"The Battle of Brexit is over; the Battle of Irexit is about to begin"

Snickers Man

Churchillian references are popular in this day and age as Britain takes its first faltering steps into estrangement from its former partners in the EU. Hence the title of this thread.

There is little point debating or discussing Britain's decision; it's done. They're outta here. What we have to do now is decide what's best for OURSELVES, sinn féin (Note lower case) going forward.

Because rest assured, we will come under pressure from many elements in Britain to follow their lead. In fact, that was clearly taken as a given for many of the more extreme Brexiteers, notably Mr Farage. He has always cited our reluctance immediately to pass the Nice and Lisbon treaties as evidence of a natural Euroscepticism lurking in many Irish people. Such sentiments, he clearly felt--and said on more than one occasion--would inevitably lead to Ireland leaving the EU soon after Britain, thereby avoiding any unpleasantness regarding hard borders in either the Irish Sea or on the island of Ireland.

The last four years has brought that assumption into question, but now that Britain has gone and that battle has joined with the EU on the nature of a future relationship, the time has come for Brexity Britain to focus on their recalcitrant neighbour to the west.

In a remarkable opinion piece published in last Saturday's Irish Times, the novelist Louis de Benieres (Captain Corelli's Mandolin) suggested, nay assumed, that the Irish if they only came to their senses would "leave the EU and opt for an Anglo-Irish economic zone".

Now these might be dismissed as the rantings of a jumped-up novelist, to be treated with no more respect than those of an overwrought actor using their Golden Globes or Oscars acceptance speech to strike a pose on some over-rated issue du jour to boost their woke credentials. But given that it also appeared in the Financial Times, perhaps it could be concluded that influential people were instrumental in getting it "placed" in prominent publications? That tends to be how these things work.

I think we should get used to a steady drip of such articles in the near future as those with a strategic bent in Britain come to terms with the fact that they are now surrounded by member states of a trade bloc that, whatever noises may be made by the likes of Johnson, Hannan et al, is now a significant rival to Global Britain. No longer a partner.

With that in mind lets consider some of the points Mr Bernieres made, from an Irish perspective on the EU. This is not to refight the Brexit battle again. After all, that one has been settled. This is about what WE should do, or not do.

Bernieres
[we]..can row away from..a troubled political and economic project that has never surmounted the difficulties left behind by the 2008 crash. The euro zone contains incompatible economies, and so it is impossible to fix an interest rate or a general economic policy that fits them all.

Really? Could not the same be said of Britain? Are policies introduced to address conditions in London, say, a good fit with rural parts of the UK? Only last week on Question Time a former Chief Constable of Durham was complaining about the London-centric government of the UK, pointing out in particular the hardship caused in Durham by the bedroom tax which was designed to alleviate accommodation shortages in London but which unfairly penalises people living in more sparsely populated parts of the country.

Even in one country, there are many situations, and one policy does not necessarily fit all. And the EU does not mandate "a general economic policy" for all members. It sets basic ground rules on competition, workers rights, state intervention and environmental regulations. Specific policy, including taxation, is a matter for individual member states. Whatever the Eurosceptics say.


Bernieres
[we]..can row away from delusions, such as that the EU has maintained European peace, when it was very obviously Nato, with the US providing the majority of the manpower and funding

Quite apart from the delicious irony that although scaremongering about a "European Army" was a popular Brexiteer tactic they are now saying that NATO (effectively a Western European Army) was the more important institution all along, the argument is bull****.

NATO may indeed have held the line against Soviet encroachment but it had nothing to do with taking the sting out of Franco-German rivalry over the fate of Alsace-Lorraine (Elsass-Loringen) over which territory they had been slaughtering each other for generations. Nor did it have anything to do with the Northern Ireland process in which a blurring of borders and an acceptance of multiple national identities of the same validity in the same region was made possible by both countries' being members of the same larger entity. And there are other regions with bitter memories of once being part of different countries where potential problems have been allayed thanks to the EU. (Sud Tyrol, Poland, Sudetenland etc) The EU has been a big smoother of ruffled feathers in those regions.

Granted, some of the things Mr Bernieres comes out with are unlikely to resonate too sweetly with the strategic powers that be in London. Or Washington. His keenness to see "the end of Great Britain.. [as a] distinct and perhaps desirable prospect" if Scotland and Northern Ireland depart will not go down well in the higher echelons of the military or other strategic planners.

Nevertheless, this article is likely to be one of many over the next few months and years, patronisingly congratulating us on "no longer being a backward country" and assuring us that our place belongs at Britain's side outside of Europe and on the High Seas of "Global Commerce" in particular those that lap along the shores of the Commonwealth. .

To which I would say, read a history book. We ain't going back to that.

But that's just me. What do you all think?

Would never happen. Irish people (and those in the UK alike) are exhausted. There's no appetite for this whatsoever in Ireland I wouldn't say.

soups05

Meh, i thought it was a helm's deep/middle earth reference. As for the rest, not gonna happen, we are happy in the EU

gooch2k9

soups05 wrote: »

Meh, i thought it was a helm's deep/middle earth reference. As for the rest, not gonna happen, we are happy in the EU

Aye, that's straight up Gandalf!


I would hope it will never happen as well. You do see an awful lot of cranks on social media bleating on against the EU. I hope that is just social media making them appear more common than they are. I know the stats say Ireland is massively pro-EU, which is one good thing.

Pablo Escobar

gooch2k9 wrote: »

Aye, that's straight up Gandalf!


I would hope it will never happen as well. You do see an awful lot of cranks on social media bleating on against the EU. I hope that is just social media making them appear more common than they are. I know the stats say Ireland is massively pro-EU, which is one good thing.

Social Media is a platform (echo chamber) that allows idiots a voice. They use it. I do think it makes them seem more prevalent, but I also think there's a significant number.

B-D-P--

Pablo Escobar wrote: »

Social Media is a platform (echo chamber) that allows idiots a voice. They use it. I do think it makes them seem more prevalent, but I also think there's a significant number.

I agree.
Those who are intelligent enough, don't bother fighting with the mules of social media.
Its like going on a show like Jeremy Kyle with an educated opinion, The inbread fool sitting beside you is just going to shout over you say "yea whatever" when they cant think of an intelligent response and you both come out of it looking like idiots.

However because of this, the stupid army grows as they have nobody to tell the next empty vessel who reads the stupid on fb why the first empty vessel is an idiot.

The Satanist

Leave EU
Print money
Buy nice stuff with money

Great idea, LIKED AND SHARED

ancapailldorcha

It's highly unlikely that jingoistic articles from the least trusted press in Europe are going to have an impact on Irish people. Irish politics is grounded much more in cooperation and compromise than the British winner takes all system.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Brexit is the single greatest piece of Pro-EU propaganda ever created.

Lord Glentoran

Yeah. Let’s destroy supply chains, our comparative advantage, screw up a massive chunk of our trade, revert to dependence on Britain and live off a fishing industry that was never signifcant in the first place.

But hey, let’s humour cranks.

STB.

Snickers Man wrote: »

Churchillian references are popular in this day and age a

Churchillian references were never popular in Ireland.

jaxxx

Ireland leave the EU? I've heard some plain stupid-ass ideas in my time but that takes the potato altogether.

PopePalpatine

STB. wrote: »

Churchillian references were never popular in Ireland.

Just switch out every mention of "Britain"/"England" for Ireland and slap it on a photo of a famous rebel and watch the Facebook likes roll in.

Politelymad

Ireland doesn't need Irexit. It has already picked out a concept which will cause massive economic and social damage. One where the true believers will ignore anything that doesn't fit with their fairy story. And that concept is United Ireland.

All the train wreck of Brexit with a uniquely Irish flavor!

Snickers Man

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

It's highly unlikely that jingoistic articles from the least trusted press in Europe are going to have an impact on Irish people. Irish politics is grounded much more in cooperation and compromise than the British winner takes all system.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Brexit is the single greatest piece of Pro-EU propaganda ever created.

Oh I think you're quite right. All I'm saying is that Britain/England will very quickly see, if she hasn't already, the vulnerability of being surrounded by a rival trade block with whom she may only be on the most tentative and arm's-length of terms. She will feel a lot safer with Ireland under her strategic thumb. And as such, there will be a steady drip drip of propaganda urging us to move along with them to the "bright sunlit uplands" (Churchill again:) ) of "independence" from the EU.

Some of this will be flattery. "You Irish are far too clever and entrepreneurial to be hidebound by this shower of Eurocrats".
Some of it will be dismissive "You won your independence from us, now you've given it away to the Germans. what sort of idiots are you?"
Some of it will be incredibly patronising a la M De Benieres "Congratulations! You're no longer a backward corrupt little country. Well done you!"

But I think it will be persistent and it will have to be countered, politely and firmly, with clear arguments. After all, I suspect it was complacency on behalf of the Remain campaigners in Britain in the run up to the referendum there, that saw them lose so narrowly.

Don't underestimate the malevolent power of social media in the hands of an evil genius like Dominic Cummings!!

maccored

'Britain did it, we have to do it ' - no, we dont have to.

seamus

The notion of Ireland leaving the EU has drifted further and further away since the Brexit vote.

Westminster has proven itself to be little more than club of English elites acting in the interests of their own pockets, and with little regard to what is best for the ordinary English person, never mind those living in scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

The idea that we would willingly bind ourselves to that omnishambles to be forever dependent on a bunch of privileged posh boys in Westminster to not make a balls of things, is 20 times more absurd now than it ever was.

In 2016 there was uncertainty as to how the British government would conduct themselves. At least now we know for sure.

Ireland should be doing the exact opposite to Irexit; taking advantage of our new position as the largest English-speaking country in the EU, and aggressively targetting companies to move them away from Britain and into Ireland.

Snickers Man

And just on cue today, I receive a load of election bumph from prospective candidates including one from the Irish Freedom Party. That's the shower led by Herman "The German" Kelly, formerly Nigel Farrage's PR flack in Brussels.

Irexit is their core issue, prompted by hostility to immigration, and they look to have a right shower of Loo Las representing them including Ben Gilroy, the DIY solicitor and property rights activist.

They won't be getting a preference from me.

ancapailldorcha

Snickers Man wrote: »

Oh I think you're quite right. All I'm saying is that Britain/England will very quickly see, if she hasn't already, the vulnerability of being surrounded by a rival trade block with whom she may only be on the most tentative and arm's-length of terms. She will feel a lot safer with Ireland under her strategic thumb. And as such, there will be a steady drip drip of propaganda urging us to move along with them to the "bright sunlit uplands" (Churchill again:) ) of "independence" from the EU.

Some of this will be flattery. "You Irish are far too clever and entrepreneurial to be hidebound by this shower of Eurocrats".
Some of it will be dismissive "You won your independence from us, now you've given it away to the Germans. what sort of idiots are you?"
Some of it will be incredibly patronising a la M De Benieres "Congratulations! You're no longer a backward corrupt little country. Well done you!"

But I think it will be persistent and it will have to be countered, politely and firmly, with clear arguments. After all, I suspect it was complacency on behalf of the Remain campaigners in Britain in the run up to the referendum there, that saw them lose so narrowly.

Don't underestimate the malevolent power of social media in the hands of an evil genius like Dominic Cummings!!

Ireland isn't really this important. Economically, we have no oil or any other natural resources. We have cultural links to the US and have used this, along with a well educated, English speaking populace, single market membership and low corporation tax to build a strong economy.

Ireland also lacks the structural and institutional problems that plague the UK. It has nowhere near the economic disparity between regions whereas the UK has 6 of northern Europe's 10 poorest areas. Then you have the fact that Ireland has STV instead of the UK's highly divisive FPTP. Finally, Irish politicians tend to have held real jobs in the past whereas the Conservative party's chosen PM's tend to be Oxbridge-educated old Etonians.

rob316

There's a belief that the British Empire still exists but it doesn't and they are about to find out the hard way they are just an island. They will be weaker outside of the EU and I shudder to think what it would do to us.

Kidchameleon

Id vote to leave right now. The EU is about power, not trade

storker

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Id vote to leave right now. The EU is about power, not trade

We'd have a lot less power outside it than inside it, as Britain is about to find out..

banie01

Ireland's interests are IMO best served by being part of the EU and I am at a loss as to why people may think otherwise?

Much like with Brexit, I'd ask those espousing Irexit what tangible and actual benefits would accrue with such an action?

There seems to be a strange predilection amongst some who always seem younger than me (40) to chase some notion of Irish greatness or sovereignty alá MAGA or Brexit...
We never had any, we had late 90's early Noughties notions

My only real concern regarding Brexit apart from the Border is the future of our Common Law system.

There will be serious push towards a move to EU/Codification and alignment without the UK's influence.

We are now positioned as the primary English speaking gateway to a market of 600 million!
Do we throw that away to rejoin the commonwealth?

Snickers Man

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Ireland isn't really this important.

I'm not sure.

We're still on Britain's western flank, we're an existential threat if allied with a stronger rival and, given that so many people on the Brexit side are so keen to draw parallels with Henry VIII's break with Europe in the 16th century and this more recent rupture, it won't be too long before they put two and two together and decide that Ireland is a place in which they have a serious strategic interest.

It was in the reigns of the Tudors, remember, that Ireland was finally subjugated to the English state.

Poyning's Law, in the reign of Henry VII made the Irish parliament subordinate to the English one.
Henry VIII was the first King of England to assume the title King of Ireland.
Mary and Elizabeth started the plantations of Laois-Offaly and Munster and their successor James I completed the only really successful one in Ulster.
Elizabeth's reign saw the final vanquishing of Gaelic power, the assumption of English titles by most Irish chieftains and the exile, or flight, of those too recalcitrant to do so wholeheartedly.

Why then? Why four hundred years after the initial "Norman Conquest"? Because the powerful European states were at that moment developing global imperial rivalries and jockeying against each other for strategic advantage. Ireland because of its reluctance to embrace the Reformation was naturally allied to England's Catholic continental allies. We had to be brought into line.

With the strategic realignment taking place in the world today, with the old Cold War being replaced by a world in which China is now the major economic power to rival the west, with the separate threat of Islamic extremism, with Europe and America diverging philosophically and culturally, with the Last Days of Oil (well last decades at any rate) promising major disruption to our economies, and with the major Western oil producers (USA, Britain, Norway, Canada) ALL being outside Europe, the threats to existing friendships are very real.

NATO is dead. Nobody wants it any more. The Europeans want a more Eurocentric defence policy; America doesn't want to pay for it any more. The bloc will diverge into a "Central European" core based around France and Germany and an external rival comprising Britain, US, probably Norway, probably Turkey and with Russia as an arms-length collaborator, sort of like they did in WWII.

And we want to think we can stay neutral in all this?
Might be time to brush up on the Melian dialogue and what it can teach us.

Scoondal

Poland should leave EU.

Most Irish people supported Lech Walsea's Solidarity movement in the 1980s. We supported their joining EU.

Now they don't agree with EU policies.

So, just leave EU.

SCOOP 64

rob316 wrote: »

There's a belief that the British Empire still exists but it doesn't and they are about to find out the hard way they are just an island. They will be weaker outside of the EU and I shudder to think what it would do to us.

British empire was over and finished 50 years ago and most of people in UK know this.

85603

No EU nation will ever leave the bloc in a manner similar to how Brexit happened.

If anyone leaves it will be done very amicably, and in a drawn out gradual fashion.

And straight into some exchange/arrangement which partially resembles the EU.

No other nation in Europe is so far up their own holes.

Tuco88

What are the views on the CANZUK trade deal? Did they not have a few of benefits from the commonwealth already?

If you ask me the EU is doomed anyway. If its only Ireland with a few others with Germany left id be happy anyway.

VillageIdiot71

Tuco88 wrote: »

If you ask me the EU is doomed anyway. If its only Ireland with a few others with Germany left id be happy anyway.

Hard to know. I think the problem is we don't really have a plan B for EU membership.

We're going to find it quite challenging to be on the other side of a border to the UK. That adjustment hasn't really taken place yet, but will hit us on 1 January next.

A big barrier to us leaving is what it would mean for our national debt, currently denominated in euro.

I don't think there's any political appetite at all for Irexit. And the consequences of a wider breakup of the EU are just inconceivable for us.

Tuco88

I think its going to be a nightmare, construction supplies from the UK are already backed up and depleted with Covid headache.

Toss in trade barriers and other red tape stuff, its going to slow the sector right down. Not to mention argri/fishing.

Hamsterchops

PopePalpatine wrote: »

Just switch out every mention of "Britain"/"England" for Ireland and slap it on a photo of a famous rebel and watch the Facebook likes roll in.

And pretend that Britain isn't between us and mainland Europe, like logic would dictate that we should trade (fresh food) in particular with our nearest neighbour instead of sending and receiving deliveries from beyond Britain.....

From this fresh food perspective Irexit may indeed make sense. Yes you can trade with Europe but Ireland and Britain are so close, not just geographically but culturally too (food types etc).

ancapailldorcha

Hamsterchops wrote: »

And pretend that Britain isn't between us and mainland Europe, like logic would dictate that we should trade (fresh food) in particular with our nearest neighbour instead of sending and receiving deliveries from beyond Britain.....

From this fresh food perspective Irexit may indeed make sense. Yes you can trade with Europe but Ireland and Britain are so close, not just geographically but culturally too (food types etc).

Irexit makes no sense from any perspective. Completely decimating Ireland's economic model while already being self sufficient for food makes no sense whatsoever.