Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: Don't imagine the English Brexit meltdown is good for us

Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement to MPs in the House of Commons, London on her new Brexit motion. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Monday January 21, 2019
Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement to MPs in the House of Commons, London on her new Brexit motion. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Monday January 21, 2019 Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement to MPs in the House of Commons, London on her new Brexit motion. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Monday January 21, 2019

England is surprised at itself, or at least so say the voices most raised in public. A country proud of its tolerance with some cause has been ‘polarised’ by the Brexit argument, it is said, into ‘tribes’ and angry division that may last decades.

To some, it is as if overnight they have become like our infamously torn society. There should be no surprise, though there might well be dismay.

The divide has been there for a long time between rich and poor, regions served better or worse by transport links and therefore more prosperous than others, north versus south in the pattern familiar in other countries.

Dominance by London is not new, even if the current imbalance is the most destructive and harsh. What is different is how Brexit has ripped away pretence and indifference, even as its implications only slowly emerge, even as its implementation stalls and becomes less clear-cut by the day.

Read More:

  • Theresa May's Brexit deadlock plans 'wasted opportunity' say Stormont pro-Remain parties
  • Theresa May to hold further talks with MPs on backstop
  • Analysis: The British government's Brexit strategy now requires a complete overhaul

No doubt it will take longer before many begin to say we’re becoming like that benighted place across the water, where everyone knows what religion the other is and hates them accordingly. But ‘polarised’? Those dreary ‘tribes’, from which only the rare decent skin breaks free to see metropolitan sense. Each time the mismatch of and clash between allegiance and administration here becomes too sharp to be ignored, the reflex in official Britain and echo here has been to detect sharper polarisation - than the previous time. Since persistent riots and violence first forced London to pay attention, British comment and even analysis has played up tribal markings and sectarian division to demean and trivialise our political differences.

We must just rise above the analysis, the casual, instinctive insult. ‘I guess you’re all republican or unionist at your core,’ a lofty American editor once declaimed as she knocked back the read of an experienced, struggling-to-be objective enough Belfast ‘stringer’. (A stringer, as some may not know, is a local knowledge purveyor, a native guide, paid by the piece in a role with just as much clout as editors recognise.) The editor would have combusted if the stringer had said ‘so you’re white, therefore your read of America is of course skewed.’ The stringer did not say.

The Times commissioned a poll last week that showed, to the obvious pleasure of the reporter tasked with writing it up, more prejudice against Leavers among Remainers than the other way around. More young Remainers could not imagine living with a Leaver, or welcoming one into their family, than the reverse.

Leavers were more laid back about it all but the divide was, is, serious, the Times found. From the most conflicted serious newspaper, pleasure that Leavers are less prejudiced personally ran alongside awareness that the split runs deep.

Read More:

  • Jacob Rees-Mogg presses ahead with appearance at DUP fundraiser despite criticism from NI Tories
  • MP urges SNP leaders to make case for a second vote on Scottish independence
  • Stephen Farry: No deal Brexit would be a disaster for Northern Ireland

But while the bad in us might sniff about Westminster disorder and the meltdown of English party politics, the spectacle of minnows and rampant egos derailing the more sane with formal splits up ahead likely enough, only the most insular can imagine this is good for us. It will take time for new patterns to emerge, perhaps proportional representation at last, an age perhaps of perpetual coalitions. If British politics has been brought to a brink at least superficially over ‘our’ border, it does not mean any more care is likely about realpolitik here.

Right on cue the Daily Telegraph reported Theresa May would tell parliament yesterday she was ‘considering rewriting the Good Friday Agreement’ to enshrine a UK commitment to ‘no hard border.’ As though she could do it unilaterally. Depending on the DUP is not good for May’s thinking. Though does she think at all beyond today, and a wish to avoid a split party when she falls?

Also on cue here comes ‘Ireland’s Future’ this Saturday in the Waterfront, fronted by lawyer Niall Murphy and polemicist Brian Feeney, trying to define a Brexit voice for nationalism though not, Murphy insists, a new party. Meanwhile this paper’s ‘On This Day’ selected by Feeney’s fellow historian Eamon Phoenix, is noting how the SDLP emerged from the swirl of civil rights agitation, old nationalist party, and the residue of physical force republicanism.

Whatever becomes of Ireland’s Voice, its origins are no surprise. Unionism could surprise itself and everyone else but the signs are the other way; business shearing away in frustration from the DUP, the UUPs insisting on their separate existence while only competing with the DUP to sound more absolutist. On past form, it is nationalism that will have to find a way forward.