N. Ireland first minister makes U-turn admitting Brexit risk

If you think Britain’s two main parties seem conflicted over Brexit, try to imagine what is going in the power-sharing administration of Northern Ireland.

Arlene Foster, the First Minister and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, told her supporters during the referendum campaign that leaving the European Union would be nothing but beneficial. As she presented things, the alleged disadvantages were trivial or non-existent while the gains, including “speed and flexibility” in economic decision-making and a more “global outlook” for Northern Irish business would be real and rapid. During the months leading up to the referendum, the DUP’s stance hardened: it went from endorsing Brexit “on balance” to an unequivocal pro-Brexit position. The more loudly local businesses warned against the effects of Brexit, the more convinced the DUP became that those businesses could not discern their own interests. Meanwhile the Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, said and continues to say the very opposite. As he put it last month, “there is no good news whatsoever about Brexit”.

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So which is it, then? From the Northern Irish viewpoint, is Brexit an unmitigated boon or an unmitigated (and virtually unmitigable) disaster? The common-sense answer to that question has been set out in a series of articles for InFacts. Brexit is indeed a potential disaster whose effects on Northern Ireland can and should be mitigated as far as possible, though there is no guarantee that this can be achieved. This week, in a letter to Theresa May, Foster and McGuinness admitted exactly that. The letter elaborated the downsides of Brexit for the region in almost exactly the same terms as InFacts has done.

First, Northern Ireland’s geographically isolated economy is critically dependent on access to EU markets and also, less obviously, to EU labour. (In other words, Northern Ireland’s software companies need programmers from Warsaw and Dublin, and its factories and public services have benefited a lot from hard-working people from Riga and Bucharest.)

Second, as the letter puts it, “EU funds have been hugely important to the economy and the peace process” and Northern Ireland was counting on receiving €20 billion under the 2014-2020 budget plan. Projects which expected to benefit from that money are in a state of nervous suspension. Northern Ireland’s farmers were the recipients of 10% of European agricultural subsidies flowing to the United Kingdom. (During the Brexit campaign, Foster and her supporters airily insisted that Westminster would simply replace any European funds for Northern Ireland ; this is the first time she has admitted that small farms in her native Fermanagh might not be top priority for a London government that was lurching through a Brexit shock.)

Thirdly, the letter implicitly acknowledged a real risk that a “hardened” inter-Irish border might paradoxically compromise the fight against crime and terror by making cross-border security co-operation more difficult and giving the enemies of peace a new target to circumvent, exploit and even attack. (During the recent Troubles, customs posts were blown up so often that they became impossible to maintain; nobody would bet on any re-erected customs buildings remaining intact for long.) As the co-signatories put it: “The border must not become a catalyst for illegal activity or compromise in any way the arrangements related to criminal justice and tackling organized crime.”

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In what amounts to a massive U-turn by Foster, she and her deputy acknowledged the importance of consultations with the Irish republic which had already begun and admitted: “It cannot be guaranteed that outcomes that suit our common interests are ultimately deliverable.”

There is no point in spending too long in crowing over the fact that Foster (and in a different, less dramatic way, McGuinness) have now jettisoned ideology for common sense. Perhaps the letter will simply be remembered as a milestone on the way to achieving an “agreed Article 50 position” on which May can start negotiating for the whole UK and softening the Brexit disaster.

But Claire Hanna, speaking for the moderate nationalists of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, scored a fair point when she said: “Ms Foster has clearly realised the error of her ways in backing Brexit, and now the horse has bolted she is asking the Conservative government to close the gate.”

Edited by Hugo Dixon