— ONE —

Brexit: ‘taking back control’

By unleashing English nationalism, Brexit has made the future of the UK the central political issue of the coming decade. Northern Ireland is already heading for the exit door. By remaining in the EU single market, it is for all economic intents and purposes now slowly becoming part of a united Ireland.1

– George Osborne, First Secretary of State (May 2015–July 2016)

The great political success of the Brexiteers is that they have convinced a narrow majority of the British people that most of their woes, even the weather, derive from Europe. In truth, scarcely any do, but foreigners make convenient scapegoats.2

– Max Hastings, British journalist and historian,
Bloomberg Opinion columnist

Brexit has spooked the moderate liberal Northern niceness, there’s no question about that, because in their European identity there was a wideness, so you can designate yourself as British or Irish singly, British and Irish both, British and Irish and European, British and European, Irish and European … That’s all been snatched away from people. That widening of national identity, in a strange way, Brexit has sharpened that distinctive of Britishness.3

– Rev. Gary Mason, Methodist minister, Director, ‘Rethinking Conflict’

Unionists’ and loyalists’ support for the Good Friday Agreement is predicated on there being no diminution of Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom … That’s the bedrock on which unionists and loyalists have supported the Good Friday Agreement. Anything that begins to undo or in any way detract or dilute Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom … presents the risk for serious disorder, which could very easily spill over into something much more looking like a conflict, and a militarized situation … In effect, it [Brexit] will see Northern Ireland become a rule taker … without a seat at the Brussels table … I think that has the potential for a serious breach in terms of the UK sovereignty, in relation to Northern Ireland. I think that could have serious consequences for the stability here that we enjoy.4

– Winston Irvine, former Progressive Unionist Party (PUP)
Director of Communications, Loyalist Communities
Council (LCC) member

The government of the republic need to be very careful about putting too much weight on Europe to help them and deal with the problems for them in the future … The South needs to be very, very careful, and it hasn’t been careful. It has, instead of seeing itself as a bridge between Europe and Britain, it has seen itself as a bulwark for Europe against Britain. But Europe will not help bail the South out if it runs into a balance of payments deficit with Britain. And Britain will not be so prepared to help out as it was in the past, because they will feel that Ireland was not helpful to them in their Brexit debate. So, I think the Republic of Ireland is not in a good place at the moment.5

– John, Lord Alderdice, former Alliance Party leader and Northern Ireland Assembly speaker, Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (B/GFA) negotiator

Brexit is a game-changer. In Breaking Peace: Brexit and Northern Ireland, Feargal Cochrane expounds on a meteor metaphor to analyse the impact of Brexit on the Northern Ireland peace process in the context of conflict transformation, focusing on the need ‘to provide peacebuilding shock absorbers that can withstand fundamental unforeseen circumstances – meteors – that hit peace processes with the potential to knock them off their conventional axes and change the local context’.6

The meteor analogy can be applied to the whole of the United Kingdom (UK). When the time frame to negotiate the terms of British withdrawal from the European Union (EU) and a trade agreement ended on 30 December 2020, four and a half years after the initial vote, there were signs that the future of the union itself was in jeopardy. A four-country poll in The Times in January 2021 revealed the extent of disaffection and disarray among citizens and the depth of the strains on the union: Scotland’s seemingly unstoppable march to independence; Northern Ireland wanting a border poll; England’s agnosticism with regard to the union; signs of a growing nationalism in Wales; and the overarching sense of Britishness fraying at the union’s seams.7 If one of the purposes of Brexit was to restore and aggrandize the UK’s sense of Britishness, the irony was that it achieved the opposite result. Only in England did voters put Britishness ahead of Englishness, in contrast to the Scots and Welsh whose national identities took precedence. English voters expected Scotland to become independent within ten years. Northern Ireland voters expected Northern Ireland would be united with the rest of Ireland within ten years.

Brexit not only changed the trading relationship between the UK and the EU, it changed the political relationship between the constituent nations of the UK. Above all, Brexit was driven by English nationalism.8 Unlike Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, each of which has its own devolved government, England is the only country in the UK not to have one. But England sends hefty subventions to the other three – 84 per cent of the population subsidizing a 16 per cent increasingly seen by the English as spongers on the British Treasury.9

After forty-three years (1973–2016) as a member of the EU, on 23 June 2016 the UK voted to leave by a vote of 52 to 48 per cent.10 The referendum question was a simple Leave or Remain choice, with no consideration as to what the divorce would entail or what kind of relationship the UK would subsequently have with the EU, whether it would be a ‘soft’ Brexit, which would see the UK continue to be aligned with the EU in a number of regards, or a ‘hard’ one, which would see the UK severing most links with the EU. Northern Ireland voted to remain by a 56 per cent to 44 per cent margin. Eighty-five per cent of the Remain vote came from voters with a Catholic background, 60 per cent of Leave votes from voters with a Protestant background. For self-defined nationalists, 88 per cent voted Remain, 66 per cent of self-defined unionists voted Leave and 70 per cent of those who chose to define themselves as neither voted to stay in the EU.11 Once identity labels are attached, the impact of political leanings became more pronounced.

It was not supposed to happen. Prime Minister David Cameron held the referendum in the certainty, shared by most elites, that it would fail, allowing him to see off the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party. No one had thought through the ramifications. The mantra ‘Taking back control’ galvanized support in England’s heartland, which had borne the brunt of de-industrialization over decades and seen little economic recovery, leaving communities with only the nostalgia for a past that no longer existed – a once-upon-a-time Britannia.12

Both the Leave and Remain campaigns were either ignorant of or oblivious to the B/GFA and the paramount importance of an open border between Ireland and Northern Ireland being one of the planks underpinning the agreement. Both campaigns were oblivious, too, to the fact that the agreement was embedded in EU law, to which Britain and Ireland were parties, and that the EU played a significant and ongoing role in the peace process. In terms of financial support, over €500 million had been pumped into the region ‘in structural funds for economic regeneration and crossborder co-operation’ under the EU’s second Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland.13 In addition, on an ongoing basis ‘two other EU programmes, INTEREG and PEACE IV, funnel approximately £470 million per annum into Northern Ireland, 85 per cent of which is bankrolled by the EU’.14 The European Convention on Human Rights is etched into every stitch of the agreement.

Cameron immediately stepped down after the Brexit vote to leave the EU, and Theresa May, the formidable Secretary of the Interior, took the helm. Touted as a Margaret Thatcher in the making, she turned out to be anything but. Just about every move she subsequently made was a mistake, some the result of hubris, some of ignorance, but most of them because of incompetence and miscalculations.

In a major speech at Lancaster House on 17 January 2017, May outlined a UK future outside of the EU that would see the UK leave both the Single Market and the Customs Union but remain a close member of the European community. She committed the UK to maintaining the Common Travel Area (CTA)15 and emphasized that ‘nobody wants to return to the borders of the past’ and that a ‘stronger Britain demands that we do something else – strengthen the precious union between the four nations of the United Kingdom’,16 a statement that was met with incredulity in Scotland and Northern Ireland, which had both voted to remain (the former overwhelmingly and the latter less so, but still substantively). May’s speech was long on the aspirational but short on clarity regarding how the objectives it enumerated might be achieved.

On 18 April 2017, in another catastrophic misjudgment, May announced plans for a snap general election.17 Rather than increasing...