to level pegging.
Who knew there were so many Irish people living in Scotland?
I’ve also read that Wales only voted leave because of their English contingent. Is that true?
How on earth did the Conservatives get the name of the Nasty Party? I’m mystified!
Except we don’t have an English nationalist government we have a reactionary populist one but they seem to have fooled you with their shtick
I worked in Belfast for a while and don’t dispute the general image of NI as presented in para 3. I simply refuse to believe that it was beyond the intelligence of EU/UK mandarins to simply put GFA at the centre of the new arrangement and work around that. But as the author says – “Why would the EU listen? Why would it do as it’s told?”
Well maybe because they keep telling the world they are a “peace project”?
The UK politicians who cheered the EU on in it’s attempts to weaponise the border agreement are culpable here. They didn’t have the courage of their convictions to push through and seize the process to openly destroy Brexit, preferring instead to hide behind flying flags and nonsense like the “People’s Vote”. I hope they all rot in hell.
The EU even has a Nobel Peace Prize!
Boris (the one that promised not to put a border in the Irish Sea) negotiated the deal, won an election with the “oven ready deal” and signed the deal…but Remoaners in the Lib Dem and Labor party are to blame!
“…but Remoaners in the Lib Dem and Labor party are to blame!”
That is correct Jeremy. Remainers and Remoaners wanted only to block Brexit, without a care for the consequences. Sometimes Jeremy, you have to look at yourself in the mirror and acknowledge what you have done.
Get real. Boris negotiated the agreement.
“..the Tories sold Electorate a pup & Brexit Party believed the establishment,”
The Tory Party and the entire establishment, almost to a man, bitterly opposed Brexit.
“Do you believe the Scum globalists will bow to democracy?”
Well that is pretty much what they were obliged to do.
If you want to use abusive language perhaps you should restrict your comments to your Twitter account.
The great disappointment with this article is that the author completely ignores the fact that it was EU intransigence that rejected the current border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and insisted that it be placed between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Yes, Theresa May’s incompetent negotiation abetted the situation but the EU knew exactly the consequences of their actions. Sadly, these consequences have come to pass.
I don’t think the EU did know exactly the consequences, but I don’t think they cared very much either, because they killed two birds with one stone; one was that they could demonstrate loyalty to a member (which without sufficient thought advocated a policy it thought would bring union closer), while the other was that they obtained a massive source of leverage to thwart Brexit, or failing that,exact never-ending concessions.
Spot on, and a point that seems conveniently ignored by most people.
Martin Selmayr articulated it by saying the cost of Brexit would mean territorial loss for the UK. The EU has shown itself to be a hostile foreign power.
Selmayr’s grandfather was convicted of war atrocities by a Jugoslav court and imprisoned.Thr US managed to get him released and he went on to head the West German secret service.America turning a blind eye to prominent unreformed Nazis in the EU is a byword, notably. Walter Hallstein the first European president and founder of the ECJ.
More nonsense. The imposition of a hard border on the island of Ireland would have breached the Good Friday Agreement. Not that that would have stopped Boris. However, he needs a trade deal with the US and he won’t get it if Brexit results in a hard border. The EU is, as usual, only following its own rules.
The UK has a common travel area with the republic. It was the EU, not the UK, which required a hard border.
The Belfast Agreement says nothing about the border. It does however say the constitutional place of NI within the UK shall not be changed without the majority consent of the people. It is that part, the central part, which has been violated at the EU and Southern Ireland’s insistence, and is being upheld now by the aggressive IRA backing Biden regime.
Yh the man you despise really saved you with that eventually the Tories would have tired of NI but know we can’t get rid of you without the consent of the Northern Irish people
The splitting off of NI with the UK also breaks the GFA.
If only someone had pointed out the problems that might follow Brexit. Oh, wait…
Talking of blaming the English is convenient but wrong. It was the EU that weaponised the Irish border to try if possible to overturn the result of the referendum or failing that to maintain as far as possible the status quo.
And I would then ask why Northern Ireland is always somebody else’s problem to solve? It’s your country. From our perspective your refusal to live together peacefully with your fellow citizens is becoming beyond endurance.
Hear hear to your final sentence.
There were just two nations living in NI and it was generations before one side started attacking the other out of resentment and grievance. Given the number of new nations we have taken in on the mainland, do you really think there won’t be similar strife down the generations, greatly multiplied?
I don’t think England cares any more. I think that, as with Scotland, many here would be glad to be rid of the, pardon the word, trouble. None of the grievances are of any concern to generations under 40 on the eastern side of the Irish Sea; indeed with the decline in Christian practise and lack of focus on the British Isles in much school-level history teaching, they are probably downright confusing to many. I get the feeling that the growing consensus in England is “Leave them to it.” This could uncharitably be translated to “Give ’em enough rope.”
If people don’t care about a foreign power annexing part of their country then they are irredeemably decadent.
NIreland has never bothered to cultivate the British – it has separate political parties and would like to have separate laws (but want Britiah money. That’s why Brits regard it’s people as Irish and would be glad to be shot of the place
It does have separate laws, as does Scotland.
As for separate political parties, it is up to Labour and the Conservatives whether to organise in Northern Ireland. Labour don’t, but at least they no longer expel members who move there. The Conservatives do organise in NI, but for some reason they don’t get many votes.
I broadly agree with your post, to the extent that I am familiar with the situation in NI. However, I think it’s a little unfair to suggest that the Conservative party chose to ‘morph’ into an English party. It wasn’t really their choice, but largely a combination of Celtic grievance (justified or otherwise) and devolution.
Granted, I always drag this up when the status of NI is called into question in terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, but that agreement was a long grass agreement to disagree between the UK and Éire (note the accent on the ‘E’ there, vitally important to include it and surprised the author missed it off given his obvious leanings) and was predicated on the Principle of Consent of ALL the parties involved, not just Northern Irish Catholics as now seems to be the case.
The IRA was a terrorist organisation, like ETA and Isis. When Gebler writes this that “the IRA and the British State were at war. We call it the Troubles but trust me, it was a nasty, dirty, vicious civil war”, he puts terrorists on a par with a liberal democratic sovereign state (for all its faults). Anyone who can’t see how objectionable this is should read Who Was Responsible For Troubles, by Liam Kennedy.
Northern Ireland was and is a divided society, but the IRA, and the Loyalist paramilitaries whose activities were largely in reaction to theirs, had no legitimate grievances that couldn’t have been resolved peacefully: that’s what happens in a democracy.
The Protocol is not just down to the English. The Scottish Government popped up frequently in Brussels during the long years of negotiation to encourage the Commission to be as tough as possible. Presumably Sturgeon thought that the worse the final deal for the UK, the better the case for independence. Essentially, she was willing economic damage on Scotland and every other part of the UK in the hope of advancing her cause. I don’t think treasonous is too colourful a description of her behaviour.
Correct, she should suffer the same penalty of her late hero Sir William Wallace.
Smithfield is still available for such a spectacle, but who will provide the firelighters?
.
English remainers were doing the same.
Ah, the Scooby Doo defence – “Brexit would have been a magnificent success if it hadn’t been for those pesky kids.”
Why is that sad?
What a self pitying article. It’s interesting that the first group of people the author mentions are ‘the prisoners’ ie terrorists. Why should they be anything other than bottom of anyone’s priorities?
This is a very sad article. I love the Irish people, north and south. It’s sad that there are little groups of fanatics on both sides who won’t come to terms with history, who won’t forgive each other – or us English who are always being blamed for things that certain men chose to do in the past. It would be great if the south chose to be reconciled to us and rejoin the UK instead of being bribed to remain in the EU. We have got the same heritage and we ought to stick together through thick and thin. There is a lot of talk of hatred these days, and of racism, but those who are most guilty won’t admit it.
They don’t think we have the same heritage. They spent a century or more fighting to re-establish their longer-term identity. Eire is not going to rejoin the UK. And frankly, if there were any chance of that (which there isn’t), the susceptibility of the English for public school t*ssers like David Cameron and Boris Johnson would knock it on the head.
So there is a UK outside the EU, and an Eire inside the EU, and there is therefore necessarily a border between the two.
We were united in the EU. Your country decided to leave. Why, exactly, should we have followed?
The Eu used Ireland as a device to extract advantage . In doing so it publicly claimed it had created its first colony.
The subsequent fudge is largely unworkable -and is an EU bureaucrats delight in that it affords them huge power over day to day supplies- with zero political accountability.
This mess is all due to the EU . The Uk would have been better to have torn up all the discussion and gone for WTO terms . That would have neutralised the ill intentioned EU . It would have placed the Eu – with its huge export surplus to the Uk in the position of supplicant.
Having said all that none of this justifies violence against anyone.
“The Uk would have been better to have torn up all the discussion and gone for WTO terms . That would have …… placed the Eu – with its huge export surplus to the Uk in the position of supplicant.”
The EU takes 45% of our exports.
We take 6-8% of theirs.
Who would be the supplicant? Which side can’t do without the other?
The EU has (or had) a massive trade surplus with the UK. Most of the EU states sell little to the UK so if we had slapped on WTO tariffs it’s not the EU as a whole that would suffer but those that export to the UK.
The EU can’t do without the UK’s money.
As it is the EU have shot themselves in the foot with the Covid drama. I wouldn’t be surprised if, on top of Brexit, that did for the EU (at least in its current form).
Try some economic analysis first. You will be surprised that states can exist successfully outside of the EU.
Brexiteers never considered Ireland at all! The EU needed to remind them of their responsibilities. Whinge all you like. This mess is due to Brexit.
This Brexiteer did and he knew exactly how the EU would play it if the vote went against them. The problem was not with Brexit but with the Remainer Parliament and Theresa May. These politicians have set back the process of Irish integration by decades. Yes – integration. Most people want to live peacefully with their neighbours and with the decline in religion in Ireland, that should have had a better chance than ever.
Not now. The EU is at economic war with the UK, and Ireland is one weapon in that struggle. So the Irish, north and south, will pay the price.
The Eu used Ireland as a device to extract advantage . In doing so it publicly claimed it had created its first colony. Wrong. The first colonies the EU took were the countries of central and eastern Europe. Dazed by their freedom from communism, they were easy pickings for the EU with its money and talk of democracy.
Saying that the English don’t care enough about NI is probably right. All through the Troubles, while there was Bipartisanship at Westminster, there was consistently a majority in the opinion polls for pulling the troops out. Major’s statement In 1993 that the British government had no “selfish strategic or economic” interest in Northern Ireland was simply confirming what had been the dominant view unofficially for a very long time.
They probably won’t listen, but my advice to NI Unionists would be to turn to the people who you have got a much better chance of getting understanding and sympathy from – your fellow Irishmen and women. Fight your corner with them, (not literally of course!!) to preserve what you value most. Irish people over here can vote in our elections, have easy travel to and fro and keep their passports, so why not look at replicating those kind of arrangements as a start?
Emotive stuff.
I think it is disgraceful that the UK succumbed to the EU’s demands on this. It has to be ended. The EU ended this section of the Protocol for a time when it suited them on another issue and we can end it permanently when it suits us and it jolly well should suit us as we have said all along ‘there will be no border down the Irish Sea’. We must invoke the get out clause as only then will we be sovereign – with NI returning to the fold and our waters similarly … along with much else. The EU will scream and shout and retaliate but in my opinion we absolutely must get out completely and fight the fight if we have to.
And face tariffs on our exports to the EU? And lengthy delays disrupting just-in-time manufacturing? How many international businesses will still be operating in the UK after a decade of that?
Within 15 miles of where I am sitting, 10,000 skilled workers in a British factory make the wings of half the large aircraft in the world (the Airbus half) and every day a giant transporter aircraft flies them to Toulouse to be bolted to the fuselages. But the Airbus plant in Hamburg would eagerly make the wings if there is a trade barrier between the UK and the EU. Meanwhile, a Vauxhall plant with 800 workers 10 miles from here makes tens of thousands of Astras each year and will close within 12 months if the impending Astra phaseout is not followed by a contract to build new electric vehicles, many of which will be exported to the EU.
Still want to pretend this is 1890, and if those damned foreigners won’t tug their forelocks to the British Empire, we will send a gunboat and teach them who’s boss?
Face tariffs on our exports? Yes please because with a £90 billion trade suplus will make our chancellor rich beyond his wildest dreams and completely ruin those that export to the UK.
The EU will come begging for a deal after that and it will be on our terms.
We faced huge tariffs on our exports in the 1960s and trade with the “6” still accounted for 40 per cent of our total. It is under 50 per cent now even with tariff free access. Hardly a striking difference. But one difference is the size of the tariffs – they are very small on manufactured products as a result of successive GATT rounds over the decades. Only on agricultural products is the trade barrier still excessively high, and the UK is a net importer of those.
It seems you are the one very much stuck in the past.
The Airbus wings are not only made here but also of British design as per the original Airbus division of responsibilities.
It is difficult,almost impossible to up root such a fundamental part of the Airbus organisation and move it to Germany or anywhere else.When an A350 exclusively powered by RR turbofans goes into service the plane is at least 40% by value a British product.
Quite right, Hugh, but the Fraudster in the White House seems to have too much influence on behalf of the IRA.
Hardly surprising when Biden claims his predecessors came from Ballina, Co Mayo is it?
“the Fraudster in the White House seems to have too much influence on behalf of the IRA” – Two pieces of nonsense in one sentence, quite a record.
The democratically-elected US Government is insistent that the Good Friday Agreement is respected and NI does not return to the days of violence.
The EU has broken the GFA. The IRA break the GFA regularly with their murders.
The IRA have not been “regularly” carrying out murders, as you suggest, for decades – long may that continue.
Have you not noticed? The violence is still there, and being ratcheted up.
This little Englander rubbish bears no resemblance to reality. Your government would have to renege on the Good Friday Agreement (not impossible, given your Prime Minister), impose a hard border on the island of Ireland (so what, say the little Englanders) and then try to make trade deals with the world. oh wait, why would any country trust any deal with the UK??
“Little Englander” says a tiddly Irishman
Ursula von der Leyen proposed ending it, until she was slapped down within hours by the rest of the EU. In contrast, Boris Johnston unilaterally and pre-emptively suspended parts of it, ignoring the protocol’s own provisions for resolving implementation issues. One NI Assembly minister is refusing to build the necessary infrastructure, in a fit of pique or grandstanding (at least he’s not yet thrown his hat into the ring for leader of the DUP).
The Protocol really needs improvement – but sulking won’t make it better.
The ‘no hard border’ stipulation that apparently existed within the 1998 GFA signed between the UK and Éire, sponsored by the EU and US, was a complete fiction.
There is no stipulation whatsoever alluding to the presence of a land border on the island of Ireland despite entirely fallacious claims to the contrary, only a commitment to the removal of military installations along said border.
Ireland and the EU, and frankly so did the UK, all well knew that any failure to agree would likely require Éire and the EU to erect said border in order to protect its single market as the UK had already expressly said it had no intention of ever doing so.
The UK should have held its nerve and sought to protect the rights of its citizens. It failed utterly miserably to do so and should be ashamed of itself.
Why have a border either way? What are the technocrats in Brussels going to do if you don’t have a border? Cry? Screw them.
There has to be some sort of agreement on a border somewhere because the UK and the EU are now effectively in different customs jurisdictions.
It’s not just about the EU and the UK, WTO rules, of which both are members and subject to, require the establishment of some sort of customs border between the two territories otherwise they might invite legal protests for other members under its MFN, Most Favoured Nation rules.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mostfavorednation.asp
The bottom line here is that the prospect of the erection of a border on the island of Ireland caused genuine panic in Dublin in the event of no agreement if the Irish under direction from the EU were seen as being the ones to do it and this fear should have been exploited by the UK in the interests of its own citizens in the spirit of forcing a compromise of some kind, which I’m sure is still possible given NI’s unique circumstances.
The point is it wasn’t even attempted.
We never had a border between Ireland and England before either of us joined the ‘European Community’. We used to travel back and forth via Holyhead or Liverpool on the ferry or Manchester by air in 60s and 70s, no passports, no checks at all. No reason for them now other than political mischief.
Carlo Gebler is also right to point out that despite the obligatory ‘united Ireland’ rhetoric there is no great demand for it. I was in Ballinasloe county Galway in 1981 when the town was filled with young people down from the North for the Pope’s Mass for Youth at Galway Race Course. One thing I remember about that evening was the pubs in the town barring the northerners who were regarded as foreigners. The same people would no doubt pay lip service to United Ireland.
Not entirely different today though the northerners wouldn’t be seen as, and unlike in 1981, wouldn’t *look* foreign. In other words, not so much because the Irish are now more ‘Republican’ but because Ireland is becoming as globohomo as England.
Irish ‘nationalism’, at least the official Sinn Fein (Ourselves) version in its latest incarnation is ‘Brits Out: Africans/Muslims In’. Which ultimately can only engender a resurgence of a more shall we say authentic Irish nationalism, which at the same time will resonate with other ethnic Europeans, not least the English as we both face the imminent prospect of ethnic minority status in our ancestral homelands. So a theme that unites all ethnic Europeans, and will ultimately doom the EU project whose raison d’etre is dissolution of nationhood as form of identity for native Europeans.
The movement of people between the UK and Ireland is not the same thing as the movement of goods.
The ‘free’ movement of people between the two countries is governed by the Common Travel Area established in 1923, agreed to by both the UK and Éire and is still in practice, the trading of goods, in the broader global sense is governed by rules set by the WTO established in 1995.
There was a border between Northern Ireland and “the South” – with checkpoints and customs posts and all.
And smugglers.
There were a few border checkpoints on main roads. I never noticed any customs. Not much point when there are so many places where you can cross unimpeded anyway.
There were customs posts miles away from the border, sometimes in portakabins.
i believe that most english people feel a much greater connection to the folk of northern ireland than they do to the scots.when the gentleman says it is the fault of the english,he is wrong.it is the fault of johnson and they are one more victim of his abundant lies.his word means nothing and promises made before brexit are now long forgetten.
The Conservative party performs well in Wales, and over the last decade or so it’s had a small renaissance in Scotland. In both countries it’s pretty much the main opposition party. It’s not the late 90s and early 2000s anymore, when the Tories were literally wiped out in those parts of the UK.
While I think most of the party’s electorate in England doesn’t particularly care one way or the other for the union with Northern Ireland or Scotland, I think the party itself does very much still see itself as a unionist one – at least where the mainland is concerned.
Northern Ireland is a slightly different matter, because we’re not countries joined by land, unlike the rest of the UK; because NI has its own polity and unique set of political parties that most people in the rest of the UK know almost nothing about; because of its distance from London (same for Scotland, but not Wales); because of its religiosity and traditional divisions along religious lines, both of which have all but vanished on the mainland; and because the move towards unification feels inevitable and natural, if only for geographical and demographic reasons.
How about Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats putting up candidates in Northern Ireland.
Let’s be clear. NI is and must remain a part of the UK – governed under “Common Law” not European Law. The EU is NOT a sovereign state but a means whereby member states can come together for certain mutual interest.
An invisible border could exist in the Irish Sea but it cannot prevent trade and travel between all interests (trade and movement of internal citizens) from happening without border.
The problem seems to arise because there is no trust when goods and services actually move from the UK into NI there is a fear that some of these goods and services will then move into the Republic of Ireland. Aren’t we law abiding and therefore if the Irish government don’t trust the system they should do spot checks rather than be suspicious that all goods and services will enter the EU Internal Market.
The issue should be settled between the UK government (in collaboration with the NI Assembly) and the government of the Republic of Ireland.
The EU member states should keep out of the arrangement and on the basis of subsidiarity (doing what can be best done at a member state level) as against making political chaos they should accept the right of the UK (NI) and the RoI to make a reasonable arrangement.
Why should England care about NI? Does NI care about England (except for the money)? Does Scotland?
If England could give away NI it would.
Quite so. And why would that be bad?
Depending on the view it is (Ulster), or it is not (you, other Englishmen).
P.S. In 2010-11 I worked a few deals with a Barclay’s banker that called himself an Englishman (not British) and was rabidly pro-EU. He even wanted to join EZ. He was the first to tell me that if England could give away NI it would – up to that point I had never thought about NI/England relationship.
It ain’t all about money or self interest. Consider the nationalist “fools” who set about prising Ireland from the Union in 1916 in a bloody and futile revolution, doomed to military failure but ultimately in political success. Many would argue that our national cultural aspirations might even have been better served had we remained in the Union and slowly negotiated independence (whatever that might mean) over a longer-term. We now find ourselves as slaves to our global elites economically, culturally and religiously as they keep our Churches closed to public worship, uniquely in Europe and without any evidence to support their decision.
Thus I found myself,a Southern nationalist, with my l ate uncle, an old IRA veteran, walking in a pro life demo in Belfast with Ian Paisley Jnr, having more common ground with him than the Sinn Féin Party, marching to a Marxist tune.
I find myself in a locked down totalitarian state where the Irish people are fed half truths to keep them in fear and where there were less total deaths in 2020 than in 2019. The EU far from being a knight in shining armour is more and more being perceived for what it really is, a vast gravy train for the politicians of Europe, over reaching into our lives and failing utterly to protect the people as the birth rate plummets and they seek to repopulate the continent, without even asking the people what THEY would want… except for the English who have some pride and guts.
Mind you, there are those who think Brexit was also about protecting the off shore wealth of the oligarchy in the British Overseas territories ?
We live in a world where people increasingly refuse to accept what is in front of their faces, and this problem is a classic example. I would like to see the end of the EU, but whatever you can say of them, they have never dealt in bad faith. They where ALWAYS about strict legal definition and articulation of any given agreement. They don’t do fudges and they don’t do British style “muddling through”.
It was laid on the line from day one that there had to be some kind of barrier between those who were in and those who were out of the EU. If it wasn’t on the irish border, it HAD to be in the irish Sea. There are no other options. The UK was the one wheedling meanings out of the agreement that simply weren’t there and constantly kicking the can down the road.
As a southern Irishman, it’s obvious to me that the actual British neither want Northern Ireland or consider its people British. Truth be told, the South doesn’t want it either, but is terrified it’s going to get stuck with it. The up side of this (for northerners) is that the south is today a morally, spiritually and culturally bankrupt country. It’s a dead state, which means it will stand up for nothing, so they’ll take pretty much any deal unionism offers, like a confederal state in which both parts are so autonomous as to be virtually sovereign states. It’s a Chinese situation — the crisis is also the opportunity.
I agree with your characterisation of the EU. But while I respect the EU for being that way, it does have a Germanic quality, not all of which is good. I think strictly defined agreements can morph into being written declarations of distrust. I also think they foster pedantry and bureaucracy, which brings the burden of indecision in what is a fast-moving over-excitable recalcitrant world. Certainly I’m not suggesting the fudginess of UK is the antidote to that but it might be more realistic to accept that the UK-EU marriage vows will have to depend on cooperation and mutuality rather than finer points of law, where the only winners are the lawyers.
I don’t see what was ever wrong about a customs border between North and South Ireland. Blathering on about how it would undermine the Good Friday Agreement was pathetic bu!!sh!it from too many people who allow or encourage the population to froth up into mental instability. The border would have soon become light-touch as hi-tech IT developed to make the crossing effortless and near invisible. Of course Britain had to revert to a Heath Robinson solution, anything just to get out of the EU and then sort out the mess at leisure. You call that fudge; I call it necessary expediency when dealing with impossible people.
Besides, as you rightly suggest, who the hell could possibly want to live with Northern Ireland the way it is today and has been for a long time? I think once Britain cuts its ties with Northern Ireland it will either sink or reincarnate. I mean, so many of the people of Northern Ireland are okay, they just need to create and vote for the kind of government they urgently need before they go under.
Only a person who has never experienced a border in his/her daily life could write the 2nd paragraph above. And if the “light touch/ hi-tech IT” border was so easy why couldn’t it be in the Irish Sea?
The EU don’t do British style “muddling through”, but they desperately want the British within the EU, don’t they? It is just that it has to be on their terms only, and the British have just rejected their arrogance. Say what you like about the British, at least deep down we know what we are. I don’t think that can be said about the bureaurocratic cartel that is the EU.
Careful about “actual British” – there are 65 million of us, all with different ideas and opinions. I want NI to remain part of the UK but only if the N Irish want to remain. Ideally, I would like a happy, peaceful island of Ireland but there is too much hatred over there, at least among a significant minority. In fact, it seems that a major part of Irish identity is derived from antipathy of the English – something which is not reciprocated over here. Your comment about the South not wanting the North anyway reminded me of when I hitch-hiked across Ireland from Dublin to the west coast in 1970. The violence had just recommenced in the north. I had one lift right across the middle of the country – a bare, boggy place it seemed, but with a town every 20 miles or so where my driver would stop to refresh himself at the local pub. He took me into one and I was surprised at how full it was for a weekday morning. He was known to everybody – i guess it was one of his regular stops – and he explained me as an English student that he had picked up. The whole pub went very quiet for about ten seconds before conversation gradually resumed with periodic glances towards me. It was very uncomfortable.
Anyhow, back in the car we talked – one of the great advantages of hitch-hiking is the variety of people and subjects that come up, so much more interesting than solitary journeys in one’s own car – and inevitably the subject of the North came up. I was young, had only the broad outline of Irish history, and was circumspect enough to let my host do most of the talking. I was really taken aback though when he announced it wasn’t the English that the Irish hated (I would never have hitch-hiked if I had thought that) but the Northerners. He denounced them in violent terms. I guess the drink had loosened his tongue. And he said he wouldn’t want them even if they asked to join the republic. It was also clear that he didn’t like the English as a nation.
I was very grateful to him for the lift but I was also glad to leave him when our ways parted. I felt there were demons there waiting to come out.
We should have fully integrated NI into the UK a century ago with no Stormont nonsense.
In my view, the only solution is a thorough reworking of the UK’s constitutional settlement. Each of the UK’s parts should be recognised as a separate country under one Crown, not with ‘devolved’ powers, which implies the seniority of the UK Parliament, but as a community of equals. Each country would be entitled to engage its own trading relationships, manage its own economy, and operate under its own legal and judicial system. The UK Single Market would be formalised and guarantee freedom of movement of people, capital, goods and services and operate a customs union along the same lines as developed by Lord Kerr and adopted by the EU. There would need to be a common defence pact, preferably a single monetary system under a Bank of the Union, and agreed areas of cooperation in data sharing, policing and environmental policy.
We largely invented the EU Single Market, it’s an excellent model whose advantages grossly outweigh the pooling of sovereignty required to make it work. So, maybe we should adopt it ourselves by agreement rather than go through the strife of arriving at it through divisive referenda, bloodshed and the sort of animosity between people that lasts generations.
There would still have to be a border with Eire, methinks.
Won’t work – England will end up paying for everything. The other member states are all net takers. They’d have to start paying their way and they won’t like that a bit.
England should either secede from the United Kingdom or hold a plebiscite asking who wants to stay. All of England, most of Wales and the better bits of Scotland would do so. The rest can just do whatever results from that. I don’t care what the northern Irish do or how they end up, ditto the smackheads of Scotland, ditto the Welsh loonies. They become a problem only for the fools who voted them in. Good.
I care that there is no border between N and S in Ireland
I Care that the EU is not an honest organisation but changes its rules to control its members.
I care that the UK government chooses appeasement over conviction of the majorities wishes.
I care that the individual countries of the UK cannot get together and cooperate in their agreeing with each other due to the ambitions of their individual leaders.
I care that they think the United Kingdom is no longer fit for purpose and yet their country born people would not return home if the UK fell apart.
I care that England will soon be swamped by none English loving people that will not defend the country.
I care that these people will in a few years time regret having their freedoms (such as they are) removed without as much as a vote in favour.
I CARE do YOU? and does your MP?
After decades of the “peace process”, 93% of children in Northern Ireland attend segregated schools. This statistic is incomprehensible to the average Brit—certainly to the English. And that is why we cannot conceive of a solution to the Irish problem. For me, reunification would be a genuine benefit of Brexit. The prime candidate to replace Arlene apparently is a creationist who does not believe in natural selection. The irony is compelling.
But on the otherside you have people who believe that the Pope is infallible and God’s representative in earth. Frankly neither side is particularly attractive from that point of view.
How many members of the Ard-chomairle (executive) of Sinn Féin or the Army Council of the Provisional IRA do you think believe in the papal infallibility? The late Pope John Paul II made his views on the violence in North very clear when he was in Drogheda in 1979. But I suppose any theologically literate provisional would correctly observe that he wasn’t speaking ex cathedra on an issue of faith or morals at the time.
The Protocoal is a result of fear of a return to violence by the IRA/Sinn Fein.The EU succumbed to this threat. Sweden and Norway have a border that works peacefully with Norway out of the EU and Sweden in so why has this not been imposed? Easily managed sustoms controls. Also why would the people in Northern Ireland want to join the ROI when they get free health care, educaion and subsidised state services and infrastructure?
Because the EU was hellbent on punishing and weakening the UK.
Their history has caught up with them. Nobody wants to invest in a place where sectarian violence is the response to a democratic vote. The Republic cant afford it and naturally do not want Unionist violence. Meanwhile NI demonstrated it wanted to be in the EU…cant see a win in this for NI sadly.
Lots of violence in the US following the democratic vote in 2016, and even more threatened if the rigged election result of 2020 didn’t stand.
Northern Ireland is on borrowed time. The Belfast agreement is practically a charter to a United Ireland and Unionists will one day regret that they agreed to it. Don’t believe me? Read the provision for a referendum on reunification with the south. The referendum is strangly supposed to be called by the secretary of state when it looks like a pro unification result will come about. Curiously there is no detail on what the criteria for that is. And then if it fails another referendum can happen after 7 years have passed. Oh and unlike the British referendum in 2016 which in theory was only advisory, the GFA has the force of law. Indeed it’s a part of international law agreed between the UK and the Republic of Ireland registered at the UN! Also it only says a majority vote is called for AKA 50% + 1.
The experience of the UK with referendums is that the timing ,when the exercise can be repeated and what counts as positive result is vital. That’s all been conceded in the 1998 agreement. The only way I can see this being slowed down is if the unionists in NI organise into one party as at the moment the unionist vote is too split amongst the DUP/UUP and TUV.
It’s one thing to win a referendum with 50.01 per cent, it’s quite another to implement it when there is violent opposition to it and the will to use arms. Who wants a civil war?
The UK is bound by international law to implement the result as I explained in my comment.
Within what time limit and with what provisos? Exactly. YOU might think nothing of a civil war, but even an idiotic UK Government would not go down that route
I’m not entering your discussion about a civil war, its a hypothetical that YOU make. And not something I brought up or agree will happen.
The good Friday agreement binds the UK and Republic of Ireland in law to bring about a United Ireland if the majority in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland vote for it.
I just checked it. It says “binding obligation” in reference to the parliaments of the UK and ROI bringing about legislation to implement a United Ireland
Jean-Pierre Derriennic wrote in his 1995 book «Nationalisme et Démocratie : Réflexion sur les illusions des indépendantistes québecois» : “However, the Irish case is ambiguous. It is one of the independences for reasons other than inequality or security … This perhaps explains the highly painful aftermath of Independence.” (My translation.) Just so. Rather than asking if Northern Ireland has a future as part of the United Kingdom, might it not be more appropriate to ask if Ireland has a future as part of the EU, rather than part of the UK? There is something sad about people that share a common language being split up because of sectarian animosities, whether it is the United Kingdom or Yugoslavia. The European Union saw nothing wrong in breaking up Yugoslavia in its eagerness to see an independent Catholic Croatia, oblivious to the flood of human misery that a piecemeal dissolution of the country could unleash. Now the EU seems to want to recoup part of its Brexit losses by recovering Northern Ireland, and making Northern Ireland part of the euro area for the first time. If it is a violent process, it won’t have anything to do with Brussels. It will be all down to the English, just as the breakup of Yugoslavia was all down to the Serbs. Whatever happens in the next few years, the next few decades should see a federal union of the British Isles. Whether there is one Irish province or two in that federation is for the people to decide. And there should be a renewed Yugoslav federation, encompassing at least the four Serbo-Croatian republics: Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia. What isn’t clear is if there is a future for the European Union, as presently constituted. Lately, it seems to be trying to discredit itself beyond any hope of repair.
The long game only ever has one result — the rest is just exercising the necessary patience.
The Protocol was leveraged by the EU-Remain-Dublin-NINats using the opportunistic and confected threat of terrorist violence. The author is either too ignorant or too dishonest to face the central problem.
The reasons DUP have given for firing Foster – whether sincere or considered good for public consumption – testify to the unacceptable, if not downright impossible burden of Northern Island remaining as part of the UK.
The sooner Britain (or England & Wales ….. or England) extricates itself from the components of a Dis-United Kingdom, the more likely each of the good & bad players can fulfil their destinies, for better or for worse.
I don’t know if NI can a make a go of it by themselves. I don’t know if NI building a relationship or merger with an independent Scotland will be beneficial. I don’t know if NI merging with the Irish Republic and therefore joining the EU will be beneficial (at least they can shoot one another’s’ kneecaps without the interference of a border).
What I do know is that I don’t care.
Yes, history shows that England caused most of the problems in Ireland but that’s history. Today it is unquestionable that NI is its own worst enemy and its freeloader relationship with UK mainland is the kind Britain needs like a hole in the head.
As for Scotland, if Nicola Sturgeon can succeed in winning a referendum to leave Britain, without specifying to her Indy followers what will then happen (eg from UK to EU? from sterling to Euro?, from Titanic to the Hindenburg? from semi-self-rule under UK Westminster to under EU Brussels? ……. as WC Fields would have said, “never give a sucker an even break”.
the Terms of Union Acts 1707 &1801 ALL Countries of The union have to treated the same, Lib-lab-Cons-greens have Sold Ulster down the border.
NI is not a country, and no one of any substance has ever claimed that it is. It is part of a country (Ireland) and part of a state (the UK). When it was created both sides saw it as a temporary solution. I think the penny is beginning to drop.
Ulster was always separate.
I think Brexit is a red herring on these unsolved issues from ’98. There needs to be serious discussion on the disaster that was coming from the ill-conceived, Clinton driven, GFA.
The police service replacement of the RUC will show the real issues soon enough. To replace a colonial type police force (for all its good and bad) with the silly group they have formed will show its problems when things really start heating up.
When the Troubles began, there were thoughts of some in the North declaring a UDI like Rhodesia. Would be interesting to speculate if two countries declaring a UDI would have created more of a bulwark against sanctions, etc. Cannot see how Zim and NI would be worse right now than they are now.
If you want to see how much worse NI could be, you have only to look at…. Zimbabwe. UDI (and continued tribalism) may well not the the answer.
The Good Friday Agreement came close to resolving many of the complex issues in Northern Ireland. Over time, there was evidence of de-escalation of tensions, a reduction in political “noise” and the beginnings of acceptance of each side’s point of view. Then came Brexit. A predominantly English project, opposed in Ireland, north and south, its protagonists paid little or no attention to the effect in Ireland. Brexit means borders!! Where did the Brexiteers think the border would go? (Did they think of it at all??) And would the Irish have any say in the answer? (What a preposterous idea!!). Oh wait! The U.S. seems to be strongly opposed to a border in Ireland . . . The result is a “border” in the Irish Sea, the practicalities of which seem reasonable and are workable but the symbolism is anathema to Ulster unionism.
No it didn’t. The wheels had to come off once whichever side was losing realised they were losing.
The majority of Unionists voted for Brexit.
There is no reason the border can’t stay where it is. That there was a problem about the border being where it is was just cooked up by the EU and the IRA, egged on by the Southern Irish and the BBC et al. There is no problem and that border already deals with different currencies, VAT rates, etc. It can easily deal with a few electronic declarations on goods. There are notices along it warning of Garda Patrol, so it is defended already. But the IRA don’t want that. They were hoping another few decades in the EU would deliver NI to the South.
The border IS staying where it is. It can’t be a “hard” border. Why? An international agreement known as the Good Friday Agreement. The suggestion that the IRA and the EU “cooked up” this situation is so ridiculous as to be hilarious. What alternative galaxy do you live on?
The EU has broken the GFA by forcing a border between the UK and NI or had you not noticed?
Meanwhile the IRA carry on murdering – albeit in smaller numbers than before. Does that not also break the GFA?
There has always been a hard border around the EU single Market – that’s fundamental to having a single market. [Most of] the UK has moved to the other side of that hard border – hence the current difficulties in NI.
Come off it! Ireland is a minnow in the big political pond, always has been and always will be.
Why should a ‘Shark’ such as England bother itself with such a specimen?
Because the American whale will, as they have since Suez, give the orders?
Yes, you’re spot on. After Israel, Ireland is the second most powerful Lobby Group in the US.
We should have reconquered the US when we had the chance in 1814. An opportunity lost is seldom regained.
Nothing good was ever to come of an arrangement that amounted to barely more than a “f**k you, Paddy, we will never forget this”. The sour little statelet that is ‘the six counties’ should never have been but for Westminster’s singular sense of betrayal at our kicking over the traces in the midst of The Great War.
Let us face it: as a distinct geographical entity with a relatively small population, the island of Ireland does not require two systems of government with a border between them that is more porous than that between Canada and the US. The hysterics over Brexit and Covid in these times amply demonstrate the inherent problems of the ‘arrangement’.
The startlingly ignorant tone of many comments yet again amplifies the sheer folly of our being beholden in any way to opinion across the Irish Sea.
That said, this excellent article by Angela Nagle in UnHerd late last year (linked above the line but I’ll link it again anyway) points the uncomfortable truth that having loosened our shackles to both Westminster and Rome, we have chained ourselves to the technocrats of Brussels and sold what is left of our soul to the shamans of Silicon Valley.
Quite the double whammy for our peculiar brand of parish pump politics.
They trusted Boris Johnson.
They got shafted.
Just like the fishermen.
Just like Petronella Wyatt.
Just like……… [fill in your own choice]
Would you buy a used car from Boris Johnson?
French naval officer Charles Louis Etienne, Chevalier de Panat: Personne n’est corrigé; personne n’a su ni rien oublier ni rien apprendre. “Nobody has been corrected; no one has known to forget, nor yet to learn anything.” And the other saying: Forgive and forget eh? No? Oh well then. Visited NI around that time. What’s shocking to a visitor is how tiny the areas where Trouble took place. A couple of thousand people holding the rest of the poulation to ransom.
Elephant in the room alert. 51% of NI are pro or don’t care if Ireland is united. 88% voted Remain in 2016. There are no Tories or Labour reps in NI.
If Mme le Pen succeeds next year (and ‘le Frexit’ is strong in her followers) it’ll be like the Dublin airlift for the EU.
If pro EU Sinn Fein carry on gaining influence and Sturgeon succeeds England will be surrounded by socialist republics and, in some cases, violent activists.
If not, the new EU rules on tax advantages will put Dublin in a poor position which they may well need to act upon. Varadkar is back pedalling like mad and there are mutterings about how the EU are behaving re Brexit.
As the 21st century sees more secular attitudes on the island we’ll have moved from religious history to the more up to date left vs right conflict.
I have not seen any glorious accords between Dublin and Holyrood and we still have the age old Orange accord between Glasgow and Belfast.
Personally I’d see the back of all peripheral anchors round our necks but to desert the unionists would cost us dearly.
Its all Brian Cowans fault. The Irish had a referendum too. But according to the EU they got the answer wrong. So they had another go, which stank to high havens and turbocharged UKIP and the rest is history.
Although the real mistake was made 100 years ago; the pope was worse for Ireland than the British Government. All alone out there between the North Atlantic and the Irish sea with the UK between it and the mainland, its almost as if Ireland is to the EU what the Falkland is to the UK.
They should re-join the UK. Apparently, over 10% of the UK population are 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation Irish and so entitled to an Irish passport which is more people than live in Ireland.
I suggest the mistake was the diehard Presbyterian Scots under the leadership of Carson, a Southern Church of Ireland Protestant,went down a cul-de-sac in 1921 when partition took place. The 3rd Home Rule bill protested the rights and beliefs of northern Presbyterians and the whole island would have avoided two opposing religious regimes. The large exodus of Southern Protestants would also have not taken place when they were abandoned by northern Presbyterians without a thought. A very selfish people.
The salient problem is the arrogance and vindictiveness of the EU to make Ireland the price of Brexit; it was then compounded by the incompetence of Theresa May and the election of Leo Varadkar, who instantly stiffed all talk – and money – to create an open border that relied on technology, which David Trimble and others had not only advocated but been working on. Boris Johnson was left with an impossible dilemma as by then the whole weight of political bravado had swung behind the intransigent, bullying and vindictive EU. If the unctuous Varadkar had shown more sense, intelligence and acumen, stood up to Barnier and agreed that a technological solution was viable – which it still is, and I think we will eventually see something like this as the EU slowly collapses (I hope so, anyway) – then we will see the Unionists stay as British subjects and the Irish as Irish. I also believe that – as the EU is now rattling sabres about the Republic’s low tax regime – which they say is uncompetitive – the Irish will come to realise that they’d be better off leaving the EU too and having an alliance with Britain, whose taxes are also lower than the EU’s and would therefore sustain and create more of the Republic’s jobs. That would be a lovely dose of schadenfreude! It’s all Varadkar’s fault, really…
Only a pompous internet pedant would point out that “fin de siecle” and “end of history” do not form a tautology.
When someone uses a foreign phrase they’re just trying to impress us. To me it makes them seem like a pompous ass or ‘un petit branleur’ as the French would say.
Just think of all the once foreign words you use every day when you think you are speaking English.
1) England simply doesn’t care about NI, Ireland does.
2) International opinion (and the World doesn’t care) will support Ireland over UK. Think if USA, EU etc.
3) Demographics are shifting in favor of Catholics.
4) Unionists seem to me especially unintelligent (politically speaking). They supported Brexit, had enormous influence on the TM’s GOV and ended with a border on the Irish sea.
The majority of southern Ireland does not consider the north to be Irish
Nonsense. Have you ever attended an Irish rugby match?
I’ve been to two in Dublin but can’t remember ever going to Belfast
Too much Guinness will do that to you, they tell me.
More Globalist garbage, The Violence would Switch from Belfast to Dublin, The Protestants Dont want to be in A United Ireland,Apart from rugby union team!..
That would be a laugh. Would there be Protestant bombs going off in Temple Bar? Dublin did little to stop it last time around. Nice taste of their own medicine.
The comment of an armchair warrior who has never experienced the kind of violence he advocates
“Unionists seem to me especially unintelligent (politically speaking).”
Yes Jeremy, but not everyone can be as clever as you.
PS: I am being sarcastic.
Any chance of anything that might be considered implementable solutions.
Yes! First, stop the Blame Game. Tone down the rhetoric. We are where we are and we have to make the best of it. The Irish Sea “border” can be managed as long as we don’t let symbolism get in the way. Ulster businesses, uniquely, have equal access to both EU and UK markets. Ulster people can choose to be Irish, British, or both, with access to both EU and UK labour markets. Get on with it!!
Not according to ordinary unionist people on the ground at the sharp end. They know people like you would like them to disappear from their own country. By force, if necessary, as you daily remind them.
Aren’t these ordinary unionists of Scottish extraction?
That’s just not true. Pure invention.
yes,R of I to leave the EU and se
Seek a pragmatic agreement with NI .
Thank you for that article, which I found quite perceptive. It never made sense to me that the Ulster unionists would support Brexit, as it was always obvious that Brexit would mean either a hard land border or a hard sea border between NI and GB. Since the Good Friday agreement meant the former was impossible, it really had to the the sea border which is exactly what we got. This was obvious to me within a few minutes of David Cameron proposing the referendum so I assumed that nobody in NI would vote for leave. And indeed most people in NI did vote remain, just not enough of them to overcome the little-englanders in the rest of the UK. I still find it bizarre that the unionists supported leave when it was overwhelmingly sensible of them to vote remain, but then the same people now have a young-earth creationist as a leading candidate to replace Arlene Foster, so wonders will never cease.
NI’s vote to remain (91k remain) was only just enough to overcome the ‘little englander’ vote for leave in Wales (82k leave), let alone England’s.
If you held the vote again, today, in NI, they’d vote leave. As they would’ve done if they’d known Leave would win.
You haven’t read the GFA. The only time the north-south border is mentioned is to acknowledge that there is one.
Your use of the phrase “little Englanders” renders the rest of your comment unworthy of reading ….
Don’t expect too much sanity around that here Jeremy.
Just one minor detail: 45% of our exports go there.
For example, most of the components used in British car factories are imported (75% in the case of the Vauxhall plant at Ellesmere Port) – it’s not like the 1970s, when most of them were made in the West Midlands – and most of the completed vehicles are exported (again, 75% in the case of Vauxhall/EP).
You suggest “proceeding with pretty much everything on our own terms“. North Korea does that. Are they prosperous with thriving trade?
What is the objection to NI becoming an independent state and concluding such agreements with its neighbors as seem to be of advantage to its inhabitants? It is said here than neither the UK nor the Republic nor the EU want it; so the appropriate response would seem to be to accept its fate and deal with its situation.
‘It is said here than neither the UK nor the Republic nor the EU want it’
Much as many of us might like to imagine that our incisive comments made on Unherd are somehow the final word on everything, I hate disabuse you but they aren’t.
Northern Ireland and ALL its citizens are still legally part of the UK and I’m not sure quite how you might feel if your part of Britain were thoughtlessly and expediently traded away because you and your fellows were deemed too much trouble to bother with by your elected government.
I wouldn’t assume that not giving a f**k is the default assumption. What other choice was there?? The EU has its strict rules and the UK government had to deliver Brexit. If there was another option, besides no Brexit, let’s hear it
It seems to me that the “English Empire” is slowly winding down in such a manner so that there will soon be nothing left of the UK but England itself. My advice to those in Northern Ireland of English ancestry is to read the writing on the wall and head back across the ocean to your homeland. Unfortunately, there is no Canada for you, so make do as best as you can. Sincerely…Your Humble Servant, George Washington.
Look. Everyone knew it was always going to end this way. It was never a matter of if, but when. Brexit is the curtain call on the British Empire. Fittingly, providentially even, it is ending exactly where it began so many years ago. The ‘plantation’ of Ulster was after all the first great British ‘experiment’ in imperialism.
This article speaks of NI as some organic, unified, historic community. It was an artificial state designed to ensure that the UK could still benefit economically from the (then) most industrialized and prosperous part of Ireland in spite of the obvious mandate for independence amongst the majority of people on the island of Ireland. ‘Paddy’ could grudgingly have the farmland. NI was created under threat of Unionist violence and accompanied by a pogrom of the Catholic population of Belfast (+600 dead and c. 8000 burned out of their homes), not to mention what took place in the seven decades since; perpetual civil war. They were given their special state with inbuilt majority. Look what they did with that power.
The current attempt to depict Ulster Unionism as ‘victim’ is laughable. Imagine, the DUP might now have to accept their Catholic fellow citizens in NI as ‘equals’ … unthinkable! The party, under Ms. Foster’s leadership, led a state that clearly viewed Brexit as unwise. Instead they tried to use Brexit as an opportunity to tear up the GF Agreement. The British establishment played the ‘Orange card’ as and for as long as it suited, then shafted them. Quelle surprise.
The irony is, if they had engaged in any meaningful way with the GFA, they could have emerged as the leaders of the new, better relations between Ireland and Britain (North-South Council, Council of the Isles). As it now is, all good relations between the two islands now go through Dublin. The writings on the wall. Ulster Unionism is at a crossroads, it can either engage, evolve and contribute (as equals) to a new relationship in these great islands, or it can retreat into a corner licking it’s sore superiority complex and fade into irrelevance.
Boris is either lying or was asleep when he signed the Protocol, as it is much more restrictive than he claimed. Still it was accepted by many Brexiteers because it had two backstops: Stormont can vote it down in 2024 and Britain can exercise article 16, as the EU did recently, if things get too bad. If the EU continues to be unreasonable, then either or both is likely. Alternatively they might vote to join the South. So democracy will decide within a few years.
”
Loyalist fury was expressed with messages painted on walls and gable ends, on placards and posters. They were everywhere — on bridges, railings and lampposts.
”
While I agree with most of the article, as someone who has lived in Belfast all my life (and is from a unionist background), this is a typically generalist comment.
The posters were not everywhere and the rioters were not everywhere. In fact, they were in a very, very small number of communities within traditionally loyalist areas and which often have other social / deprivation issues in play.
Please stop generalising that all of us are blind and cannot see beyond loyalist rabble-rousing.
Many of us (if not most of us) can see that Northern Ireland can do very well within the current protocol – an all-island economy and without borders is very significant to us. In fact, with the current UK government attitude, Northern Ireland could well do better within a federated united Ireland which is part of Europe.
By 2040, the Irish will have been fully replaced.
A federal system for the whole of the British Isles is a logical solution. But it couldn’t be a stable one with one of the 5 main parties ie England being so large compared with the rest. There would have to be moves to devolving governance to the English regions somehow and there the dominance of London and SE in England is another obstacle.
Can future articles and discussions also comment on this issue of how to remove the domination of England in the UK and of London and the SE within England. And also include consideration for the other islands that have their own independent governance arrangements eg Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man.
Everyone is always trying to break up England. Leave it alone. It is just the desire to gerrymander.
Maybe in a federal British Isles it would be sufficient to distinguish between London (everything up to the Green Belt) and the rest of England?
Why should the “domination of England” be removed? England is 56.3 million people, Scotland 5.5, Wales 3.2 and Northern Ireland 1.9. England is nearly five and a half times larger than all the others put together, provides all the money, yet uniquely has no parliament whereas all the others do.
If the negligible hayseeds to the north and west don’t like it, they should just go. Now would be a very good time.
If Ulster wishes to be taken seriously it will have “to take arms against a sea of troubles”.
It worked last time, and the time before. “No Surrender“ as they used to say.
Like Rhodesia and UDI in the 1970s?? Get a grip!! These are real people coming to terms with a post-imperial world. “Take up arms . . “?? Who are they going to shoot??
Preferably each other, as always.
The problem Charles is even if you are in the right, as we can see with hindsight the Rhodesians certainly were, there are the material facts on the ground. The Irish Romantics have unlimited cash, unlimited weaponry and unlimited useful idiots from Boston to Belfast to feed into any hot conflict. What do the Ulster Patriots have. Not much. It would be a blood bath. At this point I am not even convinced that remaining out of Erie is the best socio political choice for Ulstermen. By joining the Republic the protestants would go from being nobodies in the UK to the most significant ethnic voting block in the Republic. As long as you can use EU human rights law to keep Shin Fein abuse out of public service spending and civil service appointments, then what is there to loose. You get to be kingmakers in the Catholic Castle.
I agree completely on Rhodesia, and given the Mugabe era who can think otherwise?
It was the collapse of the USSR and a new geo- political world that sadly scuppered both South Africa and Rhodesia, much to the detriment of the indigenous inhabitants.
Fifty years ago Irish Protestants played a massively disproportionate role in the running of the Republic, particularly in the Law as I recall. Lack of available breeding stock (suitable Protestant girls) has seen that position steadily erode over the succeeding years.
A new influx of Protestants may restore the balance, but do they really want to be associated with the tarnished
Kerrygold Republic which cheerfully refused a woman an abortion a few years ago and let her die (Galway), allowed some lunatic order of Nuns to exterminate an unknown number of newborn babies (Tuam & elsewhere), and finally administered the cursed Magdalen Laundries for ‘fallen’ woman until 1994?
Ulster certainly has its Creationist Nutters and Abortion cranks, but it pales in comparison to the Republic.
Slightly more than a century ago Carson & Co said “Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right”. This time around was he wrong?
Neither of these cartoonish representations is an accurate description of either contemporary Ulster nor the Republic.
Really?
So you deny the Galway abortion death, and the Tuam baby killings. Odd because the Irish Government has finally acknowledged them.
Or is it something else that vexes you?