Current Affairs Irish Border and Brexit

[Neiler]

Ireland should have no more a voice in this than Northern Ireland. They share a geographical piece of land, one country no more equal than the other. Brussels has given Dublin a veto or EU controlling voice in this regard, we should allow Belfast the same..........

Surely the UK and Ireland are on an equal footing here?

The DUP don’t represent the whole of NI though. In fact the split is 50/50.

Even by your premise, what the DUP are doing is undemocratic.

Given the Brexit vote in NI even the DUP supporters voted to remain.

What Foster is doing is going rouge on a counties wishes, May given that context and the broader context just has to cave really.

It death by firing squad or hanging are the choices for the UK really.

 

[peteblue]

Surely the UK and Ireland are on an equal footing here?

The U.K. is the equivalent of the EU in these negotiations, it has four countries within its union. If the Eu is happy to give one of its constituent countries, Ireland, a voice, then I see no problem in doing exactly the same with Northern Ireland........

 

[Neiler]

The U.K. is the equivalent of the EU in these negotiations, it has four countries within its union. If the Eu is happy to give one of its constituent countries, Ireland, a voice, then I see no problem in doing exactly the same with Northern Ireland........

You don’t really believe that mate even R. Kipling would have trouble.

See the rest of my post above, the DUP don’t represent NI why do you think they do? By your premise Sinn Fein should also be power brokers in this. The SDLP are also in favor of a pro Irish Brexit. That’s almost 70% of the electorate in NI.

This debate isn’t about the UK deciding what to do with the empire, it’s about the UK government trying to form a stable government.

The Ireland horse has long bolted, it’s about trying to keep the ship a float at home now.

 

[abelard]

Hard Brexiters have just discovered Britain is weaker than Ireland
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...aker-ireland-brexit-talks-irish-border-lesson

There may be some way to go, but today we moved much closer to a British climbdown on the question of the Irish border after Brexit. And this will turn an acrimonious debate on its head. So far, we’ve been talking about the implications of Brexit for Ireland. Now we have to talk about the implications of Ireland for Brexit.

It is not just that Britain’s weakness in its negotiations with the European Union has been made even more starkly clear. On the three issues on which “sufficient progress” had to be made – people, money and Ireland – Britain seems likely to suffer a hat-trick of defeats.

Its concessions in the talks on the border issue are not yet official, and may seem more abstract and less visceral than its retreats on the divorce bill and the rights of EU citizens in the UK; but they may prove to be much more fundamental and much more problematic for the whole Brexit project. There is a sense here of the return of the repressed: the Brexiters pretended Ireland did not exist; now it has come back to haunt their grand schemes.

It is hard to think of a more boring phrase than the key one in the draft agreement between the UK and the EU: “continued regulatory alignment” on the island of Ireland. Yet within this technocratic formulation there lie all the things that Brexit’s true believers should have been worrying about if they were not so busy patronising Ireland with cheery and meaningless reassurances about not returning to the borders of the past. It means, in essence, that Northern Ireland will at a minimum have to behave as if it is still in the customs union after Brexit.

This may or not be explicitly stated in the final deal, but it is now the unavoidable destination of this process. You can’t have regulatory alignment if you’re in different customs regimes. Thus, even before the trade talks begin, the Brexit promised by Theresa May – a clean break for all the UK from the customs union and single market – is almost certainly off the table. Hard Brexiters always feared that the Irish border might be a Trojan horse entering the citadel of their pure certitude. The wooden horse is now well and truly inside the gates, even if it has not yet been opened.

The first thing to note about the draft agreement is that Northern Ireland is, after all, not Yorkshire or Sussex. The line from the British government has, until now, been that of its allies in the Democratic Unionist party, whose leader, Arlene Foster, continues to insist that “Northern Ireland must leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom”. The DUP, from its own point of view, is right to be deeply alarmed by what is unfolding – if this is indeed the deal, the DUP will have suffered a historic defeat.

What is now on the table is a concession that, whatever else happens, Northern Ireland will in effect stay in the same customs and regulatory regime as the Republic of Ireland, which is of course the same as that of the EU as a whole. So Brexit doesn’t quite mean Brexit after all – it has become complex and ambiguous. The apparent success of the Irish insistence on getting real commitments to the avoidance of a hard border means Northern Ireland will exit Europe through a different door.

And this raises, for people in Britain, a rather more explosive question. It is no longer whether Northern Ireland will leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the UK. It is whether the rest of the UK will now leave the EU on the same terms as Northern Ireland. Given what seems to have been conceded, there is only one way for Northern Ireland not to have a special status – and that is for all the UK to remain in the customs union.

The hard Brexiters like to see themselves also as hard unionists. But these two positions have just become radically incompatible. There are just two possible outcomes. If Northern Ireland in effect stays in the customs union and Britain leaves, then there will have to be an internal UK customs border, checking goods moving between Northern Ireland and British ports. This undoubtedly weakens the union.

But the only way to avoid this is for the UK as a whole to stay in the customs union – which of course the true believers don’t want either.

For the moment, this hard choice will be evaded with rhetorical promises that the eventual trade deal between Britain and the EU will be so frictionless and painless that borders won’t matter anyway – except, of course, for all the migrants who have to be kept out.

But if we did not know already that this is fantasy, we know it now. The climbdown we are seeing on all three of the preliminary negotiating issues surely ends the illusions of all but the most deluded fanatics about Britain’s real position in the Brexit process. It is not in a position to make demands – certainly not demands that the EU destroy its whole raison d’etre by allowing a member state to leave the single market but still enjoy all its advantages.

It was always stupid to turn the border issue into a face-off between mighty Britain and little Ireland. But that’s how the hard Brexiters and their Tory press allies chose to construe it.

Having done so, they might now ask themselves: if, for the first time in 800 years, Ireland is proving to be in a much stronger political position than Britain, what does that say about what Brexit is doing to Britain’s strength? It is being forced to accept what it claimed to be unacceptable, not because Ireland has suddenly become a global superpower but because it has the unflinching support of EU member states, the European parliament, and the EU negotiating team. There might be a lesson in there somewhere for a country facing a future without the allies it has long taken for granted.

• Fintan O’Toole is a columnist with the Irish Times

 

[degsy]

I actually think that the present impasse, if it is one, is the best possible solution. All it requires is a bit of creative double think, the ability to hold 2 different opinions at the same time...just depending on circumstances.
Eire get a soft border
NI get one too
But the UK, (as apposed from NI) get a 'hard' boarder in the form of the Irish Sea...just like The Channel.
You have you red and green exits just like Dover etc
The EU get a soft border with the UK
But in effect the UK get a hard one

Spin the wheel and where ever it lands somebody is 'happy'-ish...well not too unhappy.
You just pick one of your 'double think' options which at the time makes you the least unhappy at that minute in those circumstances
Simples

 

[abelard]

I actually think that the present impasse, if it is one, is the best possible solution. All it requires is a bit of creative double think, the ability to hold 2 different opinions at the same time...just depending on circumstances.
Eire get a soft border
NI get one too
But the UK, (as apposed from NI) get a 'hard' boarder in the form of the Irish Sea...just like The Channel.
You have you red and green exits just like Dover etc
The EU get a soft border with the UK
But in effect the UK get a hard one

Northern Ireland won't accept this

"DUP MPs have told senior government officials in Downing Street that any Brexit deal giving Northern Ireland a separate customs or trade regime from the rest of the UK would jeopardise the deal that keeps Theresa May in power."
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...talks-endanger-tory-dup-deal-northern-ireland

 

[Neiler]

Can people stop saying the DUP represent Northern Ireland, it doesn’t.

Seriously does no one know Northern Irish politics.

 

[abelard]

Can people stop saying the DUP represent Northern Ireland, it doesn’t.

Seriously does no one know Northern Irish politics.

It's not like any of the other parties want a hard Irish Sea border with the rest of the UK

 

[degsy]

Northern Ireland won't accept this

"DUP MPs have told senior government officials in Downing Street that any Brexit deal giving Northern Ireland a separate customs or trade regime from the rest of the UK would jeopardise the deal that keeps Theresa May in power."
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...talks-endanger-tory-dup-deal-northern-ireland

Just who has the final say? The Govt or the DUP
Oh right yeah
Never work will it...the DUP are still fighting that 17th cent war...ffs get over it will yis
As soon as somebody finds an answer they change the question...nothing changes does it

 

[Cork Evertonian]

 

[Gareth Gibson]

Can people stop saying the DUP represent Northern Ireland, it doesn’t.

Seriously does no one know Northern Irish politics.

True, but they do have the majority of Northern Ireland's seats at Westminster and more seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly than any other party.

Whether we like it or not they are Northern Ireland's main political voice right now, just as the Tories are on the mainland.

 

[Gareth Gibson]

It's not like any of the other parties want a hard Irish Sea border with the rest of the UK

My uncle is a Catholic from Belfast and he tends to be pro-Irish rather than pro-British, but even he recognises that it would be disastrous for Northern Ireland to be cut off from the UK, which is where most of its exports go to.

The Tories were wrong to make this proposal without first talking to Northern Ireland's main political party.

 

[Cork Evertonian]

True, but they do have the majority of Northern Ireland's seats at Westminster and more seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly than any other party.

Whether we like it or not they are Northern Ireland's main political voice right now, just as the Tories are on the mainland.

To be fair now, how can the DUP be Northern Irelands main political voice, when they only represent a certain section of society in Northern Ireland?They are the main political voice, for the unionist community of northern Ireland.While of course Sinn Fein are the main political voice of the nationalist community.

 

[Gareth Gibson]

To be fair now, how can the DUP be Northern Irelands main political voice, when they only represent a certain section of society in Northern Ireland?They are the main political voice, for the unionist community of northern Ireland.While of course Sinn Fein are the main political voice of the nationalist community.

The DUP have the most seats in the Assembly and they have the majority of Northern Ireland's Westminster seats.

I get where you're coming from, though. The Nationalist/Republican voice in Northern Ireland does need to be heard, too. But I'm sure very Nationalists want a border in the Irish Sea, cutting them off from their majority trading partner Great Britain. My mother's husband (my step-dad) is a half-hearted Nationalist from Belfast (he wants Northern Ireland to be part of the Republic one day but not now) and he doesn't want a border in the Irish Sea.

 

[Armaghtoffee]

Ireland should have no more a voice in this than Northern Ireland. They share a geographical piece of land, one country no more equal than the other. Brussels has given Dublin a veto or EU controlling voice in this regard, we should allow Belfast the same..........

Northern Ireland voted to remain Pete and I wholeheartedly agree with you that their voice should be heard.