How Brexit will impact Ireland facts and fiction

After Britain’s elections, people are talking about a united Ireland. Don’t hold your breath.

Britain’s election results seem to point in two very different directions. The headline result is that Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has won a smashing victory against Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, clearing the way for Britain’s exit from the European Union. This would seem like good news for British nationalists, who have treated the E.U. as an enemy for decades.
Yet this victory may weaken the political fabric of the United Kingdom. Scottish nationalists did extraordinarily well, too, while for the first time, more nationalist members of Parliament (who want a united Ireland) have been elected in Northern Ireland than unionist MPs (who want the union with Great Britain to continue). This has prompted some commentators to start talking about a united Ireland. But that isn’t likely to happen any time soon.
The election results are a triple blow to Ulster Unionists
The election results present enormous challenges to unionists, including the dominant Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). The first problem is the obvious one. For the first time, there will be fewer unionist MPs in the new Parliament than there will be nationalist MPs, although nationalist MPs still do not have a majority, because the cross-community Alliance party has also won a seat. This is a problem, because the territory of Northern Ireland was deliberately designed to ensure a unionist majority in perpetuity. (Full disclosure: The author’s great-grandfather was the Irish representative on the Boundary Commission that controversially agreed to this border.)
Now, this century-long territorial gerrymander seems on the verge of collapse thanks to demographic and political changes. Nationalists do not enjoy a majority (because of the Alliance Party), but the result tells unionists that they are in long-term trouble.
That isn’t all. The DUP had a powerful voice in the last Parliament, because it could demand a price for supporting the minority Conservative government. Under the so-called “confidence and supply” agreement, it was not in government itself, but could demand concessions from the administration, including political concessions on Northern Ireland. That was one reason it was so hard to reach an agreement on Brexit.
The border between the Republic of Ireland and the North of Ireland became a key issue for negotiators, because of fears that reintroduction of border controls could destabilize peace. However, the DUP threatened to veto any agreement that created a separate arrangement for Northern Ireland, in case it damaged Northern Ireland’s link to the rest of the United Kingdom. In the end, Boris Johnson effectively abandoned the DUP and struck a provisional deal with the E.U. under which there would be no customs controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, but there would be controls between Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain. Now, the DUP is in a bad situation with little bargaining leverage.
The final problem for Unionists is very simple. Johnson’s Conservatives don’t seem to particularly care about unionists, and perhaps don’t even care very much about Northern Ireland’s territorial status. They were happy to weaken Northern Ireland’s relationship with Britain to reach a deal on Brexit. They are redefining their understanding of conservatism so that it is based around English nationalism rather than U.K. nationalism. That poses an existential threat to Northern Ireland unionists, who view the United Kingdom as the core of their political identity.
This does not mean a united Ireland
Northern Ireland is entering into a world of nationalist strength, unionist weakness, U.K. government near-indifference, and a Brexit deal that emphasizes connections between Northern Ireland and the Republic at the expense of connections between Northern Ireland and Britain. That might seem to add up to a united Ireland in a hurry, perhaps after a cross-border referendum. However, there are strong countervailing forces.
The first and most obvious of these is that the government of the Republic of Ireland does not want a united Ireland in the short term. It can see very well how Britain’s politics have been shattered by a divisive referendum over the country’s constitutional status. It does not want to import instability into its own political system by encouraging a referendum in Northern Ireland that would be similarly divisive.
It is notable that Ireland’s first response to the election result was to warn against moving to a united Ireland and to express the hope that Northern Ireland’s Assembly (which has been suspended due to disagreements between nationalists and unionists) might now be revived. The Republic’s government wants a return to stability in Northern Ireland rather than dangerous and unpredictable short-term change.
The second is that the party that really wants a united Ireland and political upheavals in the Republic suffered some setbacks in the elections. Sinn Fein, which was organically linked to Irish Republican Army paramilitaries, did well in capturing seats, but its overall vote fell. It is being challenged again by the Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP), its more moderate nationalist rival, which won two seats. The Alliance party, which works across both the nationalist and unionist community, made real gains in the election, likely by appealing to more moderate unionists. Sinn Fein’s strategy has been to build strength in both Northern Ireland and the Republic, so as to press for a united Ireland, where it could be a powerful force. It failed to make the progress it wanted to make in the last general elections in the Republic of Ireland, and now it is losing votes in Northern Ireland, too.
The result is long-term uncertainty for Northern Irish politics, but little short-term likelihood of a united Ireland. Unionists are uncertain about their future, but there is no strong and unified movement for a united Ireland. The party that most wants a united Ireland is losing popularity rather than gaining it.
Over the long run, increasing economic ties between Northern Ireland and the Republic might make a united Ireland more plausible. But even then there would be controversy: It is not clear, for example, whether voters in the Republic would be willing to pay the higher taxes that would be needed to maintain government services and high rates of government employment in the Northern Irish economy.
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I am planning to travel to Ireland and want to understand the impact of Brexit on Ireland, including the impact on currency exchange and imports and exports.  I am also interested in Irish perceptions of Brexit and supposed impacts, whether they are real or not.  What is transpiring in Ireland due to Brexit?  I'm not interested in the politics of Britain in the sense of how they got to Brexit. To be relevant, it must directly discuss Ireland.

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Ireland’s prime minister talks Brexit and Trump

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Leo Varadkar, prime minister of Ireland, cuts a sharp contrast to President Trump.
This week, Varadkar came to Washington ahead of a trip to Chicago for St. Patrick’s Day. Some of the optics may be awkward — the Irish leader plans to bring his partner, Matt, to meet Vice President Pence on Thursday. However, the timing may be key. On Tuesday, British lawmakers voted against Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal. The very next day, they voted against a “no-deal Brexit."
Today’s WorldView met with Varadkar on Wednesday, one day ahead of his meetings with the president and the vice president, to ask him about Brexit, Trump and what Britain’s exit from the European Union might mean for Dublin’s relationship with Washington.
The interview below was edited for length and clarity.
TWV: What is your reaction to the votes in London against a “no deal” Brexit on Wednesday?
Leo Varadkar: It’s evident to everyone that the situation is changing rapidly day by day. It’s quite dynamic and, I’m afraid to say, chaotic in London, as far as I am concerned. What happened today in the House of Commons, I think, is that MPs have clearly indicated that they don’t want to leave if there isn’t a deal.
What I hope now is, the possibility that things that had been ruled out months and years ago can be reconsidered. It may be an opportunity now for MPs to think about what Brexit really means. If they change their mind on those issues, such as the Customs Union and the Single Market, I think they’ll receive a very warm and generous response from the E.U.
Would you support some sort of extension to the March 29 deadline for Brexit?
An extension is better than no deal. I think everyone accepts this is a decision that will be made in Brussels by the European Council, of which I am a member. The decision must be made unanimously, so the obvious question that we’re going to want to ask the British government is how long an extension are you seeking, and what is the purpose of it?
What I wouldn’t like is a rolling cliff edge whereby there are a series of extensions. So perhaps instead — I am really only speculating here — a short extension that would allow the deal we’ve agreed to with the British government to be ratified or a much longer extension allowing us to explore a much closer relationship between the U.K. and the E.U. than had been envisaged up to this date.
Are the other E.U. leaders on the same page about this? Obviously, Ireland is very worried about issues like the border with Northern Ireland, for example, but other European nations have differing priorities.
There has been enormous solidarity behind Ireland on the issues of the peace process, the Good Friday Agreement and the border. A lot of people have predicted that solidarity would break — it hasn’t. The unity in the European Union is undoubted, just as nobody can doubt the extent that disunity now pervades politics in the United Kingdom.
Do you view the U.S.-Ireland relationship differently because of Brexit?
Brexit solidifies Ireland’s position as a reliable partner and a safe place for U.S. companies to invest because we know where we want to be in the world, which is at the heart of the European Union. We believe in free enterprise and free trade. We believe in the multilateral system, and we have a political consensus around that in Ireland.
Potentially, when the U.K. leaves the European Union, we can be a strong partner for the U.S. [in the E.U.] We will always be on team Europe, but we are going to be an English-speaking country — the only one in the European Union — and a country with a very similar business culture to the U.S.
I think potentially Ireland can be a bridge between the E.U. and the United States, which the U.K. can’t be anymore.
A lot of people would argue your administration and the Trump administration have quite different values. How do you reconcile that?
I am not sure I can. We are very different politically, and our governments are very different. We have very different views on social policy and very different views on multilateralism. I don’t think those can be reconciled, but I think that the relationship between Ireland and the U.S. is long-lasting, it’s strong. Governments in Ireland change, and presidents in America change. The job that I have to do and others have to do is to make sure that those things that transcend the administrations or governments that are in power are in place.
One thing that’s really changed about the U.S.-Ireland relationship is that it’s very much a two-way relationship now. Ireland is one of the top 10 investors in the U.S. — unimaginable just 20 or 30 years ago. So you know you have jobs, investments, trade going in both directions to the benefit of both. That’s something I’ll be saying to President Trump [on Thursday].
When he proposed his
We haven’t seen that. Perhaps more American companies are staying in the United States or are investing more in the United States rather than in Europe. But you know we mentioned earlier some of the political differences between the government that I lead and President Trump’s administration? There are areas of similarity, and one of those is that we believe in pro-enterprise culture. When the U.S. decided to reduce its corporation tax rate, we had no objections with that whatsoever.
There was a lot of speculation that President Trump’s visit to Ireland last year was
I’m actually not sure why it was canceled, but I imagine any visit to Europe and many parts of the world raises the risk of protest for President Trump. I don’t think it would stop him traveling to Britain or France, and I don’t think it’d stop him traveling to Ireland, quite frankly. We have a standing invitation to any U.S. president to visit Ireland.
There are areas in which [Trump] has been quite helpful to Ireland. We had an issue around Aughinish, which is a very big aluminum plant in the West of the country employing hundreds of people that was potentially threatened by sanctions on Russia. The U.S. administration was very helpful in protecting those jobs. They worked with us on immigration issues as well, particularly around regularizing undocumented immigrants who are Irish citizens in the States and easing immigration rules so that some of those Irish people who want to invest here can get [visas] more easily. He does own a business in Ireland, too, which we shouldn’t forget.
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Even if Johnson’s deal passes, Brexit won’t just be ‘done’

Want smart analysis of the most important news in your inbox every weekday, along with other global reads, interesting ideas and opinions? When British Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged members of Parliament on Saturday to back his Brexit deal, Northern Ireland is expected to remain at the center of the Brexit debate one way or another. There is no indication that the approval of a Brexit deal would hurt Johnson’s critics in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Want smart analysis of the most important news in your inbox every weekday, along with other global reads, interesting ideas and opinions?

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When British Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged members of Parliament on Saturday to back his Brexit deal,
The delay increases the likelihood of parliamentary maneuvers that could derail or alter Johnson’s plans this week, but Johnson isn’t heading toward certain defeat. He could still secure approval for his deal, perhaps without having to make use of the Brexit extension beyond Oct. 31, which Johnson was forced to request Saturday. After more than three years of uncertainty, there might be a tight majority for his agreement.
In case his deal is approved, Johnson is likely to celebrate himself as the man who got “Brexit done” — a phrase he has frequently used in the past. But in reality, the United Kingdom’s Brexit woes are here to stay. Many of the Brexit concerns that have been on Britons’ minds in recent years — a breakup of the United Kingdom or the possibility of severe economic ramifications, for instance — would remain a risk, even if Johnson’s deal is approved.
Northern Ireland is expected to remain at the center of the Brexit debate one way or another.
Johnson’s proposed deal would avoid the reintroduction of border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, but only because it would, in practice, move the customs border into the Irish Sea, which separates the islands of Britain and Ireland. Even though Northern Ireland would leave the E.U. customs union with the rest of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland would — at least initially — in some aspects remain aligned with the European Union.
That’s a major headache for Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which has backed the Conservative Party in Parliament but won’t support Johnson’s deal. The party fears that his plans would drive Britain and Northern Ireland apart and could lead to Northern Ireland eventually unifying with the Republic of Ireland.
“Paradoxically Mr. Johnson and Brexit may have done more for a united Ireland than the [Irish Republican Army] ever did,” Jonathan Powell, a former adviser to prime minister and Labour party leader Tony Blair, wrote in the Financial Times over the weekend. Poll numbers indicate that support for unification is on the rise in Northern Ireland.
Those advocating a break with the United Kingdom could see a similar rise in support in Scotland, where First Minister and Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon has been rallying support for a second independence referendum. Five years ago, Scotland voted to remain part of the United Kingdom, but — like Northern Irish voters — Scots predominantly backed remaining in the E.U. in 2016.
Last week, Sturgeon reiterated that “it is clearer than ever that the best future for Scotland is one as an equal, independent European nation."
There is no indication that the approval of a Brexit deal would hurt Johnson’s critics in Northern Ireland and Scotland.
But pro-E.U. MPs worry that hard-line Brexiteers may be hoping to derail those trade talks, in which case Britain could crash out of the current arrangements. In some ways, the economic ramifications of that would be similar to a “no deal” scenario and could result in a plummeting GDP.
Ironically, all of this — including Johnson’s deal itself — would constitute a more radical break with the E.U. than even some Brexiteers proposed in 2016.
Since 2016, however, the British electorate appears to have moved in the exact opposite direction. Whereas few “leave” or “remain” voters appear to have changed their minds on Brexit, polls have still started to show a consistent preference for remaining in the E.U. for at least a year.
Pollsters argue that the growing support for remaining in the E.U. is mostly a result of demographic change, The Washington Post’s Karla Adam writes. Some older voters — who tend to be more supportive of Brexit — have died. Meanwhile, younger Britons who have reached the voting age since 2016 are predominantly in favor of staying in the European Union.
As the idea of a confirmatory referendum on Johnson’s deal appears to be gaining momentum among the opposition Labour Party, there is a theoretical chance that British voters’ increasingly pro-remain attitude could still derail Johnson’s plans, even if Parliament passes the deal. The emphasis here, of course, should be on “theoretical.”
Brexit has consistently proved to be unpredictable. After more than three years, there does appear to be one certainty, however: Whatever happens, Brexit won’t just be “done,” as Johnson is suggesting.
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The Good Friday Agreement ended decades of conflict. Ireland worries Brexit could unravel it.

In 1998, after 30 years of violence that left 3,500 people dead, peace was finally achieved in Northern Ireland. Now some are concerned that Brexit could be putting at risk the treaty that helped end the fighting, usually known as the Good Friday Agreement.
A critical part of that agreement was softening the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which was militarized during the decades of violence known as the Troubles. Today, people and goods can pass freely across that border, thanks to the peace and the European Union’s policy of free movement between its member countries.
But if Britain leaves the E.U., it could potentially need to reestablish customs controls and entry points with Ireland. Many fear that returning such checkpoints to the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland — making it a “hard border” once more — would be reminiscent of the island’s dark past, potentially unleashing a new wave of instability.
“Both the U.K. and Ireland will have an obligation to honor the Good Friday Agreement, protect the peace and honor our commitment to the people of Ireland and Northern Ireland, that there won’t be a hard border,” Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said Wednesday.
Former U.S. senator George J. Mitchell, who served as independent chairman of the Northern Ireland peace talks, wrote in The Washington Post in December that changing the status of the border “could increase the possibility of a resumption of violence.”
Those living there have similar concerns. As William Booth and Amanda Ferguson wrote for The Washington Post in November, some people just over the border in Northern Ireland “worry that a bungled Brexit could rekindle tensions and possibly lead to violence.” In recent days, hundreds of people have gathered by the border, holding signs and protesting the possibility of new restrictions.
But attempts to solve the issue have ground the Brexit process to a halt.
The withdrawal deal that British Prime Minister Theresa May struck with the E.U. included a provision known as the “backstop” to make sure that a hard border would not be reinstated in Ireland. The backstop specified that Northern Ireland would leave the E.U. customs union only when Britain and the E.U. were able to work out an arrangement to avoid a hard border. It was intended to give the two sides time to hash out a final deal on the issue after Britain leaves the block on March 29.
Instead, the backstop enraged May’s coalition partners, Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, and many in her own Conservative Party. The dissidents argued that the backstop would essentially dismember Britain, placing Northern Ireland outside of it indefinitely.
After May’s deal went down to overwhelming defeat in January, the House of Commons voted to send her back to Brussels to try to secure “alternative arrangements” for the Irish border, prompting fears that those arrangements could include a hard border.
“What they have done is they’ve reneged on the backstop and reneged on the Good Friday Agreement,” Ian Blackford, a lawmaker from the Scottish National Party, said Tuesday.
May responded the following day, reiterating “the commitment of this government to the Belfast Good Friday agreement” and adding that Blackford’s remarks were “frankly irresponsible.” Blackford quipped back that “the only thing that is irresponsible is the actions of this prime minister.”
A hard border remains unlikely. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Wednesday that renegotiating the Brexit deal is not a possibility, as has the Irish government. Still, even the suggestion of such a move has many in Ireland on edge.
Ireland has now been put in “a desperate situation … through no fault of our own,” Diarmaid Ferriter, a professor of history at University College Dublin, told The Post. “It’s not Ireland’s doing, and we’re going to ultimately be the victims of it."


Could Brexit bring new troubles to Northern Ireland?

Saoradh’s headquarters in Derry were raided william.booth@washpost.com

LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland —
It was “a very sociable summer,” the Derry Girls recall. As easy as the breeze, they crossed the largely invisible border into the Republic of Ireland, to visit family, or share a pint, or swim in the sea during the unseasonably warm weather.
“So we all got to thinking how we take all this for granted — the freedom of it, the flow — and how it all could end,” said Nicola Herron, 52, a local doctor who joined the group of like-minded women to pressure politicians to keep things just the way they are.
“It’s scary, to be honest,” said Elaine Doherty, 50, a psychologist and fellow activist in the campaign, which formally calls itself Derry Girls Against Borders. “Brexit is just months away — and there’s not a single person who can tell you what will happen to us.”
The 310-mile border that cuts across the island of Ireland has become perhaps the single greatest impediment in the divorce negotiations between Britain and the European Union.
“A real sticking point,” as British Prime Minister Theresa May put it.
The challenges loom over how to continue to allow for the free movement of people and trade between the Republic of Ireland, which will remain in the European Union, and Northern Ireland, which will leave along with the rest of the United Kingdom.
And how to keep the border just as invisible, even as the U.K. and the E.U. inexorably diverge — each free to establish their own immigration controls, customs tariffs and food safety rules.
And finally, how to do all this without upsetting the delicate peace in Northern Ireland that has relied on an open border.
People north and south are quick to say there will be no returning to the “Troubles” — the vicious, intimate guerrilla war between pro-British Protestant unionists and Irish Catholic republicans that left more than 3,500 people dead.
Yet, sectarian lines remain deeply drawn in Northern Ireland. Many people in this border city — still known as Londonderry by Protestant residents and Derry by the 75 percent with Irish Catholic heritage — worry that a bungled Brexit could rekindle tensions and possibly lead to violence.
Today, driving along the Irish border, you might pass a farmer who has a barn in one country but grazes his sheep in the other. Almost 1 million people freely cross the squiggly line on the map each month. There are 200 official crossing points, and nobody knows how many dirt roads, foot trails and cow paths. The economies are tightly intertwined.
Border checkpoints, and all the militarized infrastructure of barracks, watchtowers, bunkers and blast walls, were removed from the island of Ireland in the aftermath of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, a hard-won pact that ended 30 years of violence. The deal was in many ways a masterpiece of diplomacy — it didn’t seek to resolve all political differences in Northern Ireland but instead acknowledged the “continuing, and equally legitimate, political aspirations” of republicans and unionists.
E.U. membership made such evasion possible. E.U. policies of free movement and free trade allowed Northern Irish republicans to feel more connected to the Republic of Ireland, while unionists could continue to be an integral part of the United Kingdom. No one had to choose. Lines, grievances, identities could begin to soften.
But after Brexit?
Republicans worry that a defined border on the island would undercut their relationship with the rest of Ireland. Leaders of Sinn Fein, the republican political party, have warned that any Brexit border would hasten the day they seek an island-wide vote to unify.
British loyalists are livid about the E.U. proposal to place a customs border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and Britain. May’s governing partners, Northern Ireland’s hard-line Democratic Unionist Party, oppose any kind of “special status” that would make them separate from the United Kingdom.
European Council President Donald Tusk has blamed the Brexit campaigners, “who are 100% responsible for bringing back the problem of the Irish border,” he said in a tweet.
In the 2016 referendum, 56 percent of Northern Ireland voters cast their ballots to remain in the European Union. In Derry, it was 78 percent.
“Brexit has re-politicized everything,” said Jennifer McKeever, president of the Londonderry Chamber of Commerce and owner of a shuttle bus service with a third of its staff and customers living across the border.
May and her European counterparts have promised there will never again be a hard border on the island of Ireland. But what’s a real-world and politically feasible alternative? They haven’t said, because they don’t know.
May vows that her negotiators in the transition period after Brexit begins in March will craft an unprecedented free-trade accord with Europe that makes an Irish border unnecessary.
Failing that, the prime minister says, Britain will deploy a not-yet-invented “technological fix” — perhaps a system that employs cameras with facial recognition software, plus mobile tracking apps and customs checks in warehouses far from the border.
Northern Ireland’s top police officer has warned that any customs posts or security installations would be viewed as “fair game” for attack.
“The last thing we would want is any infrastructure around the border, because there is something symbolic about it and it becomes a target for violent dissident republicans,” Chief Constable George Hamilton told the Guardian newspaper.
Paddy Gallagher, 26, is a spokesman for a new fringe political party called Saoradh, which means “liberation” in Irish. The group is home to hard-line republicans who reject the Good Friday Agreement.
Gallagher concurred that “any sign of a fixed border” would quickly become a target. A remote camera recording license plates? A customs collector with bar-code scanner? “Capable groups would be willing to attack them,” said Gallagher, careful not to endorse violence himself.
Saoradh’s headquarters in Derry were raided
People here point to a disturbing week of violence this summer, sparked by unionist parades celebrating the “Twelfth of July,” the victory of Protestant Prince William of Orange over the deposed Catholic king James II in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
Angry crowds in the Catholic Bogside neighborhood erected barricades to shut down streets. Although the protests were dismissed by many as “recreational rioting” by drunken mobs, more than 70 petrol bombs were hurled, alongside two pipe bombs thrown at police officers.
This civil unrest occurred on the same streets that were the backdrop of “Bloody Sunday,” when British soldiers shot and killed 14 unarmed protesters at a civil rights march in 1972.
“It was in Derry where the Troubles started, and it was in Derry where they ended, too,” said Brenda Stevenson, 51, a former mayor here and the niece of the Irish leader John Hume, who shared a Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 for his role in ending the conflict.
Today, there’s fresh graffiti in the Bogside urging the young to “Join the IRA” — even though the Irish Republican Army retired its armed campaign in 2005.
A short walk away, in the Waterside, the shrinking Protestant enclave, a mural proclaims that “the loyalists are still under siege.”
Time is running out on the Brexit negotiations. Frustrated by British delays, the Europeans have insisted on a “backstop,” a legally binding insurance policy, to preserve an Ireland without borders in the event that a free-trade deal eludes them. In that case, Northern Ireland would remain a member of the E.U. customs union until the issue is resolved — a proposal that May has, until now, rejected.
Along the Irish border, people worry that the British prime minister might abandon her commitment to open borders. They have good reason. Polling commissioned by the University of Edinburgh and Cardiff University found that 75 percent of English Tory voters would accept the collapse of the Northern Ireland peace process “as the price of Brexit.”
Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland think they are not taken seriously. Both sides were flummoxed to learn that Karen Bradley, May’s new secretary for Northern Ireland, was so ignorant about Irish politics that she confessed surprise in an interview that “people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa.”
Nor were they happy to hear former foreign secretary Boris Johnson say that a soft border in Ireland would be no different from the discreet cameras that record and later charge drivers congestion fees for vehicles entering central London.
Jeanette Warke, 74, founded the Cathedral Youth Club for children in Protestant Waterside in 1972 with her husband, David, now deceased. They were worried about youths joining paramilitary groups.
Warke said she voted to leave Europe, although “we were not clear what Brexit was about.”
She said, “You voted to ‘leave’ if you were Prod [Protestant] and ‘remain’ if you were Catholic, was the way it seemed to me.”
If there were another referendum today, Warke said, she would vote to stay in Europe. She’s now worried, too, about tomorrow.
william.booth@washpost.com


Trump thinks that Ireland wants a border wall. Good grief.

President Trump is paying a brief visit to Ireland, where he met with Ireland’s “Taoiseach” (prime minister) Leo Varadkar. In his meeting, he said, “Probably you will ask me about Brexit because I just left some very good people who are very much involved with Brexit, as you know. I think that will all work out very well, and also for you with your wall, your border.” Varadkar was quick to correct Trump, saying, “I think one thing we want to avoid, of course, is a wall or border between us.” He was being diplomatic. The very last thing that Ireland wants is the border wall that Trump seemed to be suggesting.
Brexit is the reason the Irish border is a political issue in the first place. The border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (which is part of the United Kingdom) has always been politically vexed. After Ireland became independent, it fought a civil war over the question of whether Northern Ireland should be part of the new state, and Northern Ireland “republicans” spent decades committing terrorist offenses in pursuit of a united Ireland. However, the fact that the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland were both members of the European Union helped take some of the poison out of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. It was possible to remove border posts controlling the flows of goods and people, since these were not required between E.U. states.
Now that the United Kingdom is probably leaving the E.U., the border is becoming a big political issue again. Nobody wants to bring back border controls, least of all the Republic of Ireland, which fears that dissident republicans might use border controls to win support and stir up violence. Yet if the United Kingdom is no longer subject to the customs, immigration and market arrangements of the European Union, there is a clear threat of a return to a closed border.
This is the complex problem that Trump has gotten himself entangled in. Trump believes very strongly that walls solve border problems. He doesn’t seem to understand how walls can create problems, too. Yet a wall — or any physical barrier — between Northern Ireland and the Republic would have massive political and economic consequences, undermining peace, and damaging an economy that now spans the whole island of Ireland.
It is likely that Trump got some of his misunderstandings from talking to pro-Brexit politicians in the United Kingdom just before coming to Ireland. Pro-Brexit politicians have been highly frustrated with the Irish border situation, because resolving the problem is one of the preconditions for a basic deal on Brexit. The deal Theresa May tried and failed to get through the British Parliament included a “backstop” — a commitment by the United Kingdom that it would agree to a special arrangement for the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic in the event it could not reach a full deal. Pro-Brexit politicians hated this arrangement because this would require the United Kingdom to stay subject to E.U. rules, leading them to vote down the proposed deal.
Trump’s comments were embarrassing for the United States because they revealed that Trump did not really understand the issues between the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. However, they are probably not going to do significant damage to relations among Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Irish and British politicians have already priced in Trump’s inability to understand the nuances of Brexit. Indeed, his comments about the wall were more ambiguous and hence less obviously wrong than his previous suggestion that the United Kingdom should leave the European Union and then sue it.
Indeed, it is possible that Trump officials and family members have come away with a positive impression from the visit. While Trump is highly unpopular in Ireland, the official meeting with the Taoiseach took place in an airport VIP lounge, making protest difficult. Trump is now staying in his private golf course in the western part of Ireland. The inhabitants of the local village nearby are unlikely to make a ruckus, since they view his visit as an opportunity for profit.
Ireland’s priorities during the Trump visit were not to get Trump’s support in negotiations with Britain. They were to secure smaller concessions on issues such as immigration (Ireland has many undocumented citizens living in the United States) and to avoid major diplomatic catastrophe. Irish politicians and diplomats are probably breathing a quiet sigh of relief that the official part of the visit is over and that nothing terrible has happened.


Northern Ireland’s parliament collapsed three years ago. On Saturday, lawmakers go back to work.

BELFAST —
After three years of paralysis, the leaders of Northern Ireland's two largest political parties agreed Friday to return to work at their regional parliament, ending a bitter feud that undercut faith that the two sides — one Protestant and unionist, the other Catholic and nationalist — could forge a common way forward.
The Northern Ireland Assembly will meet Saturday, for the first time since January 2017, to appoint new speakers and ministers.
The three-year adjournment of a parliament would be crippling in most settings. But to cynics in Northern Ireland, it suggested that their politicians were not missed.
Leaders in Britain, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, described the long hiatus as the height of irresponsibility, as both sides abandoned their roles. It was a reminder, too, that peaceful coexistence in Northern Ireland remains tentative.
The agreement to get back to work was based on a no-nonsense “New Decade, New Approach” put forward by an exasperated Britain and Republic of Ireland.
Britain, which oversees affairs in the region, threatened that if the political parties could not resolve their differences and return to Stormont, the region’s assembly in Belfast, they would be forced to immediately face voters in an election neither side particularly wanted.
In quick succession Thursday and Friday, first the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which wants to maintain Northern Ireland’s union with Britain, and then the Irish republican party Sinn Fein said they were prepared to endorse the 62-page document.
The deal includes a new Office of Identity and Cultural Expression, which would promote both Irish and British culture in Northern Ireland on an equal basis.
It would recognize, enhance and protect the use of the Irish language in Northern Ireland, a right activists have long sought.
The new agreement would also make it more difficult for any one party to stand in the way of legislation. Previously, the DUP had blocked same-sex marriage — though, while Stormont was shuttered, the British Parliament legalized same-sex marriage and abortion in Northern Ireland.
The 2017 collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly was bundled up in the long strife between unionists and nationalists, but with new twists.
Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness essentially disbanded Stormont by resigning the joint position he held with DUP leader Arlene Foster.
McGuinness, who died two months later, had been incensed over what was known as the “Cash for Ash” scandal.
The Renewable Heat Incentive, which was set up in 2012 when Foster was enterprise minister, was modeled on Britain’s program to encourage farmers and businesses to switch from fossil fuel to biomass heating.
However, there was no cap on usage, so $2 could be paid in subsidies for every $1 spent, and costs spiraled out of control as users gamed the system.
A public investigation, which could prove especially damaging for the DUP, is due to conclude in the coming months.
But at the heart of the impasse over the past three years have been arguments over the use of the Irish language, and struggles over how British and Irish identities in the contested region are promoted.
Northern Ireland has enjoyed relative peace and prosperity since the Good Friday Agreement was brokered, with assistance from the United States, in 1998 — ending three decades of sectarian violence known as the Troubles, which saw 3,600 soldiers, combatants and civilians killed.
On Friday, Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said her party was ready to share power with all other parties. She described the official recognition of Irish identity and funding for the Irish language as marking a “historic moment,” and said the pact would put Irish Gaelic on a par with English in Northern Ireland.
McDonald said many “challenges lie ahead, including the impact of Brexit, austerity and other pressing issues.” The Sinn Fein leader said her party would continue to press for a referendum on Irish reunification, which the unionists oppose.
A previous attempt to get a deal, in February 2018, proved unsuccessful after DUP leaders said they couldn’t sell the Irish language elements to their supporters, amid fears that the promotion and expansion of Irish would detract from their British identity.
The DUP’s Foster said the new deal is “fair and balanced,” with the inclusion of “many mechanisms to strengthen the union,” and she hailed Britain’s promises to spend more on the region.
“The key to making devolution work will be having the resources to do so,” she said.
In recent weeks, thousands of health-care workers, including nurses for the first time, have been striking over pay and staffing levels in Northern Ireland, adding further pressure on the parties to get back to work.
Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, described the deal as “historic.”
Johnson said it is “a great step forwards for the people of Northern Ireland and for restoring public confidence in stable devolved government and delivering much-needed reforms to public services.”
william.booth@washpost.com


Northern Ireland’s peace was already in trouble. Brexit is making things harder to fix.

The murder of Lyra McKee, the young journalist killed by the “New Irish Republican Army” in Northern Ireland last week, has focused attention on how Brexit might affect Northern Ireland’s fragile peace. Whatever happens with Brexit, it has already weakened the 1998 Good Friday Agreement’s institutional fixes that led to paramilitaries dropping their arms. That has complicated an already difficult political situation.
The problems that Brexit poses for Northern Ireland are complicated by the fact that the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly have been suspended since January 2017. That’s the locally elected government and legislature that were established as part of the Good Friday peace agreement.
That agreement brought an end to the Troubles, the 30-year civil conflict between unionists, who are predominantly Protestant and want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, and nationalists, who are predominantly Catholic and want Northern Ireland to be part of the Republic of Ireland. One of the agreement’s main provisions required them to share power in the Executive and the Assembly.
But in 2017, the main parties representing each side — the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Fein — ceased working together, as the agreement required, leaving the province without a regional government. These fights were unrelated to Brexit. But Brexit — or more particularly, the heated atmosphere in British Parliament and among the wider public — has distracted the British government and kept it from pressuring the political parties in Northern Ireland to resolve their disputes. As a result, politicians have stopped engaging across sectarian lines. With no one to make policy decisions, the head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service told the BBC, there’s been a “slow decay and stagnation” in public services. Ordinary citizens have lost faith in government.
The Brexit process has also damaged the relationship between the governments of Britain and the Republic of Ireland — a relationship that once provided a framework to accommodate Northern Ireland’s warring sides. But the two governments’ shared understanding has degenerated as they fight over the status of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Although all sides want to prevent violence from resuming, they differ on how to deal post-Brexit with the border, which — because both nations have been European Union members — currently has no passport or customs checkpoints.
That has to change if Britain leaves the E.U. At the Irish government’s insistence, the E.U. will only sign an exit deal if Britain agrees to keep the border open: In other words, traffic can continue to flow freely without passport and customs checks. Prime Minister Theresa May agreed to this “Irish backstop.” But Parliament has rejected the withdrawal deal three times — in no small part because many members of Parliament object to the backstop.
Pro-Brexit members of British Parliament argue that the Irish government’s position has made it impossible for Parliament to approve the withdrawal deal. These politicians seem willing to sacrifice the peace agreement in Northern Ireland if it allows them to exit Europe. The relationship between the two countries is as frayed as it has been in decades.
Since the 2017 election in which May lost her majority in the House of Commons, she has depended upon the Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party’s 10 MPs to stay in power. The DUP is right-wing, fiscally frugal, socially conservative and ultra-unionist. It was also the only party in Northern Ireland not to sign the Good Friday Agreement — and the only party to actively campaign in favor of Brexit. Though it is the largest party in Northern Ireland, it only won about 36 percent of the vote in 2017.
The DUP’s role in propping up May’s party places it at the center of parliamentary debates over Brexit. Northern Ireland’s second-largest party, Sinn Fein, represents 29 percent of the vote and is staunchly nationalist. However, Sinn Fein’s seven MPs do not take their seats in Parliament because they refuse to recognize Britain’s sovereignty in Northern Ireland. These two facts lead to debate in Parliament that is profoundly skewed in favor of only one side of the historic conflict in Northern Ireland: the unionist perspective.
The Brexit process demonstrates how the Good Friday Agreement did not fundamentally erase the conflict’s divides — even if it did produce an arrangement that most Unionists and Nationalists could live with. Since McKee’s killing, the British and Irish governments have announced new talks among the Northern Irish political parties to restore the Assembly and the Executive. But it will have a hard time persuading them to work together given all the damage the Brexit process has done.
Kimberly Cowell-Meyers is an assistant professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University.
Carolyn Gallaher is a professor in the School of International Service at American University and the author of “


These 5 countries are busy prepping for a post-Brexit world

DUBLIN — To measure Ireland’s profound vulnerability to a no-deal Brexit, just go to any slaughterhouse or supermarket in this nation — and ask who eats that beef, or how that bread, milk and beer reached the shelf.
Take Guinness. It’s brewed in Dublin, bottled and canned in Belfast, sent back for distribution from Dublin, then often heads back north or across the Irish Sea to Britain for three border crossings before it reaches the consumer.
The same goes for milk, which is shipped back and forth for processing and sale in both jurisdictions. Similarly fluid trade applies for cattle, pigs and sheep. Northern farmers often sell their animals for slaughter in the south, and the meat often is shipped back into Northern Ireland or elsewhere in Britain.
Then there is Ireland’s dependence on Britain for critical goods and services: prescription and over-the-counter drugs, electricity and natural gas. These would keep flowing in a no-deal Brexit, but they would travel more slowly and at greater cost to Irish consumers.
“I’m convinced we will be hit harder by a no-deal Brexit than Britain itself,” said Dan O’Brien, senior economist at one of Ireland’s main think tanks, the Institute of International and European Affairs in Dublin. “We are much more trade-dependent. We export more beef to Britain than anywhere else. Even more importantly, a huge amount of our imports either come from the U.K. or via the U.K. Many of us produce goods bound for Britain. Everyone in Ireland is a daily consumer of British goods.”
As a result, nowhere outside Britain is watching the Brexit shenanigans at Westminster more closely or nervously than Ireland, whose own economic management is held hostage by the British government’s vow to leave the European Union and its borderless trade environment without any successor agreement in place.
Economists broadly agree that Ireland’s vibrant economy is close to overheating, with near-full employment and rising wages amid unaffordable housing, deficits tamed thanks to record tax hauls from U.S. multinationals based here, and growth near the top of the E.U. table.
The government of Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said it wants to unveil a 2020 budget next month that keeps a fiscal lid on things — but the crash-out Brexit being threatened next door would force the Irish to do the opposite, pumping money into an economy suddenly reeling from a severe shock.
“It is hard to plan when we do not yet know what the U.K. will do. But Irish business needs to plan for the worst,” said Irish Business Minister Heather Humphreys. “Waiting and hoping for the best is a gamble we cannot take,” she said. “It would be a sure way to end up going to the wall when hard Brexit becomes an unwelcome reality.”
In recent weeks she has regularly hosted events to help companies dependent on British trade secure state-backed bridging loans, pivot to new products and markets, and smarten up on accounting skills before new customs barriers and tariffs hit.
The introduction of those new trade barriers are all but certain to snarl traffic in Ireland’s ports and along its border with Northern Ireland. That invisible line represents Britain’s only land border with the E.U. — a line that Brussels expects the Irish to enforce in event of Brexit.
InterTradeIreland, a cross-border agency established as part of the U.S.-brokered 1998 peace accord that ended decades of bloodshed in Northern Ireland, said more than 1 million deliveries cross the 300-mile border each year. None are taxed or stopped for checks, thanks to joint E.U. membership.
A study commissioned by Northern Ireland’s Department of the Economy found that many of the 11,000 businesses involved in imports and exports between Ireland and Northern Ireland would find a post-Brexit border too expensive and bureaucratic to manage, leaving trade to wither.
One of those traders, O’Neills, is the largest sports equipment manufacturer in Ireland. It’s based in Northern Ireland in the border town of Strabane and could find its production of uniforms and equipment for thousands of Gaelic football and hurling clubs taxed as foreign exports.
“Half of our employees live in the republic with the border barely 1½ miles away,” said O’Neills Managing Director Kieran Kennedy. “Any delays on that border would cause us severe problems, especially if there’s tariffs and duties, which would add 10 percent to our costs and would make us uncompetitive.”
“Most businesses in the north are depending on sales to Europe,” he said. “It would be an absolute disaster for Northern Ireland if there was a no-deal Brexit and a hard border. We’d lose the whole of the European market.”
The Irish also need Britain’s “land bridge” for transporting perishable goods between Ireland and continental Europe. Aidan Flynn, general manager of the Freight Transport Association of Ireland, said it typically takes trucks bearing European goods around 20 hours to reach Ireland via the Chunnel Tunnel or English Channel ferry and British highways — and double the time if forced to use cargo ships that bypass Britannia.
“It makes no economic sense to pay your drivers to sit drinking on a boat for the guts of two days,” he said.
He forecasts that some popular goods and key ingredients would start to run short within two days of a hard Brexit, because Irish supply chains are premised on next-day deliveries from Britain — even for staples such as bread. Almost all milled flour comes from Britain.
“We might have to live without it, or pay through the nose for the privilege,” Flynn said.
Ireland’s Economic and Social Research Institute estimates that a no-deal Brexit would cost each Irish household an annual average of 3,000 euros (about $3,300) before tax as many goods rise in price by 30 percent or more — including British-distributed staples such as cereals, tea, coffee, sugar, ice cream and soft drinks.
But Humphreys said Ireland has spent the past three years preparing for Brexit to ensure that goods speed through Dublin Port, the key point of entry. “I meet regularly with retail distributors who have strong exposure to British trade,” she said. “ … They tell me they’re doing everything they can to ensure a continuity of supply and bread on the shelves.”
French customs officials will soon start on a dry month-long test of their Brexit preparedness, forcing companies to pretend that Britain already departed without a deal. Companies that want to do business with Britain will have to file their plans online, make their declarations to customs officers and potentially open up their shipments to inspectors, Gerald Darmanin, the French minister in charge of overseeing the customs agency, told RTL radio.
France does plenty of business with non-E. U. countries, he said. Companies should just be ready to deal with Britain as though it were “South Africa,” he said.
“For a month, we are going to act as if there is Brexit for a large number of companies,” he said. “We’re going to put in place a sort of general rehearsal, so that we are ready at the end of October.”
More than 4 million trucks go through the northern port of Calais every year. Right now, they face minimal controls, since there is no customs border between Britain and France. Much of the trade is done by businesses that have no prior experience with customs controls and borders.
Officials fear that if there is a disorderly withdrawal from Europe, the holdups from the trucks could snarl traffic across northern France. They are bolstering the ranks of their customs officers by 700, and the customs agency is practicing all through September to prepare for a sudden British departure.
Stress is spiking. Customs workers went on strike earlier this year to demand higher pay for the anticipated stress they will face with the new demands. French fishermen who ply British waters wonder whether they will lose access to their fish stocks overnight. Winemakers have put expansion plans on hold.
France may line up with other E.U. countries to apply for disaster funding that officials in Brussels said Wednesday they were considering repurposing for a no-deal Brexit. The $660 million fund usually is used for recovery from forest fires and earthquakes. This year it may be used for an economic explosion of a man-made variety, officials said.
The French government still sees a no-deal Brexit as the most likely scenario, officials have said, and they have held Brexit briefings with French businesses. They are bracing for an economic slowdown, an unwelcome development for French President Emmanuel Macron, who has just started to move beyond months of “yellow vest” protests against his leadership.
With its signature efficiency, Germany has long been preparing for the impact of Brexit. Its port authorities assure that measures are in place to avoid disruption, and its Finance Ministry said preparations for a no-deal Brexit are “largely completed.”
In an attempt to mitigate potential Brexit chaos in export-dependent Germany, customs authorities are hiring 900 additional employees to carry out the checks that will be required overnight in case of a no-deal.
As of Aug. 1, some 620 of the new customs employees had been hired, based at the main international cargo airports of Leipzig, Frankfurt, Cologne and Munich, as well as the seaport of Hamburg, according to the Central Customs Authority.
But with the country already at risk of recession, pundits have warned that Brexit could help push Germany over the edge. Britain is Germany’s fifth-largest export market, though exports to Britain have dropped for three consecutive years since the Brexit vote, in part due to the drop in the value of the pound.
German companies say they are doing what they can to prepare themselves. Cars are the backbone of Germany’s manufacturing industry, and its automobile giants have been some of the most vocal lobbyists against Brexit — while taking steps to shelter themselves against the fallout.
Britain is not just Germany’s biggest single export market for cars but also a key supplier of parts. Car companies have a complex supply chain, where parts often cross Europe’s tariff-free borders more than once, meaning they could be hit particularly hard by a no-deal Brexit.
BMW has shifted some of its engine production out of Britain. In July, it said it had switched the manufacture of engines destined for South Africa from the West Midlands to Germany. Industry experts say manufacturers have also shipped additional finished cars to Britain to prevent a disruption in supply.
Other sectors are also moving to get ahead of Brexit. The German pharmaceutical company Bayer has built extra warehousing in Britain. German banks have been attempting to contact clients they believe might be affected, to help them cushion the blow.
An article in German regional newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt this week laid out for its readers the bleakest scenario: Tens of thousands of jobs are at stake, and billions for Germany’s economy. Visitors to Britain will have to navigate visa applications, and there could be a shortage in medical supplies. But it also pointed to a small bright side for tourists: The pound has been falling for months. “Traveling to the island and shopping in London will be cheaper,” it said.
Spain is home to more than 300,000 Britons, according to registrations with the Spanish government, a larger share than the other 27 E.U. states.
Anticipating a possible no-deal Brexit, Spain passed a contingency plan in March promising British residents certain rights and a fast track to permanent residency.
But the decree explicitly demanded reciprocity for the more than 150,000 Spaniards living in Britain.
But little else suggests Spain has been gearing up for a no-deal Brexit — and the country has much at stake.
In March, the Bank of Spain estimated a chaotic Brexit would cause a 0.8 percent drop in the Spanish gross domestic product over the next five years, amounting to some 10 billion euros (over $11 billion).
Britain is the top European-country investor in Spain, committing some 80 billion euros in 2017. Britons are also key to the housing market, making up 23 percent of transactions of used houses in 2018.
And there are signs that British investors are already growing skittish. Britons made up only 13.8 percent of real estate sales to foreigners in the first quarter of this year, down from 15 percent in 2018, according to the Association of Property Registrars.
“Spain has not put in place any incentives for real estate investment for Britons,” said David del Val, with the financial analysis and market research company Afi. “We have a golden visa schedule that allows non-E. U. residents to gain an E.U. visa by buying property above a certain threshold and with some extra requirements, but this obviously does not apply to Britons yet.”
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has said he intends to safeguard the rights of Spaniards living in Britain, as well as to maintain administrative and legal cooperation on criminal matters.
“My main goal was to guarantee that the U.K.’s decision [to leave the E.U.] would have the smallest possible impact on citizens and businesses,” he said earlier this year.
In addition to providing permanent residency for Britons living in Spain, the post-Brexit plan puts in place other key measures recognizing working and voting rights and providing driving permits, social security, unemployment, education and health care for these Brits.
The bigger challenge may be not the Brits living in Spain but retaining the tourists the country hopes to attract. Every year, Spain’s coasts and islands flood with tourists roasting on the beaches and enjoying their summer homes on the Mediterranean coast — and until now a sizable share of those tourists have been British.
But Spain recorded a 1.4 percent drop in British tourists in the first half of 2019, according to the National Institute of Statistics.
Spain also faces a challenge managing the border with the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, which sits on Spain’s southern tip and has long been a sore spot between the two E.U. countries.
Gibraltar depends on an estimated 15,000 border workers — some 9,000 of whom are Spaniards. A chaotic Brexit would force Spain to reopen border control stations and could cause long delays. For now, the gates remain open.
Unlike other E.U. member states, Poland isn’t particularly stressed about the possibility of a no-deal Brexit.
“Honestly speaking, I would not say we have far-reaching countrywide preparations for Brexit,” said Jakub Borowski, chief economist at the Crédit Agricole bank in Warsaw. Borowski pointed to a widespread belief in Poland that a deal with Britain will eventually be struck and a no-deal scenario avoided. The country’s overall economic dependency on Britain is also relatively low, despite strong Polish-British ties, he said.
“In the long run, a hard Brexit can even be positive for Poland because we may benefit from migration and investment,” Borowski added.
About 900,000 Polish nationals are estimated to live in Britain, the highest number of any E.U. nation.
Facing unemployment and low wages at home, younger Poles especially began moving to Britain when it opened up its labor markets in 2004. The mass emigration of Poles soon began to worry lawmakers in Warsaw, however, who feared the “brain drain” could hamper economic growth.
Britain crashing out of the E.U. could be an opportunity to “reverse migration trends and attract back” some of the Poles working in Britain, Mariusz-Jan Radlo of the Warsaw School of Economics wrote in an analysis last year. That could have a positive impact on Poland’s “long-term economic growth,” according to Radlo, as the Polish economy suffers from a shortage of skilled labor.
Polish economists hoped a no-deal Brexit would lead to the transfer of more production facilities to Poland. “Poland looks attractive in terms of location, quality of the labor force and wages,” which remain lower than in many other parts of Europe, Borowski said.
Still, he acknowledged that the impact “in the short run can be painful,” especially for companies that would face higher-than-average tariffs on exports to Britain. Some of those companies have begun to look for ways to diversify their export markets.
Remittances from Britain could also decline significantly if there is a hard Brexit, with the British pound expected to lose more of its value and fewer Poles expected to move to Britain.
Personal remittances from Polish migrants to their home country made up about 1.2 percent of Poland’s GDP last year, according to World Bank estimates. But analysts said lost remittances could be balanced out by Polish nationals moving their families — and potentially their companies — to Poland.
Pogatchnik reported from Dublin, Birnbaum reported from Brussels, Rolfe reported from Madrid, and Morris and Noack reported from Berlin.


Why Boris Johnson is already clashing with Ireland over Brexit

In his first address to lawmakers as the newly appointed prime minister of Britain last week, Boris Johnson made one thing clear: He does not support the idea of an Irish backstop, a measure that would tie Britain to European trade policies as a way to maintain a soft border between Ireland and northern Ireland.
“No country that values its independence and indeed its self-respect could agree to a treaty which signed away our economic independence and self-government as this backstop does,” Johnson said. “If an agreement is to be reached, it must be clearly understood that the way to the deal goes by way of the abolition of the backstop.”
The comments provoked disbelief in Ireland and elsewhere in the European Union, where leaders see maintaining the backstop as nonnegotiable.
On Tuesday, British and Irish media reported that Johnson and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar had a terse phone call — their first since Johnson became Britain’s leader — in which Varadkar “emphasized to the prime minister that the backstop was necessary as a consequence of decisions taken in the UK and by the UK government.”
The border is a highly sensitive issue in Ireland because its current arrangement was negotiated as part of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that put an end to the 30-year period known as “the Troubles.”
During that time, sectarian violence between Unionists, who wanted Northern Ireland to stay part of the United Kingdom, and Nationalists, who wanted it to belong to the Republic of Ireland, killed more than 3,500.
Now, there are fears that the reinstatement of tight border controls between the two sides could ignite a dangerous new wave of tensions reminiscent of that era.
Many are also eager to maintain the status quo because it would help to preserve the relatively unrestricted trade that exists between Northern Ireland and Ireland. But British lawmakers who oppose the backstop have expressed concerns that it will force Britain to continue to abide by E.U. trade rules.
After Johnson’s remarks last week, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said Johnson appeared to “have made a deliberate decision to set Britain on a collision course with the E.U. and with Ireland.”
Varadkar told Irish broadcaster RTÉ that Johnson’s remarks were “not in the real world.”
“Listening to what he said today, I got the impression that he wasn’t just talking about deleting the backstop, he was talking about a whole new deal — a better deal for Britain,” Varadkar said, referring to Johnson’s remarks. “That is not going to happen.”
Speaking in Donegal, Ireland, on Friday, Varadkar said he thinks that if Britain leaves the E.U. without a deal, the unity of the United Kingdom could be drawn into question.
“I think increasingly you see liberal Protestants and unionists who will start to ask where they feel more at home,” he said. “One of the things that ironically could really undermine the union of the U.K. is a hard Brexit, both for Northern Ireland and for Scotland, and that is a problem they are going to have to face.”
But over the weekend, Johnson doubled down on the comments, calling a backstop “anti-democratic.”
Although the Troubles technically ended in the late 1990s, a number of violent incidents have rocked the area near the Irish border in Northern Ireland in recent months. In April, journalist Lyra McKee was shot and killed after riots broke out in the northern Irish town of Londonderry, home to a large population of Irish nationalists.
Former U.S. senator George J. Mitchell, who chaired the peace talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement, wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post late last year that changing the border “could increase the possibility of a resumption of violence.”
Fears over a hard border deepened in January, after then-Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal was overwhelmingly struck down by British lawmakers, who ordered her to return to the drawing board and determine a new arrangement for the border with Ireland. Some who oppose a hard border saw that as May essentially reneging on the Good Friday Agreement, a claim May insisted was untrue. E.U. leaders made clear at that time that the backstop was nonnegotiable.
But now, Johnson’s renewed calls to abolish the backstop that would protect the current border arrangements have left many confused about what may come next.
Johnson has threatened to leave the E.U. without a deal if he can’t renegotiate a new one by the October deadline. And E.U. commissioner Claude Juncker has made clear that the E.U. is unwilling to consider a renegotiation — especially one that abolishes the backstop. In his first call with Johnson last week, he said the most recently negotiated arrangement was “the best and only agreement possible."
And chief E.U. Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier called Johnson’s insistence on removing the Irish backstop “unacceptable.”
Read more
The Good Friday Agreement ended decades of conflict. Ireland worries Brexit could unravel it.
Could Brexit bring new troubles to Northern Ireland?
A battle over language is at the heart of Northern Ireland crisis


Theresa May’s Brexit speech may break the Northern Ireland peace process

On Friday, British Prime Minister Theresa May will deliver a speech at Belfast’s Waterfront Hall. Its contents have been widely leaked. May is set to denounce the “backstop” her government negotiated with the European Union as part of the Brexit agreement. She will say that the proposal would breach the Belfast Agreement that secured peace in Northern Ireland and leave the people of Northern Ireland without any representation in trade negotiations. She will say that “the economic and constitutional dislocation of a formal ‘third country’ customs border within our own country is something I will never accept and I believe no British prime minister could ever accept. And as they made clear this week, it is not something the House of Commons will accept either.”
This speech is a very big deal. The backstop arrangement is a crucial part of Brexit negotiations. It also may have major consequences for peace in Northern Ireland. May’s hostility to the backstop probably doesn’t have much to do with constitutional principle. It is more likely driven by politics within her own political party, and the demands of the Democratic Unionist Party, which is propping up May’s minority government.
Peace and borders are closely connected in Northern Ireland
To understand what is going on, it’s first necessary to understand the role that the European Union played in the Irish peace process. The shared E.U. “customs union” and a “single market” avoided the need for border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This not only made it possible for the two economies to become highly integrated. It also had symbolic importance, in allowing people and goods to move back and forth between the two jurisdictions, without any necessary implication that Northern Ireland would become politically united with the Republic.
Britain’s decision to leave the European Union has politicized border controls, raising the question of how to reconcile the fact that the Republic of Ireland is still in the European Union, and operates under E.U. customs and market rules, and Northern Ireland soon will not. Unionists — who want to stay part of Britain — do not want any arrangement in which Northern Ireland would have separate rules from Britain. They fear that this might lead Northern Ireland to drift politically closer to the Republic. Republicans and nationalists — and the government of the Republic of Ireland — do not want any arrangement in which Northern Ireland would have a “hard border” with the Republic. The problem is that it is difficult to avoid a hard border, without some kind of special rules and status for Northern Ireland.
This is why the Northern Ireland border question was supposed to be settled before Brexit negotiations proper began. It turned out to be impossible to reach a deal on what to do with Northern Ireland’s status, but E.U. negotiators and the Republic of Ireland accepted a compromise under which Britain agreed on a “backstop” arrangement. The European Union and Ireland interpreted this deal as saying that if no better mutually acceptable arrangement could be found, Northern Ireland would stay in the European Union’s Single Market and Customs Union, allowing the real negotiations to begin.
Britain is backpedaling on the backstop
Britain always wanted to interpret the backstop commitment more flexibly than the European Union. It tried to persuade the European Union to accept a deal under which Britain would stay inside E.U. customs and market arrangements for some period while it sorted out its own long-term status, but would not be bound by the broader commitments of E.U. membership. The European Union made it clear that this proposal was unacceptable, because it would plausibly allow Britain an enormous degree of freedom both in terms of when it decided to leave, and how it interpreted its obligations toward Europe.
Furthermore, pro-Brexit members of the Conservative Party, who had once promised that Britain would remain part of the customs union, now want a much “harder” Brexit than they once said they did. Theresa May, fearing that pro-Brexiters would split her party and perhaps force her resignation as leader, agreed last week to terms imposed by the pro-Brexit faction. One of her concessions was a change to the British customs bill that declared that it would be unlawful for Northern Ireland to be “part of a separate customs territory to Great Britain.” This meant that Britain has legally pre-committed itself to refusing to implement the backstop that the European Union thought had already been agreed.
The politics of the backstop are not being driven by constitutional worries, but by Britain’s inability to get the European Union to agree to a fudged agreement on customs and single market membership, the intransigence of May’s own party members, and the weakness of May’s leadership. It is furthermore likely that the Democratic Unionist Party, which is propping up May’s government, has also demanded that there be no arrangement that would distinguish Northern Ireland from the rest of Britain.
This may destabilize Brexit negotiations — and Northern Ireland
May’s speech will have stark consequences for Britain’s Brexit negotiations. She is presenting the European Union with a fait accompli, binding her government to a negotiating position that the European Union has made it clear it will not accept. It is theoretically possible that this will work to her advantage. Sometimes, as political scientists such as Robert Putnam have argued, weakness at home may turn into strength abroad. If you are too weak, you won’t be able to implement concessions that other governments would like you to make. However, the danger of weakness is that you may be caught in a position that is simply unacceptable to other countries’ negotiators, so that no deal is possible. This is the big risk that May is taking. If her new demands are unacceptable to the European Union, Britain will find itself in a “no deal” Brexit that could have very damaging consequences for the British economy.
Furthermore, the speech’s intransigence is likely to have consequences within Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland’s peace deal was already in serious danger, as a result of distrust between the major parties. May’s speech is likely to be interpreted by nationalists as a strong signal that she is in the pocket of the Democratic Unionist Party. Already, nationalists are having difficulty restraining radicals from returning to “the armed struggle.” May’s speech is likely to add greatly to their difficulties.


Brexit could make Ireland a ‘special friend’ to the United States, Irish ambassador says

The “special relationship” between Britain and the United States has been a fixture of international politics for decades. Could Washington now also have a “special friend” in Ireland?
Daniel Mulhall, Ireland’s ambassador in Washington, thinks so. And he says it’s largely because of Britain’s departure from the European Union.
“Brexit is a game-changer for Ireland,” Mulhall said to The Washington Post. “We become a bridge between the European Union and the United States both for investment but also for influence,” he added.
Those hopes even have a tangible symbol: This month, seeking to expand its diplomatic mission in Washington, the Irish government closed a deal to buy a 6,500-square-foot building once used by the Egyptian Embassy. It’s still a far cry from Britain’s gargantuan embassy compound, one of the biggest in Washington, but it’s a signal of Dublin’s intent.
Before he took up residence in Washington last year, Mulhall served as Ireland’s ambassador to Britain. He personally campaigned against Britain’s vote to leave the E.U. in 2016; after British voters approved Brexit, he later told a reporter, he felt “sadness” that Britain’s relationship with Ireland was being risked.
Now he sees Brexit as a new opportunity for Ireland — one that could rival many Brexiteers' own hopes for an economic future that relies on greater trade with the United States and other nations outside of Europe.
“Britain is under a cloud of uncertainty as far as its future access to the European single market in concerned,” Mulhall said. “We feel that any country that’s looking at either expanding its presence in Europe or establishing a presence for the first time will look less favorably on Britain and more favorably on Ireland.”
After Brexit, British leaders have clung to the idea of an unbending Anglo-American bond. British Prime Minister Theresa May was the first world leader to visit President Trump after he took office last year. Both leaders praised the “special relationship” during that visit, with May saying it was based “on the bonds of history, of family, kinship and common interests.”
But at the same time, Britain’s position as a member of the E.U. was one of its key selling points. “We are strong and active members of the European Union, the gateway to the world’s largest single market,” said May’s predecessor, David Cameron, in a 2010 speech.
With Britain looking to leave the E.U., many other E.U. countries are now pledging to become Washington’s new “gateway to Europe.” Ireland may be a particularly attractive base for American companies: Its common-law system is similar to the American legal structure, and it is known for being one of the most business-friendly countries in the E.U.
And, of course, Ireland and the United States share a common language. “We will be the only English-speaking country left in the European Union,” Mulhall pointed out.
Outside experts agree that Ireland is well positioned to strengthen its ties to the United States. “Ireland’s institutions have been calibrated toward attracting U.S. investment for decades, which places the country in a strong position to attract investment which may pivot away from the U.K. post-Brexit,” said Neil Dooley, a politics lecturer at the University of Sussex.
Given that Ireland is a relatively small country — just 4.7 million people — even a small change could have profound effects on the economy. Irish firms are in the process of reforming their business plans for a post-Brexit future, according to Sean Davis, the regional director for Enterprise Ireland, a state economic agency that promotes new export sales.
Davis said that 73 percent of Irish companies that work with Enterprise Ireland have taken some kind of action to deal with a post-Brexit future. That often means planning to steer their exports away from Britain. “The U.K. is going to become less attractive to Irish companies,” Davis said.
Companies sponsored by Enterprise Ireland opened 59 offices in the United States last year, according to Davis. In total, there are more than 800 Irish-owned companies in the United States, with 100,000 people employed by Irish-origin companies.
That’s a useful talking point given the Trump administration’s focus on protecting American jobs, but there could be other issues down the line. The United States has a considerable trade deficit with the Ireland, and Trump has specifically called out the country as a “tax haven.” The tax cuts passed by Republicans in 2017 appear to have hit U.S. investment in Ireland, according to Irish estimates.
And with Trump, there’s always the risk of unexpected feuds. The president is at odds with the Irish government on a variety of foreign policy issues; he has already canceled one trip to Ireland amid planned mass protests.
As such, any hopes for a “special relationship,” with this president at least, may be premature. “I don’t think Ireland kids itself that it has a special, meaningful relationship with the U.S.,” said Brian Lucey, a professor at Trinity Business School at Trinity College Dublin. “Particularly with Trump, where there’s a hard-nosed, mercantilist approach.”
But Mulhall argued Ireland knows how quickly things can change. “We were by far the poorest E.U. country” 40 years ago, he said. “Today we’re one of the richest ones.”
“This is, I think, one of the most exciting projects of my 40-year career in the foreign service,” he said of Ireland’s new global ambition. “We’re no longer a weak country trying to pull itself up by its bootstraps. We now have strengths and we need to deploy those strengths to advance our interest further in this changing and sometimes volatile international environment.”
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How Brexit will impact Ireland facts and fiction

How Boris Johnson and President Trump risk destabilizing Northern Ireland

Amanda Sloat Read more: Amanda Sloat: Sacrificing peace in Northern Ireland is not acceptable price for Brexit Michael Dobbs: Boris Johnson may be planning an electoral coup straight out of the Trump playbook Maya Goodfellow: Boris Johnson and his regressive cabinet mean disaster for Britain The Post’s View: Boris Johnson is optimistic. How long will that last? Fareed Zakaria: Boris Johnson will accelerate the decline of Europe Ryan Bourne: Don’t lump Boris Johnson together with Donald Trump

Amanda Sloat
Since taking office on July 24, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has outlined a significantly harder stance on Brexit than his predecessor, Theresa May. He has made clear that Britain is leaving the European Union on Oct. 31, with or without a deal. He is refusing to negotiate with E.U. leaders unless they reopen the withdrawal agreement and remove the Northern Ireland backstop, which are long-standing E.U. red lines. He also announced more than 2 billion pounds to fund no-deal contingency plans, including stockpiling medicine and hiring more border officers.
As Johnson and his “war cabinet” of hard-line Brexiteers push forward with their demands, the risks to Northern Ireland are increasing. But instead of seeking to stabilize the peace process, President Trump has encouraged Britain to abandon divorce talks with the E.U. in favor of a trade deal with the United States — a position that could have potentially disastrous consequences.
Northern Ireland remains the biggest hurdle to Brexit. Britain is part of the E.U.’s customs union and single market. It will leave both after Brexit, elevating the border with Ireland to a customs border with associated controls. This will create practical challenges and devastate many who endured decades of sectarian violence. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which addressed security and governance concerns of nationalist and unionist communities and took steps to mitigate identity politics, removed checkpoints along the border.
The British government has argued that it can avoid border infrastructure by developing technical alternatives or negotiating a post-Brexit economic agreement with the E.U. Unless and until either occurs, European leaders insist on an insurance policy: Britain must remain in a customs union with the E.U., and Northern Ireland must comply with single-market regulations on goods. Johnson views the backstop as “anti-democratic,” as it does not allow unilateral British withdrawal, hampers the negotiation of trade deals and was not endorsed by Parliament.
The E.U. has been clear that a no-deal Brexit would result in a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, though the British and Irish governments have pledged not to impose controls. Yet both countries have incentives to find a solution. In order for London to negotiate a post-Brexit trade deal with the E.U., Brussels has insisted it must first accept measures that keep the border open and protect the E.U. single market. In order for Dublin to maintain trade with the rest of the E.U., it must comply with regulations governing its border with a nonmember.
All of Northern Ireland’s political party leaders stressed the dire consequences of a no-deal Brexit during Johnson’s visit to Belfast this week. There are economic risks, including the projected loss of 40,000 jobs and an estimated decline in exports to Ireland of 11 percent to 19 percent. There are security risks, with police chiefs long warning about unrest and attacks on customs posts. There are also political risks, with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar cautioning that a hard border could heighten calls for Irish reunification.
The lack of governance in Northern Ireland creates further complications. The power-sharing executive, a key component of the Good Friday Agreement, collapsed in January 2017 after disagreements between the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and nationalist Sinn Féin over mismanagement of a green-energy program. Repeated attempts to restore the government have failed. Absent democratic oversight, civil servants are reluctant to make decisions. Given the complexity of a no-deal Brexit, Britain’s top civil servant has recommended imposing direct rule. London reclaimed decision-making authority from Belfast at various points during the first decade after the agreement. Yet suspending the devolved government now would be contentious, particularly for the nationalist community, as Johnson’s reliance on the DUP’s 10 legislators for a one-seat parliamentary majority in Westminster would privilege the unionist position.
Although the United States has long supported the Northern Ireland peace process, the Trump administration has been notably absent. Instead, the president has called Brexit a “great thing,” warned that the current divorce settlement would threaten British trade with the United States, and promised Johnson a “very substantial” deal once his country leaves the European Union. Both leaders are ignoring Brexit’s inconvenient truth: If Britain deviates from E.U. economic rules, there will be more freedom to negotiate new trade agreements, yet greater need for intrusive checks along the Irish border.
Congressional leaders and prominent Irish-Americans are filling the silence. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) first raised the alarm in April when she toured London, Dublin and Belfast to warn that Congress would not support a trade agreement that damaged the peace process. Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee that could block a trade deal, and Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), co-chairs of the Friends of Ireland caucus, reiterated similar pledges this week. A group of 40 Irish-American leaders raised related concerns in a letter to the new British government.
As Britain races toward the Brexit cliff, the Trump administration must join other worried Americans in putting peace before trade.
Read more:
Amanda Sloat: Sacrificing peace in Northern Ireland is not acceptable price for Brexit
Michael Dobbs: Boris Johnson may be planning an electoral coup straight out of the Trump playbook
Maya Goodfellow: Boris Johnson and his regressive cabinet mean disaster for Britain
The Post’s View: Boris Johnson is optimistic. How long will that last?
Fareed Zakaria: Boris Johnson will accelerate the decline of Europe
Ryan Bourne: Don’t lump Boris Johnson together with Donald Trump


Brexiteers ignored Ireland. Ireland may have the last laugh.

A former staffer on the official campaign to persuade Britain to leave the European Union recently recalled an awkward moment from about a month before the Brexit referendum: The BBC’s flagship evening news program phoned the campaign’s offices in London to see whether someone would come on the show to debate the effects of Brexit on the Irish border — and no one wanted to do it.
Even the most able media performers felt that “they simply lacked real knowledge of the issue,” the ex-staffer, Oliver Norgrove, recently wrote in a column in the Irish Times. What’s more, the fate of the border seemed like a minor question: “I remember quite vividly the feeling of unease and discomfort about the prospect of us talking about something we just didn’t feel needed addressing,” Norgrove wrote.
In a classic case of the return of the repressed, the question the supporters of Brexit refused to address has come back to haunt them. Theirs was a dream of a simple, once-and-for-all escape from the past 46 years of history. Britain would erase the recent past, in which its destiny has been intertwined with that of its continental neighbors, and begin a new and glorious story. But there is another history, one in which Britain has been entwined, for many centuries, with an even closer neighbor, Ireland. That story cannot be erased. And the impossibility of escaping from it has, in the end, made Brexit itself impossible.
If Brexit has come crashing down to earth, the piece of Earth in question is a straggling, meandering, perplexing and porous line on the map: the 310-mile border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It emerged as a temporary line of partition in 1920 — ironically during another episode in which a country was exiting a larger union. Catholic Ireland was breaking away from the United Kingdom. The Protestant-dominated Northeast wanted to remain. So it was agreed that there would be a short-term boundary until a permanent solution was found.
That never happened. The temporary line became a permanent, fraught border. Irish nationalists regarded it with resentment as an improper imposition on the natural unity of the island. Unionists, on the other hand, regarded the border as their defense against being absorbed into a Catholic-dominated United Ireland against their will. During the 30-year conflict that racked Northern Ireland — between 1968 and 1998 — the border became one of the most heavily policed in the world, with armed troops, watchtowers and the buzz of military helicopters overhead. For the communities separated by it, it was a daily reminder of bitter and violent difference.
And then a wonderful thing happened. Britain, Ireland, the E.U. and the United States worked together to create one of the finest diplomatic achievements of the past 50 years: the Belfast Agreement of 1998 (also known as the Good Friday Agreement). With peace, the border more or less vanished. The military and police installations were removed, and because both Ireland and Britain were in the E.U., there was no need for customs posts, either. For 20 years, people have come and gone freely over about 300 crossings to work, trade and socialize — 105 million times a year. When I travel now from Dublin to Belfast, I struggle to remember where the border is — it is a line on a map, not a barrier on the road. The most the traveler is likely to encounter is a sign saying “Welcome to Northern Ireland." It would be hard to overstate how much this has contributed to the sense of normality and the building of ordinary human contact that underpin the hard-won peace. A generation has grown up with this physical and psychological freedom.
But along came Brexit. Its effects, if implemented in their pure form, would be not just to restore a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic but also to make it much more extreme than it ever was before. It would now be a major E.U. land border, a boundary between Britain on the one side and a 27-member bloc on the other. This would be profoundly unsettling for a peace process that has made huge progress but is still fragile.
The naked truth is that the prospect of disrupting the peace agreement really does not matter to the voters in Britain who backed Brexit. Asked whether “the unraveling of the peace process in Northern Ireland” is a “price worth paying” for a Brexit that allows them to “take back control,” fully 83 percent of “Leave” voters agree that it is. This attitude reflects the recklessness of those who campaigned for Brexit, their blithe ignorance of and indifference to the consequences of what they were proposing. In this, the border question merely points to the broader reasons the whole Brexit project is such a dismal failure: It was never more than a set of slogans. It was all about the joy of exiting, with no clear sense of what condition the United Kingdom might be exiting into.
Brexit is in part a product of a resurgent English nationalism, and polls have shown that those who voted Leave are not too concerned if it leads to the breakup of the United Kingdom. In one recent survey, over 60 per cent of Leave voters said they would not be greatly or at all concerned were Northern Ireland to depart from the U.K. and join a United Ireland. Since the violence of the Troubles diminished, this part of the British state has been increasingly out of sight and out of mind.
While Britain, which is the sovereign power in Northern Ireland, did not take its needs seriously, the E.U. did. For all its faults, the E.U. does understand itself as a peace project. What happens in Northern Ireland matters to its sense of Europe’s identity. So the E.U. has fully backed Ireland in its insistence that there can be no hard border after Brexit. And this means that Northern Ireland (and, hence, the United Kingdom as a whole) has to remain aligned with the E.U.’s customs union and single market “unless and until” some other way of keeping the border invisible can be found. This “backstop” is written into the withdrawal agreement and has been, for the British, its most contentious aspect. It kills the fantasy of a clean break from recent history and makes Brexit a largely pointless exercise.
In theory, the U.K. could just leave the E.U. without a deal and ignore the consequences for Ireland. But that option is so damaging to its own economy that only a small rump of fanatics still clings to it. The alternatives to the backstop put forward by the supporters of Brexit have failed to gain any purchase. One was a fabulous deal with the E.U. in which “frictionless” trade will continue – in other words the U.K. leaves the E.U.’s club but still enjoys all the benefits of being in. It is a fantasy. The other was the idea that technology could be used to monitor cross-border trade with no physical infrastructure. Such technology does not yet exist. So if we exclude make-believe and science fiction, we are left with the unpalatable reality that a post-Brexit U.K. has to stay so close to the E.U. that leaving hardly seems worth the bother.
Their own culpable ignorance of Northern Ireland will not stop the Brexit zealots from blaming the Irish for the mess. In their eyes, Brexit would always have been a triumph were it not for the crazy complications of John Bull’s Other Island. Boris Johnson, who led the Leave campaign in 2016, has railed against the backstop as a “monstrosity” that “is being used to coerce Britain into becoming a vassal state of Brussels.” But if it is a monster, it is one conjured by the Brexiteers from the depths of their rage against political and historical realities. Their willful delusions — regarding Northern Ireland and much else besides — were always bordering on the insane.