Why is Arlene Foster and the DUP so opposed to a border in the Irish Sea? That is, allowing Northeastern Ireland to trade freely with the south of Ireland, and have customs checks between NI and Britain?
The answer is obvious: they don’t like to be treated differently from the rest of the UK, as this may lead to a weakening in the chains that bind. It’s fruitless to point to the fact that any change in NI’s constitutional future rests on one agreed matter: that the majority in Northeastern Ireland want it. Otherwise no change. So why get up-tight about the free flow of trade and people throughout Ireland? It’s only business, after all.
Arlene Foster on Andrew Marr’s show yesterday pointed to the importance of trade between NI and Mother Britain.So she clearly believes trade matters. Does she believe that a unified economic Ireland is a threat to the existence Northeastern Ireland? She does, but she’s not saying it. Michel Barnier, Leo Varadkar – lots of people have assured Arlene and other DUPers that this isn’t political, it’s strictly economics. But Arlene and Co – although they won’t admit it- are convinced it isultimately political.
She has a point. History shows us instances where economic unity is the foundation laid for building political unity. Germany didn’t exist until 1871. Some forty years earlier, the Zolliverein was created. This was a German Customs Union, which promoted trade between the different German states and standardized their currencies. Eventually in 1871 economic unity became political unity.
Likewise with the EEC. This originally was an economic pact between European states making for enhanced trade. But even more basic than the economic was the political calculation: Europe didn’t want a third run of the two World Wars which had convulsed the continent and led to such massive loss of life. Fast forward 60+ years and you have Britain leaving what is now the European Union, on the grounds that it wants to have its sovereignty restored. And their argument has elements of truth: the EU does have ambitions to become one massive political as well as economic unit.
The trouble is, Britain and the DUP have serious problems about learning from history. You don’t create change by taking your ball and going home. You create change by staying and working for the kind of Europe you want. Likewise the DUP and Northeastern Ireland: there is one way and one way only that the DUP and others can prevent a united Ireland, and that is by persuading Catholics in the north and right-wing Dublin 4 denizens that the north would be better staying separate from the south, and vice versa.
The stone-in-the-shoe for unionism, though, is that they know economic unity in Ireland makes sense. So does anyone with two brain-cells to rub together. But it appears the DUP have absorbed this fact. But rather than follow economic logic, they’d prefer to eat grass.
What sort of leadership is that?
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