I’m sorry if this is actually very easy to Google, without bothering you.
Given that the question of the Northern Ireland/Ireland border has proved the biggest ‘technicality’ obstructing the fulfilment of Brexit, had no-one pondered this particular problem and possible solutions before the referendum? ‘Eurosceptics’ have been around for decades, after all. The last-minute trouble-shooting of this seems surprising.
My understanding is that had Theresa May not lost a number of seats in the 2017 election and had to make an arrangement with the DUP to form her government, the WA would have simply instituted a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Northern Ireland has long been a red-headed stepchild in UK politics, I think.
Why no! No they didn’t. Nor any other of the vast raft of problems trying to prise us apart from an EU we spent 40 years integrating with that we’re now seeing.
And any attempt to point out the enormous practical difficulties was denounced by the Brexiters as ‘Project Fear’ and they boasted could be safely ignored. It’d all be very fine and simple. Trust them!
The Irish border is not a problem as long as the U.K. remains in a customs union/single market for physical goods with the EU or otherwise close relationship in this regard (as in May’s backstop). Before the current Brexit, this is the kind of relationship most commentators supporting leaving the EU assumed would happen.
Indeed: as I recall we were breezily told we could leave and negotiate a new relationship that would allow us to have all the benefits of the customs union and single market, but none of the bits the leavers didn’t like. As one of the EU negotiators put it, we were seemingly wanting to replace being in with lots of a la carte opt-outs with being out with lots of a la carte opt-ins.
I assume the negotiations went something like: “Why should we make it easy for the UK to leave? It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts us, and if we set a precedent where countries get all the benefit and none of the costs, how long will the union last? You’re either all in or all out.” Boris apparently has the wild idea that the EU is terrified of what will happen when Britain crashes out. The EU apparently isn’t.
So you can enumerate the possibilities - from bad to worse:
-UK abrogates all treaties, puts in a border.
-UK puts a border inspection with some degree of control between Northern Ireland and Britain, in the middle of their country.
-UK leaves an open hole in their backside for anyone to take customary advantage of. (so to speak)
-UK lets go of Northern Ireland, it joins Ireland proper.
Pick one… nobody else has yet.
Abrogating the commitment to open borders could have repercussions on negotiations on other topics, depending on Ireland’s clout in the EU and how the EU feels about things.
Putting a border inspection in the middle of the country will simply encourage the faction that wants the final option, and make it that much easier economically - why should a NI business deal with UK when there’s less hassle dealing with Ireland? The island’s economies become more tightly knit. Also increase feelings of alienation.
leaving the back door hole open does nothing for anyone. Yes, some people and goods can sneak into the EU and eventually be caught, but they have to get on Irish ships which will make goods inspection easy. Meanwhile, UK is more vulnerable to goods coming in around their customs. Good controls only work with cooperation, and what makes Ireland motivates to cooperate with the UK?
My totally uneducated guess - I’m about as ignorant of the situation as anyone can get while holding a UK passport - they’ll in the end be forced to put customs between Northern Ireland and rest of the UK… Assuming they actually leave.
Another interesting note some commentator pointed out - if they do want back in, under the new entrance rules they would have to accept the Euro also when they join - one of the rules they avoided before Brexit.
I think this is it. The people negotiating Brexit (and those calling for Brexit) assumed things would be fine, the EU would gladly negotiate that a la carte. The leaders and Brexiteers seem to have beat their head against the wall, failing to notice that the EU answer was “nein/non” on all that. May failed to have a Plan B and Boris seems to be betting the farm on the EU being willing to cave at the last minute. Depending on your estimation of his intellect, he either is refusing to reveal what he will do if they “crash out” as a negotiating tactic, or really has no clue what to do and is pinning his hopes on what he wants to happen.
As the National Lampoon said in a quote they attributed to Sen. Edward Kennedy: “We’ll drive off that bridge when we come to it.”
I’m under the impression that one of the bigger issues the Leave campaign has run on is cutting off the free movement of people into Britain. The Good Friday Agreement includes the free movement of not only goods, but also people, into and out of Ulster. There’s a concern that all of the Polish plumbers that Tommy wants to keep from moving into his neighborhood now will just fly into Dublin, take a train up to Belfast, and then take a ferry across the Irish Sea and wind up living in a flat in Manchester. The only way to prevent that would be to either create a “hard border” between Ulster and the Republic of Ireland or to create a border between NI and the rest of the UK. The loyalists in Northern Ireland won’t accept the latter, and given that the DUP is necessary for Conservative control of Parliament, there wasn’t much chance for that to ever happen. May’s backstop agreement would create a hybrid agreement allowing for mostly free travel back and forth across the border with some checks allowed was predicated on Britain mostly remaining in the customs union with the EU or at least giving up its right to withdraw from that set-up. That surrender of sovereignty was the other big reason Leave voters wanted out of the EU, so was kind of a non-starter for those MPs who actually wanted out of the EU (instead of voting for it because they feel compelled by the referendum.)
As I understand it though, the customs union comes with all those EU laws about products and consumers - safety concerns, labelling, quality standards, etc. - the sort of deep foreign control that Brexit was intended to escape. Again, there was the thought that they could be part of a customs-free zone without having to meet the same (possibly intrusive and picky) standards all those other countries had to meet. Again, the EU wasn’t going to make exceptions, because why would they show other countries’ exiteers an easy path to getting out of the EU and remaining friends with benefits? The Brexit faction would never accept remaining under EU law and the stay action didn’t see how this was different from remaining.
The issue really is that NI loyalists do not want any arrangement which treats them any differently to the rest of the UK - as far as they are concerned all the talk of the backstop is effectively a claim on British Sovereign territory and this is expressly against EU own rules. That is their interpretation of it - not necessarily of everyone else - but since their representatives hold the balance of power its very difficult to simply ignore.
If the UK leaves with no deal - and I have not actually met anyone who has read all 535 pages of it, nor anyone who can summarise it - then the border issue becomes a matter of deciding who will attempt to enforce it and how they will do it.
It is highly likely that under no deal the border arrangements will be very similar to what has already been proposed - so really the argument is pretty much about nothing - except the EU will not have veto in allowing UK to leave.
There is a principle at stake here that the EU cannot have the right to veto the UK national will to leave it, especially when a ‘no deal’ border will likely be almost identical to a ‘deal’ border - but hey, there ya go.
Loads of posturing on all sides, claims and counter claims but the outcome is far from certain, risks seem huge but are almost certainly overstated - our currency and economy were supposed to completely tank once the referendum decision to leave was taken - it did not happen and even now the Bank of England has revised the downside estimates of a no deal Brexit from the worst case scenario from 8% contraction of the economy to under 5% contraction, I think even this is likely to be a significant overestimate of the effects.
Unrealistic forecasts that turn out to be false destroy the credibility of the forecasters - too much crying wolf. I appreciate that one day the wolf is likely to turn up - but the EU is currently in a state of stagnation anyway and the loss of UK markets and funds will only make that worse.
Both sides look like they stand to lose a great deal, the Euros are largely pretending it won’t hurt them, UK alarmists seem to believe it will be economic Armageddon - neither will be true, but unrealistic assumptions do not help.
What is the border between Spain and Gibraltar like now? And will that change as a result of Brexit?
The customs union/single market in goods was one of the earliest things the EU was engaged in. And before Brexit it was considered one of its major successes. It’s always been true that to sell goods in a market you have to meet all the legal regulations for doing so. And while manufacturers have complaints about these regulations, what is substantially worse is to have to meet one set of regulations in Britain and a different set of regulations in the EU as well as tariffs and border inspections for moving the goods to the EU.
While the general public has complaints about immigration and Britain spending more money in the EU than what it gets back, it very much likes being able to buy lots of consumer goods produced in European countries cheaply.
So May’s emphasis on leaving the customs union/single market in goods was bizarre.
[Moderating]
The factual answer to the OP’s question is “of course it was considered, by at least some people”. Any answer beyond that belongs in GD. Where this thread is now going.
Sweet Jesus. I put the word ‘factual’ in the title to avoid this same old balls. Did anyone in the last thirty years actually have a plan for leaving the EU, without ballsing up Northern Ireland? Some old Spectator column maybe?
Less factually; in GD. I had fears about the UK being shattered by Brexit before the vote. But not being an enthusiast I didn’t see the border problem coming. It seems odd if no-one at all considered all the possible repercussions of Brexit in those decades of Euroscepticism.
I’m guessing the people focussed on exit were on the main island and either simply assumed that the border between Ireland and NI would be reinstated or didn’t even think about it. If the bee in their bonnet was Europe, probably it left no room under the bonnet for Northern Ireland issues.
A GREAT DEAL of pondering went into the consideration of the Irish Question in Brexit. That’s why the Withdrawal Agreement includes the Protocol on Northern Ireland aka the Backstop, which occupies a full one-third of the 585 pages of the whole Agreement including all of the Protocols and Annexes. The Preamble alone runs 5 pages.
Wiki has a link to the 585 page Draft Agreement PDF.
As for Gibraltar, the Agreement also has a Protocol on Gibraltar, agreeing on some cooperation. But it is only 8 pages (3 of which are Preamble).
Yeah, but no-one who was enthusiastic about Brexit before the referendum spent any time at all considering the island of Ireland. That wing of the British political establishment never does.
Here’s a thread from a couple of years back
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=837166&highlight=ireland
(That thread was actually a fair bit ahead of mainstream UK commentary)
The factual answer to your question is yes, people had pondered the problem of the Ireland/Northern Ireland border prior to the referendum, and potential solutions were discussed. I’ve tried googling for cites, but they aren’t coming up. But as a UK citizen who reads a lot of UK news, I can personally attest that from the moment the referendum was announced as part of the Conservative Party’s 2015 election manifesto, the Ireland/Northern Ireland relationship and the Good Friday Agreement were raised as an issue. However, it was never considered a headline issue. The general media consensus prior to the 2015 election was that the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition would continue, and there was no way the Liberal Democrats would agree to a Leave the EU referendum, so that manifesto promise was moot.
After the Conservative Party won an outright majority in the 2015 elections, the referendum promise and the effect on the Ireland/Northern Ireland were again raised. Members of the Irish government wrote guest columns for UK newspapers. I’m pretty sure that Niall Ferguson addressed the issue in a Sunday Times column. It was certainly discussed in the EU when David Cameron was negotiating a “better deal” prior to the referendum. However, in both the run-up to the referendum campaign, and during the referendum campaign, it was a secondary issue. (It probably got more press in Northern Ireland, but I read the London newspapers.)
As for the last-minute part of your question, after the Referendum, and after David Cameron’s resignation and the transfer of power to Theresa May, the Ireland/Northern Ireland relationship was, without question, discussed. May wanted a fudge. She was in favour of status quo which would then be overtaken by a technical solution. This also seems to be Boris Johnson’s preferred solution, although he jumps around a lot. May’s technical fudge wasn’t feasible as far as a currently available technological solution goes, but it was fine as a “kick the can down the road” solution. However, the EU didn’t go for it. They wanted stronger protections for the Single Market, especially in the case of another EU member deciding to leave in the future. Therefore their “kick the can down the road” solution was to keep Northern Ireland subject to EU import/export rules until a UK/EU free trade agreement could be reached, even if the rest of the UK was no longer subject to EU import/export rules. This is the essence of the much discussed backstop. Note that the EU has never wanted to enforce this backstop. Similar to May’s plan, they want to maintain the status quo until a free trade agreement can be reached. For that reason, May acquiesced to the EU solution. That created political problems within the Conservative Party, and with their DUP allies. May was never able to overcome those political problems. Boris Johnson is taking his shot, but, in the mildest possible assessment, doesn’t seem to be doing very well.
Jesus wept! I’ve twice specified the prior-to-referendum ideas of Irish harmony I’m looking for.
But thank you, Baron/Spanners.