The Difficult Brexit Question Bring Us Back To The Only Sensible Answer: Brits Out

According to apparently well-sourced press reports, officials from the United Kingdom are currently touring the capitals of Europe, briefing pretty heavily against Ireland’s position on the Brexit negotiations between the UK and the European Union. This is not the first time that such a diplomatic effort has been launched since Britain’s unexpected referendum vote in 2016 to leave the EU. But it certainly seems to be the most sustained effort by London to undermine Dublin’s arguments against the imposition of a so-called hard border around the British legacy colony on the island of Ireland. As on previous occasions, the UK has gained a less than sympathetic response from the Continental governments, despite its hopes of finding natural allies among the Eurosceptic administrations in Italy, Austria, Poland and Hungary. Whatever their views on the Union’s collective immigration policies or the over-centralisation of powers in Brussels, and so on, the bloc’s member states know the value of the unified customs union and single market and have no intention of compromising or imperilling it to meet the isolationist demands of the British. Or of xenophobic elements in the ruling Conservative Party and its hard-right allies in the Democratic Unionist Party.

On the latest Brexit shenanigans, Tony Connelly reports for RTÉ that:

The view from Brussels and Dublin is that Westminster is quite simply a parallel universe.

If anything the past ten days have made things a lot worse. One senior EU official has privately confided that we could be heading for a “cataclysmic” outcome.

In a nutshell, Dublin is angry that two years after the referendum, 15 months after Article 50 was triggered, six months since December’s Joint Report, three months since Theresa May promised the European Council President Donald Tusk that she was committed to a legally operable backstop, and with only three-and-a-half months before the October deadline, London has tossed a half-baked solution on the table.

The lameduck Tory prime minister in London, Theresa May, will surely go down in history as one of the country’s most ineffective leaders. Unwilling to face down the Brexiteer “nutters” in her own party – including several senior cabinet ministers – and reliant on a parliamentary deal with the politically toxic DUP to stay in office, she alternates from stumbling from one crisis to another to standing frozen with indecision. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic. But as we all know, with a fair and equitable agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union looking as far away as ever, its Ireland which will bear the brunt of the UK’s Brexit debacle. And the reason for that, above all else, is Britain’s continued occupation of the north-eastern corner of our island nation. Once again, on the questions of peace, prosperity or a hard border in Ireland the ultimate answer is what it always has been: Brits out.