The British Conservatives have not endeared themselves to Ireland. Since 2016 the party and its rotating cast of beleaguered leaders – David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak – have been held up as the standard bearers of Tory overreach, and the foolishness inherent to the Brexit project. The battle lines were drawn: on one side the swivel-eyed loons trying to take the United Kingdom – against all of its best interests – out of the European Union; and on the other, the clear-eyed rationalists who could tell from far away that this was a horrible mistake.
This has always struck me as an uncharitable reading. Sure, Brexit makes little sense to Ireland. But for the UK it was borne out of decades-long discomfort with European institutions. Britain’s relationship with the Continent emerges from a cultural milieu completely unrecognisable to our own. Of course we have reached different conclusions on the benefits or pitfalls of EU membership: just because our respective national interests diverge, it does not mean that either are wrong-headed or unimportant. The custodians and advocates of Brexit were, perhaps, not malign – or worse, stupid – but simply seeking something hard for us to understand.
How magnanimous! It certainly feels good to follow that line of thinking. Why chastise our oldest and closest neighbour for wanting something else? Is it not the job of the diplomat, negotiator and minister to find an equilibrium between competing and often contradictory interests? This is the soul of politics, after all. And though Brexit was a high stakes challenge that tested and strained principles to breaking point, the principles ought to remain the same: charity, co-operation, respect, collaboration.
That is all well and good, noble perhaps. Until, like clockwork, something comes along and challenges any faith you might have in such tolerance and moderation – destroying the notion that, at the end of the day, the British government’s handling of Brexit was just about a difference of opinion. That nothing malign or untoward was going on. Unfortunately an intervention by David Frost on Tuesday did just that. And once again, he proved that any of the above sympathy for their project to be shockingly naive.
In a House of Lords debate on the Windsor Framework, Frost – former chief negotiator and Brexit minister – said that when he and Boris Johnson negotiated the Northern Ireland protocol they had “always hoped” it would eventually collapse. Frost and Johnson have expressed similar consternation with the protocol they agreed to before. But neither has ever been so explicit: did the UK negotiating team sit across the table with the EU and shake hands over something they always intended to fall apart? My interest in the principle of charity is rapidly dwindling.
Negotiating in bad faith is no frivolous accusation. This seems perilously close to the line. In October 2019 the UK and EU agreed to the protocol (a measure that allowed Britain to leave the single market). In May last year the British government used concerns over “peace and stability” in Northern Ireland to justify reneging on that agreement. It was clear at that time that the UK were not putting their best selves forward. But admitting it over a year later in the House of Lords reveals the depth of disdain for negotiating partners and those set to face the fall out of the diplomatic mess – namely the EU, Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Of course, the callous disregard paid to Northern Ireland and the peace process has coloured the entire seven years since the referendum. Using the pretext of protecting peace in the region to unilaterally rip up an agreement is shocking in itself. And it points to a far, far deeper malaise: an Anglo-Irish relationship that may be marginally better but shows little sign of healing soon.
As the threat of a Sinn Féin government looms, Britain continues to misunderstand the nature of the beast
Frost and Johnson may be gone. And with them the charlatanism of their operation. But Brexit has disrupted the careful equilibrium in the North, proven to the south that Westminster cannot hide its disinterest in its politics or economic health. The old guard has changed with the arrival of Rishi Sunak. And the Conservatives may lose power in the next election in any case. This might provide a much needed shake-up – a Labour government in Westminster and a Sinn Féin one in Government Buildings is far from a foregone conclusion. But if it comes to pass it would redraw the fault lines of the Anglo-Irish relationship.
But the existential questions remain. Brexit has predictably moved the Border poll question sharply up the agenda. But somehow Leo Varadkar’s recent comments – that he expects a united Ireland in his lifetime – shocked plenty in Westminster. It was proof, again, of the little attention paid to their neighbours across the sea. As the possibility of a Sinn Féin government looms, Britain continues to misunderstand the nature of the beast.
But as all this unfolds in the history books over years to come the admission of Frost and the chicanery of Johnson will be seen for what it is: a symptom not a cause of the Conservative Party’s self-destructive impulses. Northern Ireland once again is mere collateral.