An unavoidable truth : Irish Unity will be a brexit-style process

On a recent speaking engagement, Fintan O’Toole made the observation of how important it is to avoid an Irish unity process that ends up like the brexit process. This is a wish that other analysts and political reps have also highlighted. Brexit shows, they argue, the need for adequate preparation. Northern nationalism has upped its rhetoric on this in recent months – SF has been running a time to prepare campaign, and its representatives issue a request for the Irish government to begin preparation on a weekly basis. The SDLP leader Claire Hanna made a similar appeal for planning and preparation on the floor of the House of Commons.

Unfortunately I think we are now past the point of no return, if there ever was one. Irish unity, if it happens, is going to be like brexit. And no serious preparation seems likely to take place – in fact, it is not clear that meaningful preparation is even possible. I will explain why I believe this.

Most of us have a view on what brexit was and why it was bad. For me, it was about taking a complex, nuanced issue with many interlocking parts and boiling it down to a simple choice between the well-understood status quo and an undefined alternative. That undefined alternative was accompanied by an intentionally dishonest campaign which set false expectations and unwinnable objectives, making a serious debate, never mind consensus, impossible. The brexit process produced what was effectively a constitutional amendment; a directive of the people which could not, in practice, be set aside by the government. All of this has done serious and lasting damage to the UK’s political institutions, its economy and its relationship with the outside world. The issue remains so politically radioactive that even a government with an overwhelming majority cannot touch it despite the well-documented damage it is doing to the UK economy. 

Those who campaigned for Leave positioned themselves as rebels outside of government, and as such had no incentive to find consensus on what Leave meant. A Leave vote could therefore be anywhere between “brexit in name only” with full customs union and single market membership; or a clean break with full isolation from the EU. Many Leave voters now feel they were cheated, and rightly so – there was no democratic accountability for those who promised wealth, happiness, growth and a bonanza for the NHS outside of Europe. 

The unspoken implication by those arguing that planning and preparation are required to avoid a brexit-style disaster for Irish unity is that brexit would not gone so badly if those prerequisites were in place.

But I am not sure there was ever a way to make the brexit process work, planning or no planning. The conditions to do this simply didn’t exist.

Firstly, it’s unlikely that leave campaigners would have participated in a discussion which accepted that brexit could be challenging or might go wrong. Voters were promised a range of things that were unrealistic or undeliverable – cash for the NHS, easy trade deals, a good relationship with the EU post-brexit forced by German car manufacturers.  “They need us more than we need them”, they said. “We hold all the cards”. Anyone trying to plan for circumstances where these things did not happen would have been dismissed as “Project Fear” – malign Remoaners trying to scare the British people. Indeed, I recall Bank of England contingency planning being dismissed this way when it became public. 

The second flaw is perhaps more obvious. How can you make plans for your future relationship with the EU or the rest of the world without discussing it with them beforehand ? Of course, Leave campaigners argued that the UK would simply dictate terms to the EU and other trading partners and they would be desperate to accept them. But even if they didn’t, the EU still refused to consider any post-Leave conditions or proposals until the Article 50 process had been activated. Why would they see it as their job to make departure easier ?

So how does all of this apply to Irish unity ?

In legal terms, the Irish unity process is similar to the brexit one. At the appropriate time, the Secretary of State will decide that the time has come to have a border poll. There will be an initial negotiation and agreement with the Irish government, and the date for the poll will be set. Following the poll, the Secretary of State is required to agree the unity process with the Irish government and place those proposals before parliament. 

Like brexit, this can be likened to a member choosing to leave a club. The club retains substantial control over the process by which they depart and what conditions will apply after they have left, and given that the club is inherently concerned with its own integrity and the interests of the remaining members, it has no reason to make that process painless for the departing member. 

As with brexit, Irish unity means different things to different people. The basic legal reality is that Northern Ireland will cease to be part of the UK, and will be part of a united Ireland, but that reality can take many forms. A minimal interpretation would see sovereignty transferred but not directly governed (with the PSNI, courts, NHS, civil service etc retained), something like Hong Kong, with existing reserved and excepted matters in the UK context assumed by Dublin and an oversight role for the UK. A maximal interpretation would see Stormont abolished, the NI civil service merged with the Irish one, the body of law repealed or realigned with Irish law, direct rule from Dublin, and all British oversight locked out. There are various combinations of these in-between. 

Remember when David Davis told voters about the German car manufacturers and everyone beating a path to the door of the UK to get the trade deals signed ? A large contingent of Irish unity campaigners and academics seem to be saying similar things. Some say, for example, that the UK will be forced to pay for public sector/state pensions and the national debt following reunification, and if they don’t play ball, the EU and USA will force them to do so. This risible notion simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny – it fails to take account changing attitudes in the US, the strategic relationship the EU and US have with the UK on trade and foreign policy, and the simple practical reality that a tax haven in Western Europe that has a strong economy should not need handouts to help it with a decision it took voluntarily.

This is one of several examples of how Irish unity campaigners are behaving similarly to their pro-brexit counterparts. I don’t think the open charlatanry is there, but the lack of realism most certainly is. Irish unity is an alternative to rule from London, but in some quarters, it seems to be being sold as an alternative to Stormont, something which completely ignores the distrust and division that led to the need for powersharing in the first place. Rather than be upfront about the costs and challenges of Irish unity alongside the numerous benefits, campaigners seem evasive, downplaying the expense and the risk. I regularly see people pointing to Ireland’s higher salaries and life expectancy, as if rule from Dublin will lead to an automatic salary bump and will add three years to your life. No attempt has been made to explain to people that we may face difficult decisions on healthcare or education.

All of these characteristics lead us inexorably to a brexit-like scenario. But could planning and preparation help ?

As with brexit, I don’t see how. The two problems highlighted above are the same. As with the EU and brexit, the British government are not going to negotiate any of the future details of Irish unity until the referendum has been announced, and even then, fine details will be left until the referendum passes and Ireland is stuck in a corner with no leverage. Voters will have to vote more or less blind.

The other problem is the same : unity campaigners are not capable of having a serious conversation about what Irish unity might look like and how negotiations will go. I often hear them claiming that the UK government will be anxious to leave and pay for the privilege, ignoring the reality that not only does the UK have no reason to pay Ireland to take over NI, it has interests and responsibilities to consider : there are somewhere approximating 1.9 million British citizens in Northern Ireland, and any financial settlement has to be acceptable to UK taxpayers. Those who argue that the UK government will make the process of departure easy are kidding themselves.

Those doing the planning for Irish unity would face the impossible task that the UK would have – trying to triangulate between (1) the art of the possible, (2) those selling David Davis-style sunlit uplands about Irish unity, and (3) the need to avoid exposing divisions in public opinion that could be exploited by the UK’s negotiators.

Imagine, for example, trying to plan for the issue of NI’s national debt share and state pensions, which various Irish unity activists and pressure groups argue that Britain must continue to fund. Public proposals involving the British paying for these will simply be rejected by the British through anonymous high-level briefings to UK broadsheets. If, on the other hand, the Irish government proposes to take on those costs, they could persuade a critical mass of Irish taxpayers to vote against unity, which increases the risk of a constitutional crisis. On top of that, Irish unity campaigners will accuse them of giving up ground before negotiations have even started. (I’ve heard pro-unity voices argue that Irish taxpayers will be happy to take on the cost. I am not convinced.)

If that seems too hypothetical, try imagining healthcare. Almost every elected representative in Northern Ireland is opposed to what is commonly described as “privatisation of the NHS” – the irrational view that any model other than full public ownership of healthcare assets will lead to profit-taking and healthcare inequality. An Irish government post-unity proposal might be to roll out the measurably superior but more expensive public/private Irish system to Northern Ireland, which would – if replicated – see half of the population sign up for private medical insurance, a third pay for GP visits and prescriptions, private patients paying for access to public hospitals, and could involve a number of hospitals transferring to public voluntary status (ie private ownership by a charitable trust, but performing both private and public HSE work). This would open up further divisions in public opinion. It makes no sense for nationalists to support a healthcare model under Irish unity that they implacably oppose in the Northern context. I’ve seen some argue that the NHS model could simply be extended all-island, but with the Irish government already struggling (1, 2) with its comparatively modest Sláintecare universal insurance proposals, the idea of extending the system which is in a state of collapse in Northern Ireland to the rest of the island does not seem attractive.

It’s easy to imagine other scenarios – for example education (Ireland’s private sector in primary and secondary education is much larger; and are we going to abolish state-funded grammar schools and the CCMS?) or sensitive issues such as the national anthem, flag, symbols of the state, commemoration of the past and so on. The really tricky problem nationalists haven’t faced up to is one mentioned above : it’s simply not going to be possible for the Irish government to assume direct control over Northern Ireland’s governance on day one of the unified state. There is significant divergence in the legal system, civil service and the organization of the public sector, and these mean that the devolved structures – and decision making processes – will have to stay on in some form, just as direct rule by the British government in the 1970s and 1980s was through the old Stormont departments directed at a distance by the Northern Ireland Office, rather than directly out of Whitehall. Nobody who has properly thought about any of this could seriously propose, for example, abolishing the Police Board and handing over operational control of policing to a Dublin Minister of Justice, especially not if the Garda Commissioner is ex RUC Special Branch; yet that is what is implied by those who think that direct rule from the office complexes dotted around St Stephen’s Green and Kildare Street seem to believe.

If there is any real planning and preparation to be done here, it’s by Irish unity advocates being realistic about what is possible and preparing their supporters for the difficult decisions and compromises that lie behind any successful unification vote. They should be warning them that Stormont won’t go away under unity, that taxation will go up and the public sector will have to be pared back, and that fixing healthcare and other public services will involve unpalatable changes. I see no sign that this is going to happen, because nationalist parties don’t want to take the risk of dividing their supporters. Much easier to promise sunlit uplands, as David Davis did, and then blame those negotiating unity for coming back with the compromises – a scenario with well-known historical precedent.

As I indicated above, planning and preparation for Irish unity aren’t going to happen any time soon. None of the actors likely to be involved in any future Irish unity campaign are motivated to do it. It’s just another slogan deployed by northern nationalist parties to make it sound like they are doing something while passing the buck along to others. If, somehow, we do end up with a border poll – we’ll be voting blind – and those who pushed for a poll without attempting to prepare their own supporters for all of the consequences will be fully to blame for what happens.