ANALYSIS: We cannot underestimate the sheer complexity of the Irish border issue
Andrew McQuillan
| Dods Monitoring
Westminster politicians belatedly turning their attention to Northern Ireland will soon realise how tricky the Brexit border issue will be, writes Dods Political Consultant Andrew McQuillan.
That oft repeated quote by Churchill referencing the reappearance of the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone following the First World War has taken on added piquancy following Brexit.
The vexatious issue of the national border which straddles both counties has been at the heart of the island's political dynamic since partition in 1921.
The decision of 23 June 2016 has cast into sharp focus how little Northern Irish matters play into the politics of the nation at large.
The coverage of the recent Tory-DUP deal suggests that the media and sections of the political class – with honourable exceptions- have paid next to no attention to Northern Ireland since the ink started to dry on the 1998 Belfast Agreement.
However, the matter of what will be the land border between the United Kingdom and the EU cannot be underestimated.
The sheer complexity of what lies ahead is personified by the farmer David Crockett, whose land extends across the border into the Republic of Ireland.
Will he need to pass a border post to tend to his cattle in one section of a field that is technically in another jurisdiction? Such practicalities were, I suspect, not to the fore of Vote Leave’s concerns in the quest to take back control.
The assurances of David Davis in promising a “hi-tech” border have been given short shrift by the Irish Government.
Foreign minister Simon Coveney has said although there was no proposal from Dublin to relocate the border from land to sea, it is incumbent upon London to find an “imaginative” solution to the issue - very much a case of 'you Brexit, you own it'.
The Irish Government have also said they would not support a settlement which resulted in a hard border. The DUP, for all their enthusiasm for the key points of Brexit, have made avoiding such an outcome part of their wider approach. The scorn poured on the notion of a sea border by the party’s two key figures at Westminster – Nigel Dodds and Sir Jeffrey Donaldson – illustrates this.
The DUP regularly point to the existence of the common travel area when suggesting that there should be no hard border. Placed into the wider context of British-Irish relations, a fudged compromise seems a possible outcome.
However, wandering into a hard border would be an invidious outcome. One of the successes of the Belfast Agreement and its successors was that they allowed people in Northern Ireland to no longer feel pigeon-holed into an identity they neither wanted nor sought.
A hard border acts as a symbol of a retreat from that; perhaps a return to a dividing line on Ireland secretly appeals to the base desires of the refusenik strain of unionism which still exists.
While some of the more hysterical suggestions that this could lead to mass violence should be treated as such, the symbolic capital of such a retreat should not be underestimated.
Reconciling leaving the single market and customs union yet retaining the porous border is just one of many hurdles to be negotiated in the Brexit process.
Given the interlinked nature of trade, business and people on Ireland, it is essential. Today’s mega-phone diplomacy renders the question of whether it is possible to find that “imaginative solution”.
Dods Monitoring is Europe’s leading provider of tailored political intelligence. Find out more by visiting the Dods website.
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