Kevin Meagher“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” Theresa May told the Sophy Ridge programme on Sky News on Sunday. She was speaking in code to her party: ‘I know my deal isn’t perfect,’ she was saying, ‘and we’ll see what we can do in coming days to improve it – so please don’t oust me.’
In the very short term – measured in hours and days, rather than weeks and months – it’s proving a winning tactic. She is (at the time of writing) still in situ.
Today she went to the European Commission to see if she could wangle a few more concessions to please her truculent backbenchers and get a withdrawal deal over the line before we head off the cliff and the unmitigated disaster of a hard, no deal Brexit.
Part of her pitch, we are told, was to see if she could convince the Commission to relent and concede some form of border arrangement between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
Theresa May is an intelligent woman and she surely recognises there is no wiggle room here. After searching forlornly for a fix over the border for the past two years, she isn’t about to find one in the next few days. She might be offered a sprig of presentational relish from the Commission, but that will be it.
But she has to be seen to try.
Hardline Brexiteers, drunk on their petit-English nationalism – which instantly renders adherents economically illiterate and politically oafish – just don’t care about assuaging Irish delicacies. Paddy will jolly well have to put up with some cameras on the border.
Yet the Prime Minister knows she cannot take casual chances with the peace and political process in order to placate her MPs or the DUP’s. The task of safeguarding the Good Friday Agreement – akin to carrying a Ming vase across a freshly-polished floor – has become axiomatic, even to the Tories.
So she needs to twirl her MPs around the dance floor one last time in order to show beyond any reasonable doubt that border infrastructure is a non-starter: disastrous to trade, security, community and diplomatic relations. Notwithstanding, the Commission and Irish Government’s will flatly refuse to countenance any move in that direction.
It all serves to throw into sharp relief the biggest failure Theresa May has made throughout this process. She simply has not set the groundwork for the inevitable political trade-off that was always coming at the end of the Brexit process.
She should have told Arlene Foster months ago that a British compromise would take place on Irish soil. So stuff the DUP’s mouths with gold. Dole out peerages to the backwoodsmen. And doesn’t ‘Dame Arlene’ have a ring to it? Perhaps you cannot buy the DUP’s loyalty. But you can certainly try renting it.
The Prime Minister’s second biggest gaffe was in underestimating the Irish negotiating position. Buttressed with the heft of the European Commission, Ireland has not proven to be the pushover chauvinistic British ministers assumed.
In due course harrumphing Conservative backbenchers will swallow their medicine and back her deal. We are at that part of the process where Theresa May will do everything she can to sweeten the turd sandwich they will consume to avoid either a general election or second referendum.
Of course, if Britain does indeed crash out with no deal (something I just don’t believe will happen), then it will be because of Northern Ireland. But this will not be remembered as some grand defence of the Union. It’s just the bald parliamentary arithmetic in play. Theresa May is reliant on the DUP and the hard-right Brexiteers in her party. They merely have disproportionate influence. In happier times, they would be discountable fanatics.
In case anyone has forgotten, she was entirely content to shaft the DUP in the draft deal. She had to. It just isn’t plausible that Northern Ireland – amounting to just 1.5% of the UK’s economy – would be put before the economic interests of 62 million British people and 98.5% of our economy.
The fundamental irony of all this is that time limiting the British backstop – the main sticking point – is already built into the deal. After all, it only applies as long as Northern Ireland continues to exist. The place is already on life-support and gone in the next five to ten years anyway; depending on what tactical opportunities emerge to catalyse the long term trends inexorably pointing towards Irish unity.
There aren’t many Irish nationalists to be found in the Conservative and Unionist Party but if they’re serious about a smooth Brexit deal, perhaps there ought to be.
More by Kevin Meagher:
‘Now Look Here, Paddy…’ – Britain’s Bungled Diplomacy on the Irish Border
Of Course An Agreed Ireland is Desirable, But it’s not a Precondition for Irish Unity
