Peter Flanagan lives in Hackney, London, and works as a comedian all over Europe. He has been gigging around Britain recently and thinks England’s contentious relationship with Europe is being driven by its contentious relationship with itself
The 2010s started so well for Anglo-Irish relations. Conservative prime minister David Cameron’s worst instincts were curbed by his coalition partner and future tech-bro, Liberal party leader Nick Clegg. And many swooned when the queen of England reeled off her cúpla focal during her visit to Dublin Castle in May 2011.
Fast-forward to the present day and the British government is treating the Belfast Agreement with the kind of contempt usually reserved for a gym membership signed while hungover on New Year’s Day.
To understand current British prime minister Boris Johnson’s difficult relationship with Dublin, it is important to first consider the toxic political atmosphere he has helped to curate at home.
Britain’s problems mirror those of Ireland, especially when it comes to housing. Millions of council homes were sold off under Margaret Thatcher in a transfer of wealth from the taxpayer to an incredibly fortunate minority who saw property prices skyrocket. The dearth of affordable housing stock has been exacerbated by restrictive planning rules, land hoarding and foreign investors pushing up prices.
The capacity of the National Health Service (NHS) has been diminished by a decade of austerity. The Covid-19 pandemic pushed the NHS to the brink and contributed to the surge in Britons choosing private care. The growing number of people opting to pay for healthcare is causing concern over a two-tier system developing in a country already riven by social divides.
If Ireland’s big cultural split is between the urban and the rural, England’s main social schism is more about degrees of latitude. Although manufacturing wilted in the north in the 1980s, the services sector in the south of England thrived. While the Conservative government put its boot to the throat of the trade union movement, it took its hands off the banks through the deregulation of financial services. London in particular thrived, taking in more cash than the cloakroom at Copper Face Jacks.
The villages of the home counties are unlike anything I’ve seen in rural Ireland. They are home to some of the most privileged people in the world, many of whom did well in the city before retiring to the shires. Think lizard-green Jaguars, chummy vicars, town names like Red-Trousers-Upon-Thames. Imagine a series of Midsomer Murders where the only bad thing to happen is a sudden spike in the price of camembert.
The Irish countryside has millionaires too, of course, but you’d be hard pressed to find them holed-up in bucolic Tudor cottages.
The difference in England can probably be partly explained by the industrial revolution. While Irish labourers mostly stayed to toil the land and provide the food needed to fuel Britain’s economic ascent, the working poor in Britain moved en masse to cities.
Whatever grudge endures in Ireland over the famine that followed, the hostility felt in the north of England over unequal outcomes in the British Isles may be more acute. People there did not experience starvation, but rather a grinding economic humiliation spread out over generations.
While Ireland’s grievances largely relate to the past, England’s are living, breathing resentments. Watching Prince William and the national anthem get booed by Liverpool fans at the FA Cup final this year, you could have been forgiven for thinking the game was taking place in Tehran.
When I gig up north I’m taken aback by how run-down certain areas are. It can feel as if you have taken one of those sad Irish towns — the ones with 14 busy pubs and one empty primary school — and inserted fluttering union flags, diminished Victorian buildings and stone icons of the glorious war dead — teasing reminders of a better yesterday. It is not difficult to understand why so many of them voted for Brexit. Looking around at the poverty, you wouldn’t think you were in Europe anyway.
Personality is one resource, at least, that the region still has an oversupply of. If you hear a person say that they don’t like the English, what they really mean is that they don’t like the southern English. Northerners are so much craic, they could almost be Irish.
Newcastle on a Saturday night feels like Galway rag week blended with a Hogarth painting. They refuse to wear coats, even in winter. This trait is usually explained away in the south as proof of an inherent beastliness. For me, though, it is evidence of a distinct regional joie de vivre, a triumph over the elements.
The ongoing furore over the Northern Ireland protocol is a reminder that London and Dublin cannot just ignore each other post-Brexit, however much they might like to.
We face so many of the same challenges — from national security to global pandemics — that collaboration has become essential.
Both sides would benefit from a more intimate understanding of the other. But before Britain can heal its marriage with Ireland, it needs to work on its relationship with itself.
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