“The great thing about this deal is that it means that Northern Ireland has the best of both worlds.”
So said prime minister Rishi Sunak when he brokered the Windsor Agreement to replace the ‘Get Brexit Done’, oven ready deal, but nonsensical protocol arrangement that he and ultra Brexiter and Lord Frost had ‘negotiated’ with the EU back in 2019.
Sunak, of course, is right. Northern Ireland does now benefit from a free trade deal with the biggest single market on the planet, the European Union, and it is able to trade as a nation state within the United Kingdom.
Not surprisingly, this is being reflected in the country’s economic performance. Whilst the rest of the UK is flatlining, Ireland is enjoying a 6% growth rate. Not too shabby.
If you’re English or Welsh, then you have to accept that the majority of us were daft enough to shoot ourselves in both feet and rip up a stellar trade partnership with our nearest neighbours that can never be matched, no matter how many compromises we make on health and safety regulations, food quality control, and immigration with Australia, the USA (nowhere near a deal being done with the States by the way), and countries within the continent of Africa.
However, if you are Scottish, you have every right to be angry and frustrated with an agreement that offers Ireland benefits that your nation doesn’t have – because the vast majority of citizens in Scotland, 62%, voted to remain in the most successful trading bloc on the planet.
And, if Britain’s economy continues to struggle as it currently is, and Ireland maintains its recent strong performance, how long will it be before Leavers start to express ‘buyer’s remorse’ in greater numbers than already appears to be the case? According to polls going back over six-months now, a small majority of people would take the UK back into the EU if there were a referendum tomorrow.
That, of course, is not an option. Not only are most of the great British public still fatigued by the Brexit debate, and the subsequent fallout, but the EU would make demands for our re-joining that even arch-Remainers such as myself would find hard to sell, including the replacement of the pound with the Euro.
Nevertheless, that should not rule out our politicians initiating an honest and mature conversation with the electorate about the need for us to have a much more cordial and robust relationship with the EU – one that looks very similar to the one Northern Ireland now enjoys.
Labour is frit from going anywhere near the ‘B’ word, believing that to suggest any new accommodation with the EU will lead to those Red Wall voters who abandoned the party at the last General Election punishing them again.
The majority of Tories within parliament know that a new settlement with the EU is necessary to get our economy fully functioning again – but also understand that a membership that chose Liz Truss over Rishi Sunak is unlikely to thank them for re-opening a more cordial conversation with Messrs Macron, Scholz & co.
So, we have a government that is scared to have an honest conversation about the EU because of its members, and an opposition that is scared to have an honest conversation about the EU because of the voters. What a time to be alive!
Surely, a few more months of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ type economic performance that we are witnessing across the island of Ireland will give our political leaders the confidence to open a more meaningful dialogue with the EU and re-negotiate a deal that allows England, Wales, and the poor Scots a deal that gives us ‘the best of both worlds’ too. One can only hope.
