Liam Halligan

Irish troubles

The Taoiseach leads a minority government — he has an incentive to make the Brits sweat

How did we get into this Brexit mess? Why is it proving so difficult to leave the EU? Was it Theresa May’s botched 2017 election, which vaporised her Commons majority? Or perhaps her general incompetence and lack of vision?

How about the fierce determination of Europhile civil servants to save stupid Leave voters from themselves, cooking up a half-in-half-out withdrawal guaranteed to split the Tories?

Maybe it was the cynical ambivalence of HM’s Opposition, with Labour simultaneously backing both Brexit and a second referendum, having always intended to cause chaos and spark a general election by voting down the UK’s exit, contradicting its own manifesto? Then there’s the relentless big business lobbying, with corporate vested interests determined to keep Britain behind the EU’s protectionist wall and smaller rivals ensnared in Brussels’s red tape.

I’d say all of the above. While the case for being outside the EU still stands, the process of Brexit has been crippled by a combination of home-grown shortcomings: weak leadership, venal party politics, anti–democratic mandarins and an overwhelmingly Remain-supporting media class. This damaging Brexit impasse, though, has been caused not only by British incompetence. A mighty contribution has also come from Dublin.

When it comes to Brexit, the Republic of Ireland has much to lose. If the UK and EU fail to strike a withdrawal agreement, and Britain leaves with no deal, the Irish economy will suffer. Yet by wildly over-playing his hand, teaming up with Brussels to adopt a maximalist, ultra-legalistic approach to the Irish border, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has made that outcome far more likely.

Having grown up ‘London Irish’ in the 1970s and 1980s, I feel in my bones the fragility of relations between the two countries that define my ethnicity. As such, the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and subsequent Anglo-Irish rapprochement have been a source of much personal relief to me and millions of other Irish exiles born and raised in Britain.

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