The Irish Question

A Guardian piece seeks to explain to the non-Irish what the fuss is all about over the Irish border (still being held up by the EC as a major stumbling block to agreement). There is the usual shouty headline:

Brexit is a menace to society in Northern Ireland. Here’s why

 
Greenslade discusses the issue of hard borders in a rather ambivalent way. The actual border:

has existed in name only for the past 20 years, it is crossed and recrossed by many thousands of cars and lorries on a daily basis. There are 208 crossing points, and technological monitoring appears unfeasible even in the highly unlikely event that people opposed to the border don’t put the devices out of action...Cross-border cooperation has become a fact of life and touches every sector, both public and private, including agriculture, health and higher education. People travel across the border to work. Regional development bodies aimed at improving the infrastructure on either side have been set up. Small businesses trade without a fuss across a frontier that to most people, especially the younger generation, is a meaningless entity.

But only the EC wants the UK to reinstate a proper hard border. Rees-Mogg recently argued on Newsnight that the policing of customs, VAT and currency exchanges all go on at the moment unobtrusively and 'remotely' and he can't see why that should change .

Greenslade argues it is seen as a big deal in Northern Ireland because the Good Friday Agreement referred to human rights in the context of the European Convention of Human Rights. Apparently, the issues are being highlighted by a group called Border Communities Against Brexit, and 'Michael Farrell, the man who led the civil rights campaign in Northern Ireland in 1968'.

When the UK leaves, the reference to the European Convention will obviously cease to apply, but human rights will still be guaranteed:

The Conservative government has pledged to repeal the Human Rights Act, which incorporated the ECHR into UK law. Instead it wants to introduce a bill of rights, which will relieve British judges of the requirement to follow decisions by the European Court of Human Rights. It amounts to a breach of the GFA, but this is not a [mere] technical, legal issue in Northern Ireland, where rights are fundamental to the smooth workings of its society...Fears of a further encroachment to human rights centre on the fact that one of Northern Ireland’s major parties, the DUP, which opposed the GFA and opposed EU membership, is also opposed to extensions in equality legislation. [That party is a key partner of the current Conservative Government]...[prompting] Sinn Féin, to call on Ireland’s constituency commission to maintain post-Brexit representation for Northern Ireland’s residents in the European parliament by allocating two new MEPs’ seats.

We can see that the DUP and the people who voted for them are not a part of Northern Irish 'society' for Greenslade. This would be to allow citizens of Northern Ireland voting rights while no other citizens of the UK would have them, 'But Brexit redefines British citizenship too, does it not?'

Greenslade is right to say that 'in the 2016 EU referendum 56% of Northern Ireland’s voters favoured staying in the EU. Is it democratic to threaten that majority’s human rights?'. But,of course,  52% of the wider UK voted to leave, and this is a much greater number, so deciding what is 'democratic' needs a bit more work, as it always did in Ireland.

It is also not at all clear that the reasons for disquiet expressed by Border Communities Against Brexit, Michael Farrell or Sinn Fein are the same reasons for EC obstructionism on the matter. That seems to have much more to do with managing trade between the UK and the EU more generally, regardless of the rights or interests of the Northern Irish.