Rafael Behr’s brilliant evisceration of the UK government’s shambolic handling of Brexit makes for depressing reading from the Dublin side of the Irish Sea (As Tories slug it out, does anyone care about Ireland?, 15 November). However, the suspicion remains here that the problem is not just with London but with Brussels too.
Brexit was initially met with anger by most Irish people but the upset receded as everyday life got in the way. Now it is back, and the island of Ireland is staring down the barrel of a hard border. These are glum and worrying times. Ireland is caught between undoubtedly ignorant rightwing Eurosceptic British politicians and the mammoth Brussels bureaucracy.
Europe will let us down if it feels it is absolutely necessary to do so for its own prosperity and survival. In 2011, the European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet warned the Irish finance minister Michael Noonan that a “bomb would go off” in Dublin if Ireland dared to burn bondholders. The Irish people have been solely carrying the massive debt burden of our banking collapse ever since – including, scandalously, the huge losses of international speculative investors.
When push comes to shove, will Ireland be a sacrificial lamb for Brussels in the Brexit negotiations as it was during the banking crisis in 2011? Quite possibly yes. The only difference this time, it seems, is that we might be sacrificed primarily for long-term political, rather than financial, stability in the wider European Union “family”.
Joe McCarthy
Dublin, Ireland
Spot-on from Rafael Behr regarding Brexit and Ireland. I like his phrase “diplomatic cohesion”. We have none. Theresa May can insist all she likes about being benign, but I fear she is part of a process – a process – of not taking Ireland or Northern Ireland at all seriously. No PM since Tony Blair has.
I recall that towards the end of my period as a direct rule minister in 2006, I was asked at a Belfast reception by more than one person – did I think the next PM would take the same interest as the then current PM? There was concern that the situation would be fragile for many years. I said I hoped so. I was wrong. All three successors to Blair have failed to give the time, effort and commitment to the island of Ireland, be it north or south.
There are a series of policy issues from energy to waste that are going to haunt the UK government during Brexit, and none of them need have been an issue.
Jeff Rooker
Labour, House of Lords; minister of state, Northern Ireland Office, 2005-06
No one with even a cursory knowledge of Irish history can be surprised that Tory cabinet ministers are willing to risk peace and prosperity there over Brexit; moments of even-handedness and reason, notably the Sunningdale agreement in 1973 and John Major’s 1996 Downing Street declaration, stand out from centuries of callous disregard and disrespect of Irish humanity and nationhood. While the Good Friday agreement was proceeding to implementation from 1998, already William Hague as opposition leader could not resist the tribal call to side with loyalist rejectionists at several points along the bumpy road, and few believe that the historic peace settlement could have been achieved under a Tory government.
The reversion to historic type was well signalled by the insulting appointment of Theresa Villiers as Northern Ireland secretary. Her reckless Brexit views were proved to be diametrically opposed by a substantial majority of the Ulster electorate in the EU referendum.
Tom Brown
London
The DUP’s insistence that Northern Ireland is exactly the same, and must be treated the same, as the rest of the UK is a wilful denial of history. The terrible beauty of Ireland – a land rent asunder when six of its counties were politically amputated in the aftermath of 1916 – will become even more terrible as this jingoistic approach is brought to the Brexit negotiations.
Did the Brexiteers ever give the slightest thought to the problems of Ireland, its internal border and the fallout from Britain’s imperial past? I doubt it. I suspect they were used to seeing their homeland geography as a very British archipelago with the southern part of its western island (the Republic of Ireland land mass) lopped off. An irrelevance.
Alison Hackett
Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin, Ireland
So Arlene Foster thinks a Corbyn-led government would be “disastrous for Northern Ireland”. Given that she leads a party that supports a hard Brexit despite a clear majority of the people in the north voting remain, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. If it is not stopped, the government she supports will do far more damage to all of Ireland than any recent administration. That is a potential disaster worth worrying about.
Declan O’Neill
Oldham
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