Starmer gives British Labour a lesson in Irish history

Yesterday the Telegraph made a curious argument for Britain’s future with the Biden administration. Because Joe Biden’s ancestor fled to the United States from Mayo during the famine, it could mean the 46th US president is “well disposed towards Great Britain”. Without wishing to be glib, the famine was likely not the PR coup for Britain some seem to think it is.

But what is one throwaway comment? There are plenty of good cases to be made about Biden’s good future relations with Britain. And the counterargument – that Biden will be bad for Britain simply because he is invested in Ireland – is a facile one. That the famine would have any bearing of Anglo-American policy is a ludicrous notion.

But there is something a little more insidious at play. Demonstrating a historical illiteracy of the famine is hardly bound to have any real-world impacts. But this faux-pas – in keeping with home secretary Priti Patel's suggestion she threaten Ireland with food shortages amid Brexit negotiations – is revelatory of a more dangerous mode of ignorance.

When historical questions feed directly into live political issues there is a lot more at stake. As the UK negotiated its exit from the European Union it became increasingly clear that Brexiteers paid little heed to the provisions or sanctity of the Belfast Agreement. This was no more obvious than when then Northern Ireland secretary Karen Bradley revealed she did not know elections in the region were fought along nationalist or unionist lines. Nor should we readily forget when Theresa May’s former adviser accused Leo Varadkar of being “the real threat to peace”.

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The consequences of this casual indifference to Northern Ireland exceed the tone-deaf gaffes from cabinet ministers and their advisers. The unwillingness to understand the unique constitutional status of Northern Ireland, from the starting whistle, heralded years of instability for the region. Instability that could have been avoided were Westminster in possession of greater knowledge about the peace process, and the moderate sensibilities required to maintain it.

Historical illiteracy

Good politicians know not to interrupt their enemy while they are making mistakes. And as this worrying historical illiteracy ran amok in the Conservative Party, Keir Starmer remained rather quiet on the topic. But he also knows when to pick his moments. The Labour Party has launched an education initiative for its 500,000 members on the Belfast Agreement. It’s intended to explain Labour’s role in securing peace in Northern Ireland, and draw attention to the work done by women and trade unions throughout the process.

It is not an unwelcome gesture, though it seems unlikely that it will see a wholesale attitude shift when it comes to Northern Ireland. Rather, it is in no small part a move designed to throw the Conservatives’ cavalier handling of Northern Ireland into sharp relief, drawing attention to its systematic mismanagement of it throughout the entire Brexit process. Because what Brexit has proven is that historical literacy is of vital importance. Not simply because it engenders good relations, fostering a sense of comity between two historically angsty neighbours (though of course this matters too). But because it has practical implications for designing workable policies.

Infighting

It took several years for Brexiteers to realise that taking Northern Ireland out of the single market, while simultaneously avoiding a hard border, was an unworkable aim. A lot of this energy could have been saved were greater attention paid to Northern Ireland, and were greater heed paid to its fractious history. In lieu of that we were treated to years of infighting over the backstop, the design of the Northern Ireland Protocol, and threats to tear up the protocol in the name of political leverage. In exchange for internal Conservative Party conflict on its various myopic versions of Brexit we got damaging uncertainty for Northern Ireland.

No education initiative for Labour Party members is going to rewrite this recent past. But an acknowledgment from Starmer that much of this could have been avoided with a stronger grasp of Anglo-Irish history can certainly not go amiss. In the very least he has offered a clear signal – though too little too late – that he understands the need to uphold the Belfast Agreement. It is a small ask of a senior politician, but it is a position conspicuous in its absence for many years.

And in doing so Starmer has not just demonstrated a divergence from the current government, but so too from his predecessor’s incarnation of the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn had long allied himself with the more extreme ends of the Irish nationalist cause, voting against the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 on the grounds that it hindered moves towards reunification. He offered no salient opposition to Conservative mismanagement of Northern Ireland because he too was gripped by historical amnesia, unwilling to understand why Ireland was happy with the post-1998 status quo. Where the Conservatives failed Northern Ireland due to a historical illiteracy, Corbyn failed due to historical blinkeredness.

A refusal to understand, or a refusal to accept, historical realities will always have tangible consequences. And Northern Ireland has long been the victim of these competing modes of thinking in Westminster. Though Starmer’s intervention may be little more than a gesture, it’s a good start at redressing the years of imbalance.