Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

It’s become common to assert that Brexit has changed the contours of British politics forever. That remains to be seen. After the UK leaves the EU, older loyalties and divisions may re-emerge, as allegiances and rivalries that developed since the referendum become irrelevant. That hasn’t prevented some fairly animated discussion about the potential for new parties to reflect a ‘realignment’ of politics after Brexit. Since Jeremy Corbyn’s hard-left faction took charge of the Labour, there have been suggestions that its pragmatic ‘Blairite’ wing would be happier outside the party. They may or may not have enough in common with disgruntled Conservative ‘remainers’ to share a common political home. This fabled ‘centrist’ group is joined by a ‘Radicals’ party, imagined by FT journalist, Jeremy Cliffe . He went to the trouble of drawing up a short manifesto, that combines pro-EU, pro-migrant social policies, with proposals for aggressive decentralisation and a free-market economy, ...

We don’t yet know how Brexit will affect Northern Ireland exactly, but the referendum result certainly revived the nationalist trope that Irish unity is ‘inevitable’. The Republic’s national parliament recently published plans for a forum “to achieve the peaceful reunification of Ireland”, Sinn Fein blithely assure unionists that the “British identity” will be protected in a thirty-two county state and newspaper columnists rush to tell readers that the fourth green field will soon “bloom again”. One particularly excitable author, Kevin Meagher, a former special adviser to Shaun Woodward, (remind me again why unionists didn’t trust that former secretary of state), even called his book “ A United Ireland: Why unification is inevitable ”.    In response, unionists have challenged nationalism’s “self-regarding, single certainty” in a series of astute articles. At the dissenter blog, a leading academic took apart the question of a “United Ireland, inevitability an...

Previously, I argued that there are no longer any ‘leavers’ or ‘remainers’: just Brexit deniers and Brexit realists.  The UK will leave the EU and the government has outlined in reasonable detail its plan for the future.  Northern Ireland’s decision-makers, whether or not they comprise a devolved Executive, can either act as if they're still fighting the referendum campaign, or start to plan to make the best of our future after Brexit. On behalf of the think-tank Global Britain , and local businesses including Sandelford Policy , David Hoey and I have written a report describing “ An Agenda for Northern Ireland After Brexit ”.  This sets out a framework to address some of the policy challenges presented locally by Brexit. At The Dissenter, David sets out in detail why all levels of government in Northern Ireland should “stop talking and start doing” .  Many of our most pressing local issues are economic and many of the issues that we’ll face after Brexit ...

The Irish Times published a series of articles examining relationships between “Ireland and Britain”.  In a typically forthright piece, the paper’s columnist, Newton Emerson, writes that he does “not feel Irish in the slightest” .  He grew up in Northern Ireland at a time when direct rule made it “as British as Finchley”.   I’m a little younger than Newton and my attitudes are slightly different.  I do consider myself Irish, but the Irishness I feel has little to do with the Republic of Ireland and it sits happily alongside my sense of Britishness.  For me, Northern Ireland is “as British as Finchley”, or Stirling, or Caerphilly, it just isn’t the same as Finchley.   I grew up in Ballymena, Ian Paisley’s heartland, where hostility to Irish identity was not  uncommon.  After winning his first international cap, one of the town’s rugby stars, Davy Tweed, was reputed to say, “I’ve played thirty times for my country (Ulster) and once for ...

The campaign against Brexit was criticised for trying to frighten people into voting ‘remain’, as economic meltdown and the breakup of the United Kingdom were threatened, in order to support the idea that Britain could not leave the European Union without devastating consequences.  These tactics backfired, as the public became weary of the movement’s negative tone and cynical about the motives of an ‘establishment’ it perceived was arguing in its own interests, rather than the interests of wider society.  As referendum day approached, David Cameron tried to put an even older British fear at the heart of debate, when he claimed that the UK would be ill-equipped outside the EU to deal with threats from “a newly belligerent Russia”.  The ‘leave’ campaign’s figurehead, Boris Johnson, was subsequently lambasted as a ‘Putin apologist’, when he suggested that Brussels’ foreign policy helped create conflict in the Ukraine. The ‘remain’ camp’s Russian strategy was nev...