Northern Ireland is no one's backstop

The treatment of Northern Ireland in the context of the negotiations between the EU and the UK has shown the inconsistency of the EU’s position with regard to nationalism.

The EU rightly condemned Crimea’s secession from Ukraine and reunification with Russia. This was not so much because the referendum that led to this secession was held under dubious circumstances. Crimean secession would have been condemned even if the vote had been completely free and fair. The reason is that Crimea is a part of a sovereign nation state called Ukraine and parts of sovereign nation states may not legally secede without permission.

This position was reiterated with regard to Catalonia. It simply did not matter whether a majority in Catalonia wanted independence or whether they didn’t. So long as Spain refuses to allow a legal referendum on independence and refuses to recognise the right of Catalonians to create a sovereign nation state, then Catalonia will remain legally a part of Spain.

There are similar examples all over the world. The right of a sovereign nation state to maintain its territorial integrity is insurmountable so long as it does not oppress or attack the people living in part of its territory. It was only because Serbia attacked the people in Kosovo that international opinion was willing to make an exception and grant the right of Kosovo to become independent.

International opinion has also favoured the right of colonies to become independent, but it is important to recognise what is and what is not a colony. Argentina was a Spanish colony. Catalonia is not a Spanish colony. If you really can’t see the difference, you might benefit from a pair of glasses. If Catalonia were to be described as a colony, then half of Europe would have a colonial relationship to the other half.  

The peculiar thing about Northern Ireland then is that the EU is unwilling to treat it in the same way as it treated Catalonia and Crimea. Northern Ireland is not a colony. Some Irish nationalists, thereby making the case for Ulster unionism, still speak of the people of Northern Ireland as settlers having been planted there. But if we treat everyone whose ancestors moved somewhere in the fifteenth century as illegitimate colonists then we are liable to end up thinking that virtually the whole population of the United States of America has no right to live where they do.

Northern Ireland is an integral part of the sovereign nation state called the United Kingdom. The Republic of Ireland has no more legitimate claim to a part of that nation state than Russia has a claim to Crimea. It simply does not matter that Crimea was once a part of Russia. Nor does it matter if the majority of the population of Crimea think of themselves as Russian, speak Russian and would like to secede from Ukraine. Crimean secession would be illegal even if all these things were true. It is for this reason that nearly the whole world continues to protest against Russia’s annexation of the territory of a neighbouring state.

But this argument obviously ought to apply equally to Northern Ireland. When the 26 counties chose to secede from the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland remained. It indeed has never left the United Kingdom. Secession doesn’t give you the right to claim someone else’s territory, otherwise the Confederacy if it had won would have had the right to claim New York. For this reason the Republic of Ireland has no more claim on the territory of the United Kingdom than does Russia with regard to the territory of Ukraine. Indeed it has less for Northern Ireland was never part of a sovereign nation state called the Republic of Ireland.

There are various treaties that exist between the UK and Ireland, which allow both the people of Northern Ireland and the people of the Republic to hold votes regarding Northern Ireland’s status, but the UK as a sovereign nation state can choose to renounce or renegotiate any treaty that it pleases. Lots of historical treaties have become obsolete, have been broken, or simply no longer apply.  The UK therefore could decide that such treaties that currently exist between itself and Ireland were obtained by coercion as a result of terrorism and were therefore inconsistent with the British Government’s longstanding policy of not appeasing terrorists.

It could also argue that the Irish Government has used the existence of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement to hinder British foreign policy (Brexit) and that the Irish Government is using this agreement to further its policy of gradually annexing Northern Ireland.

The purpose of the Irish backstop is to put Northern Ireland into the Republic’s sphere of influence and to show that while the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland is seamless the border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain may become real. Checks may be required. British goods and citizens may in effect be moving from the non-EU to the EU when they travel from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

Could such a border exist between Catalonia and the rest of Spain? Obviously not. Spain would not accept it, because it would encourage Catalan secession. Would any other sovereign nation state in the EU accept such a regulatory border? No. This is the sort of thing that a sovereign nation state goes to war to prevent happening. If you don’t fight for your territorial integrity, what do you fight for?

No-one is going to impose a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. The British are not going to do it, nor are the Irish, nor are the EU. But the Irish Republic has used this non-issue to further its irredentist and quite illegitimate claim to Northern Ireland and it has done so with the backing of the EU. This alone must be grounds for the UK Government reviewing the Belfast Agreement. It is quite intolerable that, backed by terrorist threats, the Irish Government seeks to move towards a position where it can call for a referendum on Irish unification. This is no better than Russia using military force to win a referendum in order to justify its claim to Crimea.

It is time for the UK, just like Spain and Ukraine and indeed the vast majority of states in the world, to assert that our territory is indivisible. Secession and annexation is no more legitimate a foreign policy goal in Ireland than it is Ukraine. The Republic of Ireland has no more claim to the territory of another sovereign nation state than does Haiti have a claim to the Dominican Republic.  The mere fact that you share an island does not allow you to steal another person’s home.

The EU’s hypocrisy on this issue is dangerous for stability in Europe. In attempting to punish Britain by furthering the aims of Irish nationalism it will encourage such nationalism elsewhere in Europe. Why shouldn’t Russia seek to reunify what was once “All the Russias” including parts of what is now the EU such as Poland and the Baltic States. If reunification is a morally worthy goal for Ireland, why not for Austria, Russia or dare I say it, Germany. No doubt Austrian, German and Russian nationalists would be delighted to go back to their 1914 borders.

She betrays what they fought for

A week ago we commemorated the 100^th anniversary of the ending of the First World War. Theresa May laid wreaths on the graves of those who had defended the freedom and democracy of our country while knowing that she intended to surrender both of them. For this alone she must go.

No free, democratic country that has not already been defeated in warfare would sign a legal treaty in which it agreed to obey the laws of a foreign power without any say in their formulation and that this arrangement would continue until that foreign power agreed that it would cease. It is just this that we fought to avoid in 1914 and 1939. For this reason Theresa May and those others who have been responsible for formulating this treaty have betrayed not merely those of us who voted to leave the EU in 2016, they have betrayed more importantly everyone in British history who fought to establish the democracy in which we live.

We were willing in 1914 to sacrifice the lives of a generation in order to defend Belgium neutrality.

We were willing in 1939 to go to war to defend Polish freedom.

In both cases we could have remained neutral, but we decided to fight for a principle and because it is the British way to stand up to bullies. Now once more we have to stand up to defend a principle, only this time we won’t have to fight anyone.

No-one knows for sure what exactly would happen in the event of a “no-deal” Brexit. I have read speculations that vary from it being relatively straightforward to it being relatively difficult. But in any event it would be worth it.

Markets crashed in 1914 and our trade with the rest of the world was hindered by the fact that U-boats fired torpedoes at our merchant fleet. Nothing as bad as that would happen in 2019. From 1940 onwards British trade with the continent all but ceased, but we were able to dig for victory. Nothing nearly as bad as that will happen in 2019. The worst that will happen is that we will trade with the EU in exactly the same way that we at present trade with the USA. There may be some traffic jams in Kent, there may be some short term shortages, but surely Britain can still take it.

What is to be done?

1. Get rid of Theresa May.

2. Appoint a new Tory leader quickly. Get us David Davis in a week. Give him the job for a year. Have a full blown leadership contest then.

3. Apologise to the DUP and the people of Northern Ireland. Make clear that Belfast is as British as Bognor Regis and that no UK Government will ever treat it differently.

4. Remind the EU that we have not been defeated and that we reject their deal.  Announce that we are leaving in March without a deal.

5. Sack Philip Hammond and appoint a Chancellor who is willing to spend any amount of money to ease the British economy through the transition and to deal with any economic shocks.

6. Remind Parliament that it has already agreed to Article 50 and that the Government intends to stick to the Brexit timetable come what may.

7. Inform the Republic of Ireland that we will impose no border checks, but that the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement cannot be used as a means to annex UK territory, for which reason we renounce it. Furthermore we are no longer interested in having the Republic of Ireland in the Common Travel Area or giving its citizens any more rights with regard to the UK than those from Japan. In future we will treat any Republic of Irish claims to Northern Ireland as being equivalent to Russian claims to the Crimea. It doesn’t matter how the people in Crimea vote, they are still in Ukraine. If the Irish Republic chooses once more to take advantage of terrorism to further its foreign policy aims then we will respond as we always do to terrorists and their sympathisers.

8. Inform the EU that UK armed forces will only be used to defend our territory and they will under no circumstances serve abroad.

9. Attempt to arrange a new security structure involving UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand as these are our true allies and friends.

10. Make Britain the easiest and cheapest place in Europe to do business. Undercut every EU nation in corporate taxes and offer free trade deals to anyone and everyone willing to reciprocate. Get rid of EU bureaucracy in order to outcompete them. Make them regret every sentence of the deal they wanted to humiliate us with.

I will never vote for a Conservative Party that is led by Theresa May and if we leave the EU on the terms that she has put forward I may never vote again. There isn’t much point voting when you’ve lost your freedom and your democracy.

We've survived worse

It looks very much as if the Chequers deal has been rejected by M. Barnier. So Theresa May’s softest of soft Brexits isn’t enough. A plan that has outraged much of the Conservative Party, most Brexiteers and caused the resignation of any number of ministers still doesn’t satisfy the EU. What next?

Parliament has shut down. The politicians will now have a deserved holiday. But when they come back the fundamentals will still be the same. There are three options.

1. We could opt to Remain in the EU on the same terms as we had before.

2. We could decide that it is pointless negotiating with the EU and leave anyway without a deal.

3. We could submit to whatever terms the EU wants, agree to these and leave on that basis.

The only deal I want with the EU is something similar to the free trade deal they have made with Canada and other countries. The EU doesn’t interfere in the internal affairs of Canada. There is no free movement of people between the EU and Canada. EU law or EU law courts do not in any way control Canadian laws or Canadian law courts. Why can’t Britain have something similar?

The reason is Northern Ireland. Apparently a simple free trade deal with the whole of the UK outside of the EU’s Single Market and Custom’s Union would impose a hard border in Ireland.  The whole point of the Chequers plan is to so mimic the EU’s Customs Union and Single Market that there need be no border checks in Ireland. But what would happen if we left with no deal. Would there be border checks? No. The UK has promised not to man the border in Ireland. The Irish have no intention of manning their side of the border either. Moreover the EU has promised the Irish Government that if there is no deal there will be no requirement for anyone to man the border. So neither the EU, the British, nor the Irish want or intend to man the border. Yet this and really this alone is preventing us from having a free trade deal. It is necessary to conclude that this problem is manufactured bogus and designed to force Britain to accept the worst possible deal with the EU.

What does the EU want? It most wants us to stay in the EU. If that isn’t possible it wants us to leave in such a way that we cannot make a success of Brexit and thus be a positive example to others.

So we could choose option number one. We could decide that leaving the EU is impossible or that it would do immense damage to the economy. Why would it do this damage? The reason is that the EU has come up with a bogus reason for making it impossible for the UK to have a free trade deal like the one that it has with Canada.

What if we chose option number two. We just go to M. Barnier and do what he wants. How much softer will Brexit have to get before M. Barnier is happy? I suspect we would have to agree to remain in the Customs Union, possibly the Single Market and we would have to accept free movement of people. We would have to accept that EU law remained supreme and that the European Court of Justice was higher than any British court. We would likewise have to pay not merely the £38 Billion divorce fee, but an ongoing yearly fee not dissimilar to the one that we paid as EU members. This is the price that the EU wants for us to trade with them freely. I would prefer remaining in the EU to this.

If leaving the EU is truly impossible, then it is better by far for Theresa May to go on television and admit that we tried to leave, but we couldn’t do it. There is no point having a referendum on something that is impossible. Better to just admit that the 2016 EU referendum was a charade because the EU really is a prison without doors. In this way we would join the long list of countries that voted against the EU and were later forced to change their minds.

What would be the consequences of this? In the short term there would be none. We would all get on with our lives. There wouldn’t be any economic disruption next March. But there would be a sullen sort of anger in the hearts of many voters. There would be a sense that politics was pointless and that elections didn’t matter. There would be pessimism about the future and a loss of hope that real change was possible. Long term this sort of thing withers a country.

What would be the point of ever having a referendum again about anything? If it turned out that the fifth largest economy in the world couldn’t leave a union of forty years, who would believe that Scotland could leave a union of three hundred years? Moreover, even if Scotland at some point voted to leave the UK, what would prevent the UK negotiating in the same way as the EU in order to give Scotland either independence in name only or else the chance to repent of its sins and remain?

But once you say to people that their political ideals are pointless that real change cannot be achieved by means of the ballot box, you open the way to a poisonous mixture of apathy and extremism. If Britain either fails to leave the EU or leaves in such a way that it is indistinguishable from remaining, there will be consequences for our democracy that are completely unknown and unknowable. I fear this far more than leaving without a deal.

After her holiday Theresa May should make a final offer to the EU. We want a Canada style free trade deal that applies to the whole of the UK including Northern Ireland. We are not going to allow any sort of internal border in the Irish Sea. If this is unacceptable she should say there is nothing more to discuss and announce to the British public that we are preparing to leave without a deal.

Leaving the EU without a deal would no doubt involve some short term difficulty, but we ought not to leave on terms that are intended to do us long term harm. In our long history we have from time to time had to struggle in order to do what was right. The beginning of the First World War brought with it financial chaos, but neither the government nor the people wavered in its resolve. A little courage is required, this time, but only a little. We will have to adjust in order to trade with the EU on WTO terms. The EU might be awkward for a while, but this won’t last long. Whatever happens, we will manage and it will be worth it. We survived Napoleon’s blockade and eventually he ended up on one of our tiny islands in the middle of the Atlantic.

We have seen off worse than the likes of Barnier.

With friends like these

I spent my childhood watching reports from Northern Ireland about bombings, punishment beating and prisoners on hunger strike. Most nights the BBC news would have something about some latest horror. The people living in Northern Ireland suffered more than anyone else. It didn’t matter who you were. There was the daily possibility of being killed or maimed by someone who wanted to solve a political issue using violence.

I remember that there was some fear that the conflict might spread to Scotland. After all quite a large number of people in various parts of Scotland sympathised with the aims of the IRA. But for the most part we observed from far away.

Every now and again we discovered that the IRA had spread to Guildford or Brighton or Manchester, but we never had the day to day fear that people must have felt in Belfast.

I remember in the end becoming rather immune to the whole thing. I took it for granted that these things would happen every now and again. I barely paid attention. A routine developed. Politicians would condemn using a set formula of words and then we all just waited for the next bombing. Even in Northern Ireland the chances of being killed or wounded were small. In other parts of the UK they were very small indeed. The IRA were like a disease that was hard to catch, but impossible to cure. There wasn’t any point worrying about them.

And then it ended. Who won?

I’d like to think Northern Ireland won. The situation isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot better than it was. Northern Ireland rarely appears on the BBC news anymore and if it does, the story, for the most part, is the same sort of story that might be told in any other part of the UK. One or other of the Northern Irish political parties is arguing about something. There has been some particularly bad weather or there has been some sort of accident. Sometimes there is even good news.  

We made peace. It’s not perfect, but it has more or less lasted since 1997. The thing with peace that is always tricky is that you have to make it with your enemy. There is no point trying to make it with anyone else. But this, of course, meant that British politicians didn’t quite mean what they said when they stated so often that they would never negotiate with terrorists. We did negotiate with them, then we set them free and then we allowed them to become elected politicians. We also had to make concessions. The IRA gave up their campaign of violence. The British in return gave them the Belfast Agreement (1998) commonly known as the Good Friday Agreement. It was right that we did so, but let’s not pretend. It was the reward that the IRA got for their decades of bombing. The British signed the agreement so that this bombing would stop for ever.

There is therefore something very dubious about using this agreement years later to try to gain a political advantage. But suddenly ever since the UK’s vote to leave the EU in 2016 I kept hearing various people going on about the Good Friday Agreement. The phrase had almost dropped from my memory. What on earth had that to do with Brexit?

Over time it became clear. The EU and the Irish Government wanted to use the Belfast Agreement as a way to put pressure on the British Government. This immediately struck me as quite outrageous. How dare they use a peace treaty that we signed so that the UK could avoid terrorist attacks to gain an advantage in the Brexit negotiations? Were these to be the fruits of the long IRA bombing campaign? Did the Republic of Ireland really want to inch closer to a united Ireland because Britain naturally didn’t want any more of our people to be killed by Irish terrorists? I thought this stank morally. But then far too many of those who wanted a united Ireland were always willing to sympathise with the aims of the IRA even if they sometime tut tutted at their methods.

I kept hearing from Remain supporters in the UK and from people in the Republic of Ireland that the Belfast Agreement forbade there being a hard border in Ireland and that it meant that it limited the UK’s room for manoeuvre in leaving the EU. This kept being repeated so often that it became a sort of orthodoxy. It’s also complete and utter nonsense.

I have never read so much interpretation about a document that demonstrates so ably that the interpreters have never in fact read it.

The Belfast Agreement is quite an easy read, though it is rather dull. It can be found here.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-belfast-agreement

What is it about?

Firstly it states that both the UK and the Republic of Ireland accept that the status of Northern Ireland must be determined democratically. The people who will determine that future are those living in Northern Ireland. So if Northern Ireland were ever to unite with the Republic this could only happen after a vote.

There is next a section on setting up an assembly in Northern Ireland, then a section on setting up a North/South Ministerial Council and also a section on setting up a British Irish Council. There is quite a lot about human rights, cross border cooperation, reconciliation, decommissioning and prisoners but not once is there any mention about border controls. The actual border between Northern Ireland and the Republic or its status in fact is not mentioned at all.

Even in the section dealing with “Economic, social and cultural issues” there is not a thing about trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic. There is no mention of customs, or duties. In fact none of the things that have been debated endlessly about the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland are anywhere mentioned in the Belfast Agreement.

The only limit to the UK’s sovereignty with regard to Northern Ireland is that we have promised to allow the Northern Irish people to decide if they wish to stay in the UK or join the Republic. Until that point we would be free to build a wall and dig a moat. The Republic of Ireland has no more right to demand that the border be kept open than any other nation state has that right.

The UK knows that most people in Northern Ireland want an open border. It is convenient and it is far better than neighbouring countries have friendly relations and open borders. For this reason we have promised to keep the border open.

But the Belfast Agreement in no way limits Brexit. It in no way changes the fact that the border in Ireland is an international border. If as a consequence of its EU membership the Republic of Ireland finds it impossible to remain in the Common Travel Area or if it finds itself forced to collect tariffs and regulate the movement of people, then that is a problem for the Republic not for us.  It could be resolved by deciding to leave the EU also.  But that is an issue for the Republic. It is not the UK’s business.

There is nothing in the Belfast Agreement to prevent friendly relations between the UK and the Republic of Ireland continuing after Brexit. The various councils and cross border cooperation would continue even if the border were manned. After all prior to Schengen almost everywhere in the EU had a manned borders. Owing to the crisis over migration there are quite a few manned borders springing up again in the EU. But these countries still cooperate and are friendly and trade freely with each other.

It becomes ever more obvious that the EU and the Irish Republic are attempting to use Brexit to bring about a united Ireland. This is why they continually wish to treat Northern Ireland differently from the other parts of the UK and why they want a border to run through the Irish Sea. So what the IRA couldn’t achieve by bombs the EU and the Irish Republic wish to achieve by means of issues they pretend are contained in the Belfast Agreement. Meanwhile the Remainers cheer them on. With friends like these who needs terrorists?

Binning the Vichy water

It is perfectly possible to imagine a mutually beneficial deal emerging from the UK’s negotiations with the EU over Brexit. We already trade freely with EU countries and meet whatever standards are required to do this. It should pretty much be a matter of saying let’s continue more or less as we have been doing. If the EU cannot negotiate a free trade deal with Brexit Britain, with whom everything is already in alignment, how does it expect to be able to negotiate one with the USA or China? But of course, obstacles can be overcome when there is a mutual desire to overcome them. After all Canada has a free trade deal with the EU. It is neither part of the EU’s Single Market, nor is it part of the Customs Union. It doesn’t pay the EU billions for the privilege of trading with them and there is no free movement agreement between Canada and the EU. But what is possible for Canada is apparently impossible for the UK.

We all know that divorces can become nasty. This is because human beings are involved. The EU is struggling again. Italy is rebelling as are the Visegrád Group of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia with perhaps Austria re-joining its former Empire in setting up a rival to rule from Berlin. The Brexit negotiations very ably demonstrate what would happen if Scotland voted to leave the UK. There would be zero goodwill, just mutual recriminations with endless debates about who gets custody of the CD collection.

The EU wants to discourage other countries from leaving and it wants to do this in two ways, firstly by punishing Britain and secondly by doing all it can to hinder us from making Brexit a success. If ten years from now the UK is trading freely not only with the EU but also with the rest of the world and doing just fine other EU members might wonder what the point of the EU was. Is it really just a prison held together with fear? A successful Brexit destroys the fear. 

The point, of course, is what it always has been. Since the Franco Prussian War France can no longer compete on its own with a unified Germany. The solution to the problem of Sedan (1871), Verdun (1916) and Sedan again (1940) is for Germany to be united with France. But Germany wins too. The 1914 Septemberprogramm German war aim of a united Europe dominated by Germany has been more than fulfilled and it can justly be said therefore that in fact Germany won the First World War. It just took them rather more than four years to do so.

So it becomes clear what we are up against. What if anything can be done?

The aim of the EU is for the UK to have all of the costs of EU membership with none of the benefits. They want us to have to continue following all of the EU’s rules and they want us to continue to have to pay pretty much the same for the privilege of doing so. In divorce terms it means that the husband has to pay the mortgage of a house where he no longer lives, he has to pay his wife’s living costs, but he no longer gets to sleep with her.

This is what the Remainer rearguard wants too. It wants to leave Britain in more or less the same situation as we are now. We would still pretty much be in the EU’s Single Market, still in the Custom’s Union, but we’d be without any representation in the EU whatsoever. We’d be told what to do by the EU and wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. There is a word for this. Vichy.

It is for this reason that I likened the Remain rearguard to Lord Halifax’s view that we should negotiate with Germany in 1940. But in fact Lord Halifax had a point. Our prospects looked grim in 1940. It took something like a miracle for us to survive that year. It wasn’t irrational to seek terms. It wasn’t even unpatriotic. But still it was wrong. It would have left Britain just like Vichy. We would have become a vassal state taking orders from Germany.

We are not in that position today. Britain’s prospects are very good indeed. We just have to have the guts to stand up for our own interest and we have to be willing to say No when someone is trying to treat us like a vassal.

It’s always worth remembering that between 1940 and 1945 we had next to no trade with continental Europe. We survived. We weren’t fully prepared for the difficulties that those years brought us, but we managed. We bounced bombs while the French collaborated. British ingenuity, self-reliance and self-confidence meant that we found solutions rather than dwelt endlessly on problems. In far, far easier circumstances we must manage now.

If there is no deal with the EU we would trade with them on WTO (World Trade Organisation) terms. This would not be ideal. But it would be no worse than the terms by which we trade at present with USA, Japan and New Zealand. Better by far to trade freely with all of them, but we could manage for a while.

If we had no deal with the EU we would of course keep the vast majority of the £38 Billion we have promised to give them. We could then go to court to determine what if anything we actually owed them and conversely what if anything they owed us. After all we paid into the marriage for decades. Why don’t we get something in return?

We should immediately begin to make whatever preparations are necessary for “No deal”. It’s far too late of course, better by far if we had begun two years ago, but again we will manage. What’s more even if leaving in this way were tough, it would be worth it. We have never fought for a better cause than our own democracy and freedom from foreign domination.

Better by far that we come to an arrangement with the EU, but we should be clear with them that the whole UK EU relationship is on the line. At present the EU doesn’t want the UK to be involved in Galileo after Brexit. Apparently it doesn’t trust us with sensitive information. Likewise M. Barnier has said that we won’t be involved in EUROPOL or the European Arrest Warrant or have access to various EU databases. Of course, they don’t have to share any of these things if they don’t want to. But they are happy enough to share with non-EU members like Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. But it seems we are no longer to be friends with the EU. Fair enough. But then don’t expect any friendship back.

Why should we pay 2% of GDP on defence when much of it is used to potentially fight wars on the continent or in other parts of the world? Britain could offset many of the costs of a “No Deal” Brexit by moving towards neutrality. We would then spend whatever is enough to defend our island against attack from without and within, but no more. We would retain our nuclear weapons, but explain that they would only be used if Britain or British interests were attacked. We didn’t have to fight either of the World Wars, nor did we have to get involved in wars in the Middle East. Why spend our money and lose our lives defending those who hate us?

We have a large network of spies and the best security service in Europe, but why should we share any of the information we gather with those who do not trust us. When we get information that Russia intends to attack across the Suwalki Gap, why should we tell the EU?  Why indeed should we be part of NATO at all? Many EU countries don’t like to spend too much on defence, well perhaps they ought to begin. We should be safe enough on our island. After all, the Russians would have to go right the way through the EU to reach us.

There has been much debate on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. The problem here is caused by the EU. After Irish independence we came to an arrangement called the Common Travel Area that for the most part allowed free movement across the British Isles. Irish citizens could continue to live and work in the UK and they can still vote in our elections.

Relations between the UK and the Republic were fairly poor for decades after Irish independence, but in recent years there had been some grounds for hope that they might be improving. These hopes are now in danger.

It is obvious that with a tiny bit of good will on the part of the EU and the Irish Republic that we could keep the border open. But whatever solution we try it is immediately rejected.

The UK should make a final offer. We should promise not to physically hinder anyone crossing into Northern Ireland. Whether we use cameras or anything else is our business. Cameras hinder no-one and all of us spend our lives being filmed in every major city.

If that isn’t enough then we should leave anyway, still promising not to hinder anyone physically from crossing unless there are security reasons for doing so. What the Irish Republic does on its side of the border is its business not ours.

If the Republic wants to unite Ireland then it only has to say clearly that this is indeed what it wants. If it were to win a poll then, it would pay the cost of maintaining the present levels of public spending in Northern Ireland and it would deal with whatever trouble results from reunification. Personally I’d be delighted to see some hundreds of thousands of Northern Irish Unionists fulfilling Nicola Sturgeon’s desire to increase Scotland’s population.

The UK faces a crucial moment in our history. If we end up a non-voting client state of the EU it will be a national humiliation. It would be far worse than Suez (1955). In fact you have to go back as far as Yorktown (1781) to find a worse humiliation. It would take Britain decades to recover from failure to completely leave the EU. The national mood would be one of acceptance of decline and sombre realisation that when tested we didn’t even have the courage to say “Non M. Barnier”. This is the sort of thing that a country doesn’t really recover from. Ask the French. It’s not even something that you can put a price on.

Killing people is wrong

Once again Northern Ireland in general and the DUP in particular are taking a bit of a bashing because the Republic of Ireland voted to change its constitution the other week. I doubt there would be any criticism of the DUP if Slovenia had chosen to make such a change. I doubt indeed that anyone would have noticed. But very strange logic applies in Ireland.

The first mourning by William-Adolphe Bouguereau 

Long term Northern Ireland’s future in the UK depends on two things. It depends on the UK staying intact, which means we must defeat Scottish nationalism decisively and it depends on Northern Irish Catholics voting for unionism. For this reason I tend to the view that it would be better for Northern Irish politics not to follow religious lines. It should be as natural for a Catholic to vote for the DUP as it is for a Catholic in London to vote for Labour the Lib Dems or the Conservatives. The DUP are the main Pro UK party in Northern Ireland. The key to maintaining a Pro UK majority in Northern Ireland is for large numbers of Catholics to be happy to be both British and Northern Irish and for them to vote for Pro UK parties like the DUP.

There is nothing inherently about being Catholic that means a person has to support a united Ireland, Scottish independence or not being British. There are nearly six million Catholics in the UK. The vast majority want to continue living in the UK and happily describe themselves as British. The debate about Northern Ireland should therefore have nothing to do with religion or demographics. It should be the same debate as everywhere else in the UK. Do you want to keep your country intact? Do you value being British?

Because I favour taking religion out of politics I likewise think it is mistaken to view the debate about abortion through the lens of religion. What has changed since Ireland voted in 1983 “to recognise the equal right to life of the mother and the unborn?” There has been a huge scandal involving child abuse in the Catholic Church in Ireland. Consequently many Irish people have ceased to have much faith in the Church and are less willing for the Church to tell them what to do. But to respond to child abuse by voting to kill them instead is a decidedly odd response.

 The problem with basing the debate about abortion on religion is that it then depends on faith. Christianity cannot be proved and whatever truth it contains cannot be demonstrated by science or reason. This is not a flaw. It’s a feature. If I could prove a religious claim it would not be possible to have faith in it, because instead I would have knowledge. This means that if someone uses religious reasons in a debate, these reasons will not be compelling to non-believers or those who have a different faith. Therefore as faith declined in Ireland so too the rights of the unborn declined. The reason for this is that those rights were grounded in faith.  But it is always a mistake to build a house upon foundations that may in time become eroded. At that point the house is liable to collapse.

The traditional Christian argument against abortion might go something like this:

Killing people is wrong,

Babies in the womb are people,

Therefore killing babies in the womb is wrong.

You really have two choices here. Either you can deny that killing people is wrong or you can deny that babies in the womb are people. The first option is unpalatable for obvious reasons. If killing some people is not wrong, where are we going to draw the line? Does anyone in our society have the right to choose who they kill? I would prefer not to live in such a society. So clearly we have to accept that killing people is wrong.

The problem with the babies in the womb are not people argument is that it looks awfully like the slaves are not people argument that meant that in the United States they could declare that all people are created equal except slaves. Why should we discriminate against these people who happen to be situated in a womb? Moreover if the unborn are not people what on earth are they and how do they eventually become people? 

I have a colleague who recently became pregnant. After the necessary scan she came to work and told everyone she was having a baby. She then passed round pictures pointing out the various features of the baby. Everyone gushed about it. She didn’t say she was having a foetus. She didn’t use language that would minimise the humanity of her baby. It was as much a baby there and then as it would be when it was born. But she could with ease have simply decided to kill it. Oddly however it would be grotesquely wrong if I decided to kill her baby in the womb. It would be something very like murder if I somehow deliberately caused her to miscarry. But the baby in each case would be the same. It’s a very strange moral situation when under one circumstance the exactly same sort of being is a human being to whom we have a duty, while in another circumstance it is nothing and can be discarded.

But what about the rights of a woman to do what she wants with her body? Indeed these rights must be taken into account. But which human right gives me the right to kill another human being? Self-defence perhaps gives me that right. But babies in the womb are only rarely a threat to a woman’s safety. The law can easily protect the lives of women and can be worded to avoid those unusual cases where a pregnant woman’s life is threatened by her pregnancy.

But doesn’t a woman have the right to do what she pleases with her own body? Even if she does it is worth reflecting on whether there is someone else’s body inside her when she is pregnant and whether that someone else might reasonably limit her right to do as she pleases. After all I don’t have the right to do exactly what I please with my body when I’m driving. I can’t for instance use my arm to turn the steering wheel of my car so that it crashes into someone else. If I do, I am liable to prosecution. Likewise if I neglect an infant who is dependent on me so that they die I will be prosecuted. I will probably even be prosecuted if I fail to look after a dog. In that case why do I not have an obligation to look after a human being who temporarily is located in my womb?

In the end if babies in the womb are people, we can reasonably expect women to respect the rights of those people just like any other people on the planet. This may involve some inconvenience for a few months. But do we really want to go down the route that I can kill people when they are inconvenient. Old people are frequently inconvenient. The location of a human being, inside a womb or outside a womb, does not change its moral status.

This has the following consequence. It cannot be grounds for killing a human being that he is the result of rape or incest. If I were teaching in a school and discovered that one of the children in the class was conceived as a result of rape or incest would I be morally justified in killing it? Obviously not. But why should I be justified in killing it because it is situated in a womb rather than a classroom?

The pro-abortion argument then is left with having to deny that babies in the womb are people.

The babies in the womb are not people argument is faced with the difficulty that we all accept that babies outside the womb are people. Killing babies which have been born is liable to lead to a murder charge. But then if we wish to maintain that babies in the womb are not people, we are forced to say at what point they become people.

Many Christians think that the moment of conception is the point at which life begins. For this reason they think that all abortion is wrong.  But why should the moment of conception be theologically significant. I think this is to mix up science (the moment of conception is only known about because of science) with theology.

Traditionally the Church knew no more about the mechanics of conception than did anyone else. A few hundred years ago no-one knew that a sperm entered into an egg. They didn’t have microscopes that were powerful enough. When did the Church think life began? It thought that it began with quickening or the moment when the woman first feels the baby in the womb. The Church traditionally treated this moment as the moment when the baby gains a soul.

And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost.

 Elisabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, is filled with the Holy Spirit at the point when she first feels her baby moving. The baby gains a soul at this point not before.

For this reason it is not necessary to believe that all abortion is wrong from the moment of conception. It is perfectly possible to say we have an actual person when it gains a “soul” but prior to that we only have a potential person. But two people who first meet and think about marrying have in them any number of potential persons. Their failure to marry and have sex may prevent one of these potential persons from becoming an actual person. But there is clearly nothing wrong in this. If there were, a man could demand sex on the grounds that it makes a potential person actual.

From this we need not be quite as strict as some opponents of abortion. There is a window of opportunity where it is possible to abort babies without doing anything seriously wrong. Quickening occurs between 15-20 weeks after conception. What matters however is when the baby begins to think and feel and when it is conscious of itself. This does not require that you actually believe in souls.

Rape victims and victims of incest ought to be able to have an early abortion. Other women too who elect to have an abortion as soon as they discover that they are pregnant need not feel that they are doing anything particularly wrong. A cluster of cells that is neither conscious nor self-conscious may or may not become a human being, but it is not a human being yet. A potential thing is not the thing it might become. An acorn is not an oak and therefore while chopping down an oak may be wrong throwing an acorn on the fire is morally unproblematic.

The argument about abortion must be grounded not in theology but in what we think a human being is. It is not primarily about women’s rights, because those rights cannot extend to killing other human beings.  But it is not necessary to argue that actual human beings begin to live from the moment of conception. The potential is not the actual.

In limiting abortion to the first few weeks of pregnancy Ireland may have found a stronger foundation for protecting the rights of the unborn than it had previously. Rather than criticise Northern Ireland for not immediately imitating the Republic, why not instead criticise the UK for not immediately following Ireland’s lead by lowering the current abortion limit from 24 weeks to 12. If the UK were to do this, then people in Northern Ireland might in time decide that they would like to follow suit. That would be up to them.

We ought to be living in a free society which is tolerant of the views of everybody whether religious or not. Religious views ought not to determine at what point abortion is legal or illegal. We do not, thank God, live in a theocracy. But I am free to think that early abortion is morally and theologically unproblematic while also maintaining that late abortion is a form of legalised murder. You do not have the right to choose to murder. Killing people is wrong.   

What have the Brits ever done for us?

There is something dispiritingly similar about Irish nationalism and Scottish nationalism. This is no doubt because the one frequently supports the other. Most Scottish nationalists would cheer if Irish nationalism achieved its goal of uniting Ireland, while I strongly suspect quite a lot of Irish people would delight in seeing Britain partitioned. It is rather contradictory to think that uniting one island is good while partitioning another is also good, but then again if your main goal is getting even with the Brits you just don’t much care if it happens by means of uniting or dividing.

Cú Chulainn brings peace and democracy to ancient Ulster by means of rustling cattle

The Republic of Ireland has a long term goal of uniting Ireland. I think it would be better if they left this up to the people actually living in Northern Ireland. Personally I regret that Ireland was ever partitioned, but it was a direct consequence of Ireland seeking independence from the UK. If the Irish had decided to remain in the UK, their island would not have been partitioned. This is self-evidently true, but stating it immediately leads to hostility from both Irish and Scottish nationalists.

It might or might not have been possible to force what became Northern Ireland to leave the UK along with the South. But the majority of people living in Northern Ireland at the time did not want to leave the UK. The British army could perhaps have forced them to join the South, but then again it could equally have forced the South to remain in the UK. Partition was not an ideal solution. It led to decades of terrorism. But would forced Irish unity have led to peace?

Anyway we are where we are. I would have no objection at all if the majority of people in Northern Ireland ever chose to join the Republic, but let’s leave it up to them rather than try to force the issue by turning the border in Ireland into a way of loosening the ties between Northern Ireland and the other parts of the UK.

The Irish PM has been pushing his luck lately. The Republic of Ireland has a national interest in trying to maintain a close trading relation with the UK. We would like the same. But there may come a time when ordinary British people lose patience with the Irish. We have, on the whole, remained friendly towards you. We have been happy to buy your beef, your butter and your beer. But we don’t have to do so. We have a national interest too. We are trying to leave the EU in such a way that we can maintain an open border in Ireland, maintain more or less free trade with all EU members, while regaining our sovereignty and the right to make trade deals with the rest of the world. If the Irish are seen to be trying to damage the UK national interest, there may well come a point when ordinary Brits cease being quite so friendly and may discover that we can buy what we need from elsewhere.

The essence of the problem between Ireland and the UK is that while the Brits tend to look kindly on Ireland, the Irish tend to view Britain with hostility. It is this that is fundamentally behind the diplomatic difficulties at the moment. If there were good will, the border would not cause much of a problem, but there is very little good will at all coming from the Republic.

The reason for this was very ably illustrated to me the other day, when I pointed out on Twitter that if it had not been for the Brits, the Irish today would be speaking a language (Irish), that could be understood nowhere outside of Ireland apart from perhaps in the Outer Hebrides. This was met with fury, even though it is self-evidently true. Irish people overwhelmingly speak English as natives, because for many centuries they were ruled from London. If you don’t think it’s an advantage to speak English as a native speaker, then by all means cease doing so. It wouldn’t bother me in the slightest if the whole population of Ireland spoke Irish and only Irish, but it might hinder your trade rather more than Brexit.

No doubt great wrongs were done in Ireland. But frankly great wrongs were done in Britain too and throughout Europe. The nobles conquered and the peasants suffered. Kingdoms expanded and contracted. Wars were fought.  But you weren’t the only victims. It wasn’t Irish people alone in Europe who suffered from famine. The ordinary Brit had no more say in who ruled him than the ordinary Irish person. Each could die for a stupid reason or because it was the whim of someone more powerful. We are not at a fault for every bad thing that ever happened in Ireland. Get over it. No-one now was alive when the New Model Army crushed you.  We don't even blame present day Germans for the sins of their grandparents, but you would blame us for what happened between 1649 and 1653 as if it happened yesterday. 

Lots of Brits moved to Ireland during the period when we were joined together. But then again in prehistoric times Brits were the first settlers in Ireland, and you repaid us the compliment by first sending the Scoti to settle in Scotland and then during the nineteenth century moving here en masse. Many Scots moved to Ulster in the seventeenth century and their descendants still form a majority there. But if Scottish Protestants were planted in Ulster, is it equally correct to say that Irish Catholics were planted in Glasgow or Boston? We have been moving between our two islands since history began. When do we have plantation and when do we have the benefits of migration?

The failure of Irish nationalism is that it could never take with it the whole of Ireland. The reason for this is that it has zero appeal for Ulster Protestants, for the simple reason that they are still treated as if their presence is unwelcome. They are still settlers more than three hundred years after they settled. The Irish treat unionists as if they arrived on the Windrush fifty years ago and should jolly well go home. Until the Irish cease to hate the Brits they will have no chance whatsoever of having a united peaceful Ireland because those Brits live in Northern Ireland and why would they want to be part of a state where they are hated?

What have the Brits ever done for us? Well out of all of the most notable Irish people I can think of the vast majority were descendants of the British. That is what we did for you, even though you hate us for doing it.

St. Patrick (5th cent.) came to Ireland from Roman Britain. He was therefore a Brit. He gave you Christianity and you celebrate his doing so every March 17th forgetting that the man who got rid of your snakes was not actually Irish.

Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1783) the great idealist philosopher was from Ireland, but he wasn’t just from Ireland, he was Anglo-Irish. What this means is that he was a Protestant and was a descendant of people who were planted in Ireland.

Robert Boyle (1627-1691), the first modern chemist gave us Boyle's law, but the law equally well expressed the fact that eminence in Ireland invariably was a consequence of being both Anglo and Irish. 

The greatest general in Irish history Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852) was born in Ireland, but reckoning that if a man was born in a stable it didn’t make him a horse declined to consider himself Irish. Still he was at least as Irish as the vast majority of great Irish people, far more so than any number of American Presidents who find it convenient to discover, or else make up, some Irishness in their family tree. 

If you go through a list of the greatest Irish writers, beginning with Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), continuing with Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900), George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950), W.B. Yeats (1865-1939), C.S. Lewis ( 1898 – 1963), Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Iris Murdoch (1919 – 1999) etc. etc., you will find that nearly all of them are Anglo Irish. In fact the only significant Irish literature that is not Anglo-Irish literature is either written in a language that almost no-one can understand, (e.g. Táin Bó Cúailnge), or is written by James Joyce in a language that quite literally no-one understands (e.g. Finnegan’s Wake).

Modern roads in Ireland were designed by the British, so too were the railways.  We gave you the games that the world now plays (Football, Rugby Cricket), otherwise you would have been left merely playing with yourselves (Hurling, Gaelic Football). The most famous Irish products such as Guinness were created by the Anglo-Irish. Even those Irish politicians who campaigned most effectively for Irish independence such as Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891) were doing so precisely because they were Anglo-Irish and had been brought up in the British political tradition.

Prior to Irish independence in fact it is hard to find anyone of consequence from Ireland who was not at least partly British. These people for the most part thought of themselves as being British. They saw no particular difference between themselves and those living in Britain. There, in fact, wasn't much of a difference apart from an accent and the separation of the Irish sea.  We gave up hating people because they were Protestant or Catholic sometime in the eighteenth century. Unfortunately you didn't, for which reason we received sectarianism as your gift. It's the thing that most distinguishes those who have Irish descent from those who don't.

None of the great Anglo-Irish people would have existed, at least they would not have existed in Ireland, unless British people had moved there because it was part of Britain. Hating Britain amounts therefore to hating the best that you produced.

Perhaps this is why you hate us. It must be tough to take when you find out that almost no-one of exclusively Irish descent was of any consequence whatsoever in the long course of Irish history. You all speak English, yet you hate us for teaching you to do so. We built your cities, brewed your beer and allowed you to come here to work when there was no more work in Ireland, but still you blame us for everything.

Not only this, Ireland in the 1920s had free markets, the rule of law and a functioning democracy with a civil service that was more or less free from corruption. It had these things only because it had been part of the political development of the British Isles that gave us all these traditions. None of these things existed in Ireland prior to British involvement. You didn’t have any sort of democracy before the arrival of the Brits, you had no free markets  and no freedom. You had only despotism and barbarousness. Irish civilisation happened because of Irish history, which includes the fact that for many centuries we were united. Even in Europe today let alone the rest of the world there are few places that are as prosperous, free and democratic as Ireland and the UK. None of this was automatic. It happened because of our shared political traditions, which were spread from Britain to all of the Anglosphere.

My family were from Ireland. Some of them are still there. My grandfather was Anglo-Irish and he found it rather tough to remain in the land of his birth because of the prejudice he encountered at the time of Irish independence. But he didn’t blame Ireland for anything, rather he always loved it. He made a successful life here in Britain. You see, when you spend your whole life blaming someone else it give you a wonderful excuse for failure.  If you give someone a reason to fail by always blaming someone else, do not be surprised when they grasp at failure and embrace it. It is this above all else that hinders Ireland.  

Britain remained friendly towards Ireland even when you bombed us, even when you blame us and even when you hate us. Blaming us for everything damages you, not us. We moved on a long time ago. We find your hatred rather baffling, but we are used to it and quite indifferent to it. Most Brits no longer even notice you (did they really elect Dame Edna to be their Prime Minister? we shrug quite unaware of whether Fine this or Fine that or indeed Fine Fair is the party that you chose). 

But your hatred of Britain damages not merely your relations with the UK. It means that you can’t quite join the Anglosphere. The “five eyes” of Canada, UK, USA, NZ and Australia, have a trust and friendship that means we cooperate in security. But Irish hatred of Britain means we could never quite trust you. To whom would you divulge a shared secret just to get back at the land that gave birth to Cromwell? It's you that loses from this, not us. 

Accept who you are. Every Irish person is to a lesser or greater extent a mix of the British and the Irish. Hating the British is simply a rather odd way of hating yourself.

The chippiness on the Irish shoulder has damaged relations between our islands for too long. Most Brits have Irish ancestors, most Irish have Brits in their family tree. We are the most closely related countries in Europe. Let us work together and accept that for all our faults we are what we are because of each other. If we could overcome the hostility we might just find a mutually beneficial way of living together.