Stephen Collins: Labour win in UK elections is preferable from Irish perspective

A century on from the series of events that led to the Irish exit from the United Kingdom it appears that Scotland is about to launch itself on a similar trajectory with unforeseen consequences for all the people of these islands.

While violence is unlikely to feature on the road to Scottish independence there are some remarkable political similarities with the situation in Ireland just over a century ago.

The current British election campaign has uncanny echoes of the first election of 1910 when the Conservative and Liberal parties ended up in a dead heat and presented the Irish Parliamentary Party with the balance of power in the House of Commons.

It was the day that John Redmond had been waiting for, and he used his pivotal position to extract a firm commitment from prime minister Herbert Asquith and his Liberal government to introduce Home Rule for Ireland.

That commitment really meant something because the House of Lords veto was in the process of being dismantled after their lordships rejected the “people’s budget” of 1909. It meant the road was finally open to the establishment of a parliament in Dublin.

Apart altogether from the Home Rule question there was considerable outrage in England that the Irish Parliamentary Party was in a position to dictate who should form the government of the UK.

The parallel with the position Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party (SNP) is hoping to find itself in next month is obvious. The current Conservative appeal to English voters to stop troublesome Scots dictating who should form the government in London has many echoes of 1910.

Back then furious effort were made after the January 1910 election by leading Conservatives and Liberals to find an agreement among themselves on the great constitutional issue of the day to limit the influence of the Irish party.

As outlined in Ronan Fanning's riveting Fatal Path, Lloyd George and the Conservative leader Arthur Balfour met in secret to see if they could devise a bipartisan approach to Ireland as a way of neutralising Redmond. When their efforts to get around the Irish veto failed there was a second election in 1910 designed to break the impasse and protect the union.

In the event the result was another dead heat and the elements of the Liberal establishment who chaffed at Redmond’s influence over affairs reluctantly agreed to Home Rule.

One way or another the two deadlocked elections of 1910 put the Irish issue at the centre of British politics and it stayed there until it was resolved, however unsatisfactorily, in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922, with the departure of the 26 Counties from the UK.

If Sturgeon is in a position to dictate the formation of the next British government many of the same issues that dominated British politics in 1910 will recur and there is already talk of a second election in 2015 if there is no clear winner on May 7th.

Price is right

Her position in relation to the Labour Party is not that dissimilar from that of Redmond to the Liberals. The instinct of the Scottish Nationalists will be to back Labour and keep the Conservatives out of power but only if the price is right.

That was obvious during the leaders’ television debate on Thursday night when Sturgeon entreated Ed Miliband to strike a deal to keep the Tories out.

Any deal will have to involve far greater powers for the Scottish parliament and, even if it does not amount to outright independence in the short term, will set the UK on course for fundamental change.

So what are the implications for Ireland? When the momentum for Scottish independence began to develop some years ago the late Garret FitzGerald expressed concern at the capacity of Scottish independence to upset the cordial relationship between Ireland and the UK which had taken so long to evolve.

The disruption of the current UK structure will undoubtedly have implications for the North, particularly in the light of the attachment to Scotland felt by many Northern unionists.

However, whatever difficulties might arise for Ireland as a result of a new relationship between Scotland and England they pale into insignificant by comparison with the other big relationship at the centre of the election campaign – the prospect of a British withdrawal from the European Union.

If David Cameron and the Conservatives retain power there will be a referendum on EU membership and there is no knowing how that will turn out. Any British decision to pull out of the EU would have serious negative consequences for this country on a number of fronts.

Border controls

On Thursday the Oireachtas Committee on European Union Affairs concluded meetings on the topic. Committee chairman Dominic Hannigan said issues included the current freedom of movement between the two states; border controls and customs checking; and the significant psychological impact that may be brought to bear on those living near the Border and on cross-Border relations.

The Open Europe think tank simultaneously published a report claiming a British exit would damage the Irish economy and lead to a slow-down of foreign direct investment. It also said a British withdrawal would reduce the influence of the free trade bloc in the EU, of which Ireland is a member, and increase the power of the French-led protectionist bloc.

Given the uncertainty a Cameron victory will generate about the future direction of the EU, the preferable outcome on May 7th from an Irish perspective is a Labour government in Downing Street. It looks as if that can only happen with the backing of the SNP.