Noel Whelan: Enda Kenny seems intent on making mess of Brexit

In the face of rumblings about a Fine Gael leadership challenge, Enda Kenny loyalists have been busy talking up the Taoiseach's supposed centrality to negotiations about Brexit. These negotiations will not only shape our new relationship with the UK and the EU, but will also threaten economic recovery in the Republic and political stability in the North. The thesis from the Kenny regime is that Ireland needs an experienced and careful leader at this crucial moment.

The reality is that the Brexit negotiations will take much longer than either the Kenny leadership or the current Government are likely to last.

Based on their record in the 133 days since Britain voted to leave the EU, that might be a good thing. It is not at all clear that the Government or its current leader is up to the task of meeting the Brexit challenge.

One would have expected the Government to set out a clear vision for our political, diplomatic and economic policy in light of the Brexit vote. There should have been a massive reorientation of Government structures and even of the Cabinet itself to focus on this priority. One would have hoped for a clear road map for intensive research and public engagement on the issues involved.

Instead the Government response has been passive, ad hoc and at times confused.

Since June 23rd, Kenny has made a number of set-piece speeches about Brexit but these have been little more than a summary of departmental check-lists itemising policy aspects likely to be affected.

Listening capacity

There have been some reconfigurations of personnel within and between the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of Foreign Affairs to create a Brexit unit. There has also been some beefing up of diplomatic listening capacity in London,

Brussels

and other European capitals, but nothing on the scale necessary.

One gets a sense that the Government and officialdom feel it can do Brexit in the same centrally-controlled manner it has done everything else – behind closed doors with occasional consultations with the usual suspects.

Anyone who doubted the Government’s conservatism in that regard need only look at the coverage of this week’s grandiosely titled All-Island Civic Dialogue on Brexit. It all looked and sounded very familiar. Hundreds of men (and some women) in suits at plenary sessions in a lavish setting.

At the end of the event the Government announced four general outcomes. And each could have been written – and may have been written – before the event took place.

The event concluded with a vague promise of similar events at some unspecified point of the Government’s choosing.

The notion of naming this conference as an all-island event was curious. Kenny first floated the idea of an "all-Ireland" forum on the implications of Brexit in the days before the last North South Ministerial Council in early July. He had egg on his face, however, when the North's First Minister Arlene Foster slapped down the idea at a joint press conference, saying it had not been discussed with her, and she and her party would not be attending.

Different approach

In the following days the Department of Foreign Affairs briefed that this all-Ireland forum concept was a notion of Kenny’s own making, and had it known about it then it would have advised a different approach.

Notwithstanding this rebuff and even though Kenny then suggested that such a forum would need “buy-in from everyone”, the Government put together this week’s event knowing unionist politicians would not attend.

One wonders how the notion of the Dublin Government organising a so-called all-island forum without the involvement of the Belfast government or any of the unionist parties is supposed to help calm the political impact of Brexit for this island.

Nationalist politicians from the North and South were delighted with the event since they got to parade before the cameras on their way in and talk up “cross-Border dimensions” to the further irritation of unionism.

Even apart from this week’s event the Taoiseach’s talk around the implications of Brexit for Irish unity has been haphazard.

In late June, Kenny, like many others, was dismissive of Sinn Féin’s trumpeting of the need for a “Border poll”. In late July, however, Kenny gave the notion an airing to the media on his way into the MacGill Summer School. The words used by Kenny suggested his primary concern was not to be outflanked in rhetoric by Sinn Féin on the topic.

Brexit has the potential to arouse noisy dogs that have been left sleeping in Northern Ireland as the peace process bedding down. The Taoiseach should be countering and not contributing to this disruptive rhetoric.

The merits of the Kenny approach to date are questionable in terms of European policy, and they are reckless in terms of Northern Ireland policy.