The British, whose national cuisine is already considerably less to write home about than that of many of their neighbours in Europe, are starting to find out, a little more each day, how the humble pie that Brexit will, inevitably, serve up as their just deserts is going to taste. There is no such thing as a painless divorce.
Only the arch manipulators of the world of British politics are pretending to enjoy the over-spiced broth of sovereignism that awaits them, as the ideology has doubtless had the effect of burning their taste buds out. However, in all layers of British society in which pragmatism still has a place, there is a growing realisation of the evident forthcoming disaster. This is the case among bankers in the City, of course, and the thousands of people who work for companies whose natural market is the single market, but also among farmers, who are suddenly discovering that Green Europe had more than just a downside. And even among the ordinary citizens who tipped the balance towards a “no” to remaining in the European Union, the sluggish economic forecasts that Her Majesty’s services are starting to disclose are leading them to doubt whether the decision they made was the right one.
Nothing and no one will come out unscathed from the rift that Brexit will inevitably be. All member states of the EU will suffer from the British defection, to a greater or a lesser extent. Those which are geographically or historically closest to the United Kingdom, however, are likely to be its biggest victims. And there are two regions, located on its periphery, that can now see the eye of the storm getting dangerously close.
Gibraltar is discovering with horror, to quote from its Chief Minister, Fabian Picardo, that there is an “existential threat” to this rock perched on the edge of Spain: with just 4% of its population having voted to break ties with the European Union, the prospect of being unceremoniously expelled from the single market on 29 March 2019 is the stuff of nightmares. Spain has long stressed that this will be Gibraltar’s fate, unless a deal can be sealed with Madrid in advance on the status of this hotly contested British possession.
Since then, not a thing: neither London nor the government of Gibraltar has moved – which you can possibly understand from Theresa May’s team, as they clearly have bigger fish to fry. But all of a sudden, 28,000 people are left in limbo.
The situation is even more complicated on the island of Ireland which, according to an assessment of the damage likely to be caused by Brexit carried out by the European Parliament in March of this year, will suffer “the same magnitude of losses” as its British neighbour, which prompted a Guardian columnist, Rafael Behr, to describe this British desertion as “economic aggression across the Irish Sea” (The Guardian, 14 November).
From an economic point of view, the harmful consequences could well be enormous if tangible physical borders end up being rebuilt between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland as the result of a hard Brexit. However, the consequences could be even more dramatic from a political point of view, as it could have the effect of re-establishing a border that was only “recently inked in blood”, to quote again from Rafael Behr.
It is a border that, though currently invisible in the framework of the EU, was protected by barbed wire and watchtowers before the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998. Today, thanks to the Belfast Agreement, to which the EU contributed an enormous amount, this invisible border is punctured by some 275 crossing points which allow the Irish, from the North and from the South, to contribute to the island’s economic development. Is it acceptable that simply because of Brexit, this ‘Peace of the Braves’ could be compromised by a government, the government of London, that has in fact pledged to help ensure cooperation on this scarred island on which too much blood has been spilled? By way of response, the government of London has so far provided only ambiguous answers and delaying tactics.
In reality, the only way to respect the Good Friday agreement is by avoiding a hard Brexit. Or, at least, making sure that the Emerald Isle can be given a derogatory status, allowing it to evade the disaster of the withdrawal of the United Kingdom – and therefore of Northern Ireland – from the single market and customs union. If this is not possible, a tangible border, with physical barriers and customs controls, will necessarily reappear: why should the Republic of Ireland accept that tomorrow, agricultural products that no longer comply with the sanitary standards in force in the EU should be allowed to enter the single market through it? It would be unthinkable!
For the time being, London is playing on words, stalling, confirming that the ‘perfidious Albion’ of yesteryear has not quite shaken off its reputation for perfidy. For Theresa May’s government, the Irish question is particularly awkward as they owe their fragile majority to a tiny Northern Irish party, the Democratic Unionist Party, which has made it quite clear that it is not ready to cut the umbilical cord with Great Britain. Before its very eyes, Theresa May’s ragtag team can see Dublin excelling at the very game the British so enjoyed for many years in a European context, that of drawing lines in the sand: with no commitment from the United Kingdom on preserving the invisible nature of the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar will veto the opening of negotiations with London on the future of the United Kingdom with the European Union.
This is quite fair enough and it is entirely healthy that in the major disarray of British rebelliousness, the 26 other member states are rallying behind the EU’s negotiator-in-chief, Michel Barnier, to back Dublin in this stand-off. At the European Council of mid-December, they will have to stand united to the end so that the Irish do not ultimately take the biggest hit in the whole of Brexit.
Times are changing: the days are gone when the UK could divide the European governments and, if not necessarily conquer them, at least stop the European Union from moving forwards. It is a positive thing that the Twenty-Seven are still, against all odds, doing all in their power to block what they feel is wrong, by backing Ireland to the hilt. We can only hope that Dublin will remember this solidarity when, one day or another, it is time to revisit the vexed question of unacceptable tax competition.
Michel Theys