As far as Brexit is concerned it has always been clear that there was a perfectly credible solution to the Irish border problem: a combination of modern technology and old-fashioned common sense could deal with what is, in trade terms, quite a small matter.
But no, the EU had arbitrarily chosen to put this issue to the top of the list of Things That Must Be Settled Before Real Negotiations Can Begin. And to reinforce this sudden elevation of the Irish border to make-or-break status, it promoted the inexperienced Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar to world stardom. Well, you know the rest. We don’t need to retrace the steps of what looked like a tragedy until it turned out to be a farce. Suffice to say that the head of the pantomime horse was occupied by our old friends on the European Commission and the rear end was filled by Varadkar, who must have been thrilled by his personal visitation from Donald Tusk to announce that Ireland would have a unilateral veto over Brexit terms. This was, it has to be said, quite a wickedly irresponsible thing to do because it threatened to open a breach in a terrible, bitter dispute which has only recently — and tenuously — healed.
Mercifully, somebody pulled the strings that needed to be pulled in time so we have a solution to the Irish border question which will, I am willing to bet, hold up indefinitely. Oddly enough, on that long Thursday night, we also seem to have settled a couple of other outstanding difficulties. The final exit bill for the UK will be, according to reliable sources, £35-39 billion, which is higher than Theresa May’s initial offer of £20 billion (Dh98.3 billion) but far below the figure of £100 billion (with an indefinite commitment to future instalments) that had occasionally been bandied about in the more excitable quarters of Brussels. What is more, everybody now accepts that EU citizens in the UK will continue to have the same rights as they had before, as will UK citizens in EU countries. You don’t say.
Have any of these outcomes ever been in genuine doubt by realists on all sides? If not, what was all that hysteria in aid of last week? Of course, it was partly the fault of the UK government, which seemed to have been peculiarly obtuse in its dealings with the sensitivities in Ulster, but it also seemed to fit too well with the Brussels game of ritual mortification which must be visited upon Britain. As I may have said before, this is not a negotiation, it is a hostage crisis, in which payment (in both cash and abnegation) must be agreed before the terms of release can even be discussed. But something had clearly gone badly wrong. Watching Jean-Claude Juncker’s face and listening to his uncharacteristically gentle diplomatic words as he delivered his statement at the press conference of doom on Monday, it was clear that he was genuinely alarmed. This was not going according to plan. Ireland had gone from being one more mischievous trick on the British to an actual obstacle with possibly tragic consequences. In short, the EU had dangerously overplayed its hand.
Juncker and Varadkar fairly tripped over one another in their eagerness to pull back from the brink. So, in the dead of night, rabbits leapt out of hats, the intractable became manageable and the deal was done. We had now, it was solemnly intoned, made “sufficient progress” to be allowed to enter the proper negotiations over future trade relations which should have been going on simultaneously with that peculiar trio of pre-conditions ordained by the EU. Never mind. We are back in the real world now, which might seem like a relief to us but is the EU’s nightmare — which is why they have been so busy staving it off. Because when the truly problematic matters of trade have to be dealt with, serious divisions within the European Union will be flushed into the open.
That’s when the fun really starts. The melodrama and grandstanding of the past weeks between the UK and Brussels will pale in comparison to the spectacle of the poor Mediterranean countries within the Eurozone struggling to protect their interests against the dominance of richer northern ones, and the former Warsaw Pact countries resisting the French push toward greater centralised control. Just wait. Brexit will look like a warm-up act for the real European drama that is to come. Germany, which as yet has no government, has provided a splendid trailer for the upcoming feature. Last Wednesday, Martin Schulz, head of the SPD, whom Angela Merkel is fervently hoping will join her in a viable coalition, announced his proposal for a new EU treaty creating a true United States of Europe to include unified (and centrally controlled) fiscal and defence policy. Any member state which could not accept this would be forced to leave the union. (In fact this would happen automatically, since any new treaty must be ratified by all member states, most of which would be obliged to hold referendums for the purpose. Failing to ratify would trigger immediate withdrawal from the EU.)
Fiscal and military union would mean that there would be little point in voting for a national government ever again, since tax and spending policies and the defence strategy are the chief grounds for deciding which party one supports. Merkel has, for the moment, rejected Schulz’s suggestion. But in France, Emmanuel Macron is promoting more monolithic centralisation too, if in rather less crass terms. In the end, all those Brexit disagreements may come to look like so much posturing and prancing when the internal EU discord erupts.
—The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2017
Janet Daley is a political columnist and author. Her two novels are All Good Men and Honourable Friends.
