The hard border everyone wants to avoid looks increasingly likely

When pondering the long and often troublesome relationship between Britain and Ireland in the early 20th century, someone once said that Britain's problem was that it always looked at Ireland "through the wrong end of a telescope".

It could neither see its people, nor what they wanted, properly.

Given the events of the past few weeks and months, the charge against many British politicians must be considerably worse since then: these days, they don't bother to look or think about Ireland all.

But we're thinking about it now. Because it is Ireland, not money, which threatens to destabilise the Prime Minister's negotiations.

Ireland has the power of veto over Britain moving onto the next stage of trade negotiations, which it has said it will use if it is not satisfied that the Brexit settlement won't make the border in Northern Ireland less porous.


We now have less than 10 days to sort the problem before December's EU summit.

Many in Westminster's media and political class have seemed surprised at Ireland's perceived truculence.

They shouldn't have been, if they'd been paying attention to what the Irish government has been saying for months, it's clear the writing has long been on the wall.

The typical British response to the situation in Ireland has been perfunctory and, at times, bordering on insouciant: usually going along the lines of "where there's a will there's a way".

"Ireland will sort itself out."

Image: Theresa May is reputed to have told Leo Varadkar that 'we are close' on a deal

The competing narratives of this question apparently extend up to and including the leaders of both countries themselves.

So much so that, at an EU summit in Gothenburg last week, Theresa May is reputed to have told Leo Varadkar that "we are close" on a deal - to which the Taoiseach responded that this was "fantasy".

Indeed he told me in an interview later that day that the two sides were "nowhere near close".

This situation we find ourselves in now stretches back to the referendum.

During the campaign, aside from a few game attempts by former prime ministers (and architects of the Good Friday Agreement both) John Major and Tony Blair to discuss it, Ireland - and the issues pertaining to the border which Brexit would inevitably involve - barely got a look in on the mainland.

Given that Brexit might imperil the hard won political stability of one of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom, that is extraordinary.

That curious and ahistorical attitude stretched up to the then Northern Ireland Secretary, Theresa Villiers herself.

Thus the Irish and British public were treated to the bizarre spectacle of a British Northern Ireland Secretary publicly advocating and campaigning for a political outcome which, whatever its overall rights and wrongs, would almost certainly lead to a destabilisation of the political situation and stability in the region for which she was responsible.

The situation since has not been much better.

There is perhaps no finer example of the Anglo-shrug of all matters Irish than the much vaunted 4,000 word article by the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Brexit, which he wrote before the Conservative party conference.

4,000 words of his usual glittering penmanship. Not one word about Ireland.

How are we to explain that? Especially from politicians of the Conservative and Unionist party, of all things?

Image: Ireland's Prime minister Leo Varadkar at the European Social Summit in Sweden

In some ways it involves the passing of time. The darkness and damage of the Troubles, to many of us on the mainland at least, seem remote and distant.

The Good Friday Agreement has been almost too successful: it has allowed us to put Northern Ireland's troubles in a box marked "history".

It has thus apparently given way to a deep complacency amongst a generation of politicians who assume things will be fine in the end.

Some, perhaps more troublingly, are aware of the risk but ultimately care about Brexit more than Ireland - and are therefore willing to roll the Irish dice to get it.

In some ways, in terms of our ignorance of matters Irish, t'was ever thus.

Britain has generally ignored its smaller neighbour until its problems proved so great that it had little choice but to confront them.

But there's a difference this time: for the first time, with its veto, Ireland has serious power over her larger neighbour.

They have the power to unlock something we desperately want - but the Irish key looks nearly impossible to obtain.

Arlene Foster warns DUP will block any move for Northern Ireland to follow EU laws

The Irish government has been clear that they will not accept any situation where the border is any harder than it is at the moment.

To that end they have suggested that the best option (as reiterated today by Irish EU Commissioner Phil Hogan) is for the UK to stay in the customs union and preferably the single market too.

But the British government has also been clear since the PM made her Lancaster House speech in January: we are leaving both. To resile from that would not be tolerated by her backbenches or indeed, many in her cabinet.

Ireland has therefore suggested some sort of special status for Northern Ireland. Perhaps the province could stay in the customs union and single market.

That, however, has been rejected by the DUP for the obvious reason that Northern Ireland would become more closely bound to the Republic and the rest of the EU and slowly drift away from Britain (by far the country's biggest export market).

The truth is much of the Brexiteer argument on Ireland was always rather woolly.

For a start many of those who currently say that the Irish situation will be fine in the end do so in the same breath as saying that a No Deal outcome is possible - and some even say that it is desirable.

In the case of a "no deal", we would conduct only WTO trading with Ireland and the UK would be duty-bound to erect the hardest of hard borders on goods between north and south. It would be the biggest threat to the peace process possible.

The other contradiction lies at the heart of the Brexit Ireland paradox itself.

Image: Johnson wrote 4,000 words on Brexit with no mention of Ireland

Adherents of Brexit usually claim it is a huge economic and political revolution. At the same time they say things in Ireland can remain more or less the same as they are now. It cannot be both.

After all, what is the point of Brexit if we cannot take back control of our borders?

In order to do so, we must have a border with the EU. One of those borders will be in Ireland.

The government is trying to find a good answer to an impossible riddle. Sometimes, goodwill isn't enough.

Ministers are fond of pointing out Britain and Ireland enjoyed the fruits of the common travel area and free trade with Ireland long before we joined the EU.

That is true. But they forget it is no co-incidence that Britain and Ireland joined the EU on the same day.

If one had been part of a common market with Europe and the other hadn't, that would have exacerbated the already considerable divides which existed at that time.

In leaving the EU now, for the first time in our modern histories, Ireland and Britain will be operating under different regulatory regimes. This is uncharted territory.

And we ought to remember too that EU membership was written into the particulars of the Good Friday Agreement. The agreement depended on a perfect equilibrium which EU membership provided.

Being in the same travel area, the same single market, the same customs union, the same overarching political confederation meant that both sides felt that the province had a political foot in both camps, one in Britain, one in the Republic.

The future was obtainable to both sides.

It gave the unionists certainty of Ulster's links with the UK but also tantalisingly gave nationalists the hope that, however distant, Northern Ireland might slowly economically and politically drift south as their political and economic systems converged.

That is why the prospect of a hard border is so unacceptable to the Irish government now: It entirely cuts that off.

And on a personal level too, as Irish writer Fintan O'Toole has persuasively argued, the EU facilitated a pick and mix approach to identity for those in the province.

Identities became fluid, shared and particular. Brexit - once again - forces people to choose.

A way to solve the Irish border question?

We've already seen some of the old acrimonies reappear. A war of words has broken out between the north and south.

Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster has warned Leo Varadkar "he should know better" and "stop playing around with Northern Ireland."

DUP MP Sammy Wilson accused the Irish government of trying to thwart the Brexit process.

The Irish government has been no less vituperative. More worryingly still some of the vitriol is spreading to the press. The Sun newspaper recently instructed the Irish Taoiseach to "shut his gob".

This can't all come down to the British, the Irish will have to give to.

They have nothing to gain from Britain leaving the EU without a deal which would create the very hard border they are desperate to see avoided.

But their problems have been made worse by political instability in Ireland. The country could yet face a general election as a result of a domestic political scandal before Christmas.

That would make it even more difficult for Leo Varadkar to compromise. He will face considerable domestic political pressure to continue to play hardball. From their point of view it is the British who have decided to Brexit, it is for them, not the Irish to come up with a solution.

And no-one has come up with any solution which answers the problems. Someone is going to lose.

UK 'wants divorce and open relationship day after'

I fear that, when the history of this period and the Brexit process is written, it might not be the ins and outs of trade or courts and citizens' rights over which historians linger long, but the effects on the peace settlement in Ireland.

An outcome no-one wants seems now inescapable.

I hope I'm wrong. The situation may yet be resolved. Either way, I doubt that twenty or thirty years ago we would have treated the situation there with such abandon or showed such lack of interest.

And so the insouciant shrug of the shoulders will no longer do. The Irish issue was the referendum issue which did not bark. It's barking now. We must answer its call and do it urgently and convincingly.

As John Major said before the referendum, the hard men of the Troubles are still there. They are waiting and rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of a breakdown in the peace process. They are lying in wait.

The British government must make sure they never return. That might come at a cost of Brexit purity or the speed of Brexit or its form but ultimately the Queen's peace, on the mainland and in Ulster must come first.

W.B. Yeats, that greatest of Irishmen, more alive to the subtleties and nuance of the Anglo-Irish relationship than almost anyone, once wrote that :"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy...".

I wonder just how far away we might be from things falling apart. Lest they do we need to reach for our Irish telescope.

Let's hope our politicians, on both sides, hold it the right way round.