Tories willing to sabotage UK out of blind hatred of EU

The willingness of the British Conservative Party to risk the future of the United Kingdom in pursuit of a no-deal Brexit is breathtaking in its recklessness but no great surprise considering its past record on Ireland.

Just over a century ago the Tories, in alliance with the Ulster Unionists, brought the UK to the brink of civil war to prevent the establishment of a home rule parliament in Dublin. That set in motion a sequence of events that led to the major part of this island exiting the UK.

Today the right wing of the Conservative Party is hell bent on a course of action that has the capacity to break the UK into pieces once and for all. Just to put the icing on the cake the team around Boris Johnson is boasting of his willingness to cling to office even if the House of Commons passes a motion of no confidence in his leadership.

Attachment of Ireland to the EU has puzzled many strands of opinion in the UK

Such a move, more reminiscent of Venezuela than a European democracy, would precipitate a constitutional crisis and destroy what remains of Britain’s international reputation.

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It would also have the potential to drag Queen Elizabeth into a raging political controversy that would be deeply damaging to the monarchy.

Complex relationship

How the political party which has dominated the UK for nearly two centuries has got itself to this point is a long and complicated story but outsiders can only watch in fascinated horror as the drama plays out over the next three months.

At the core of the crisis is a conjunction of the UK’s complex relationship with the European Union on the one hand and Ireland on the other. The two have come together to create the perfect conditions for the nervous collapse of British democracy.

In a fascinating lecture at the Royal Irish Academy earlier in the year David Cannadine, one of the UK’s leading historians, touched on how anti-Catholic feeling had warped the capacity of the British government to deal with Ireland before 1922 and he speculated that the anti-Catholicism so rife in Britain in centuries past had morphed into the anti-EU sentiment of more recent times.

There is a striking symmetry between the parallel growth of anti-EU sentiment in Britain and the way in which Ireland has moved from being a country where a majority of people so strongly identified with the Catholic Church in the past to one which today identifies more strongly with the EU more than any other member state.

It is possible that the House of Commons might just be able to prevent a no deal

The latest Eurobarometer poll published this week illustrates the point. It found that Irish people are more optimistic about the future of the EU than the citizens of any other member state, despite the risk of the UK crashing out without a deal at the end of October.

Some 85 per cent of Irish people surveyed said they were optimistic about the future of the union and 77 per cent were happy with the way democracy worked in the EU – putting Ireland at the top of all member states in both categories. A whopping 85 per cent of Irish people also said they felt like they were citizens of the EU.

This attachment of Ireland to the EU has puzzled many strands of opinion in the UK. What they find even more mystifying is that the feeling is mutual and that the EU has so far maintained its commitment to Ireland. There was a widely held view in the UK that the European Commission and the other member states were merely using Ireland as a bargaining counter and would be quite willing to ditch us when the going got tough.

Fundamental threat

What this analysis missed is that Brexit represents a fundamental threat to the EU itself. One of the most noble and successful political projects in human history has been put at risk by Brexit. The EU and Ireland have no choice but to defend it with every weapon they have and that includes the border backstop.

That is why Johnson’s threat to leave without a deal has not had anything like the impact in the rest of Europe that the new prime minister and his circle expected. If anything, Johnson’s election has made it easier for EU leaders to stick to their guns and refuse to budge on the terms of the deal they negotiated with Theresa May.

That penny still has not dropped with most of the British media, as evidenced by Paschal Donohoe’s interview on BBC’s Newsnight earlier in the week. Presenter Emily Maitlis seemed surprised he wasn’t quaking in his boots at the idea of a no-deal Brexit or pleading with the EU to find a way of saving Ireland from the implications of the backstop.

How it will all turn out by October 31st is still impossible to predict. It is possible that the House of Commons might just be able to prevent a no deal or precipitate a general election by voting no confidence in the British government.

There is even a remote possibility that a temporary cross-party government might be able to take control and seek another extension. The only thing that is clear is the willingness of a sizeable portion of the Conservative Party to sabotage the UK in their blind hatred of the EU.