The future of the Irish border.
| Author | Hayward, Katy |
Brexit has placed the Irish border at the centre of European politics. Westminster urgently needs to wake up to its histories and complexities.
We have discovered recently how little some politicians in Britain know about the island of Ireland. Their weighty pronouncements and momentous decisions about the future of the Irish border are unburdened by knowledge. They are free from the sense of responsibility or caution that even a cursory glance at Irish history and politics would surely encourage.
Marina Hyde has described British government ministers as moving from 'post-truth' to 'post-shame'. (1) This is an all too apt description when it comes to the Irish border issue. There is apparently no shame in seeking to exploit British ignorance about Northern Ireland. In fact, such ignorance is nurtured in order to secure implicit permission to play with the peace.
Amid all the hubris and the defiant rhetoric, we can find the familiar push-pull of British and Irish nationalism--something that we thought had been indefinitely suspended twenty years ago. This is a tug-of-war, and the Irish border is the rope.
The consequences of previous decisions made in England about Ireland remain all too evident in Northern Ireland and the border region. A friend in Co. Down (who, as it happens, is a former customs officer) likes to tell visitors to the area that it is not an Irish border but rather an English border: one that was inconsiderately left behind. Trying to find future arrangements for this border that accommodate both pragmatic and symbolic imperatives requires acute levels of perspicuity. It also requires an ability to look towards the long-term implications of the policies and decisions that may be stumbled upon in the heat of negotiations.
A perfect storm
The current disagreement about the future of the Irish border is not some minor parlour-game that is being played out in the corner of the so-called British Isles. This is a process of European interest. Ironically, Nigel Farage's rallying cry to 'take back control' of our borders demonstrated the deep commonalities between British and continental European politics. The drive to harden and monitor borders is present across Europe--the EU itself is in the middle of a major process of upscaling its capacity to manage its external borders. It is doing so under pressure from member states, who are strengthening their own border controls, building border fences and voting for anti-immigration parties in a way that would have been inconceivable a decade ago.
All of this has consequences. Becoming an external border of the European Union is nothing less than a perfect storm for the Irish border. Whatever your viewpoint on Brexit, fundamental changes in both the United Kingdom and the European Union are making the task of preparing for it all the more difficult. This is exemplified in the conundrum of the Irish border.
The factors shaping the future of the Irish border are no longer subject to assumptions about the future that were valid until just a few years ago. Close communication between British and Irish officials, and trusting relationships between British and Irish politicians, have traditionally been enabled by common EU membership.
Incredible as it may seem, after decades of careful nurturing, the assumption of a deep and close British-Irish partnership can no longer be sustained. This change in the intergovernmental relationship has transformed the conditions for managing the current state of uncertainty regarding the post-Brexit Irish border. As one observer of Anglo-Irish relations commented to Tony Connelly:
The fear is that Dublin is relying on an old British system that has passed. There is no predictability. There has been a paradigm shift. This is the difficulty for Ireland. (2) Given the lack of political sensitivity and historical awareness about the Irish border and Northern Ireland's peace process among many commentators in Britain, trying to plot a way out of the uncertainty sometimes feels like trying to hold up a tent in a storm--after the guylines have been cut.
One way out of this, however, is to look at what we can be sure of. This is what I will aim to do in this brief piece, starting with the present day and moving backwards. I will discuss the EU's draft Withdrawal Agreement, the 1998 Agreement and the history of the Irish border. There are some clear pieces of information and lessons to be drawn from these, which can be used to at least plot the coordinates for a future re-stabilisation of British-Irish relations.
Exit and EU borders
The UK government has never been clear that Brexit will inevitably--and necessarily--be a drawn-out and complicated process. There will be no free trade agreement to wave around on 29 March. An orderly Brexit would proceed along a route with four critical phases: withdrawal; transition (whilst negotiations on the details of the future relationship continue); new treat(ies); then implementation of those new treaties.
It is worth taking the time to 'Brexit' carefully and over a long period, not only because of the complexity of the task but also because of the existence of potential constraints on the future relationship. This is particularly evident in the instance of the Irish border--not only as a state frontier, but also as the point at which the new UK-EU relationship will be made manifest.
Member states at the EU's external frontier have to apply the necessary border controls rigorously, despite the inconvenience and disruption caused. And the EU is also used to having complicated land borders. That said, there is hope that it is possible to compose unique arrangements for the Irish border after Brexit. Such hope arises from the guidelines put forward by the EU...
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