Opinion

Claire Simpson: Brexit has exposed anti-Irish sentiment at the heart of the British government

Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab. File picture by Peter Nicholls, Press Association
Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab. File picture by Peter Nicholls, Press Association Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab. File picture by Peter Nicholls, Press Association

Since the June 2016 EU referendum, British Brexit secretaries have come and gone but their marked antipathy to Ireland has remained.

Like colonial viceroys who didn’t like it when the natives stepped out of line, former secretaries David Davis and Dominic Raab seemed particularly peeved that the Dublin government dared to have its own opinion on how the border should be handled.

The current incumbent Stephen Barclay has proved to be so ineffectual that it would be difficult to identify him from a line-up of one.

But perhaps his bungling and fudged answers are a better approach than that of his predecessor.

Mr Raab revealed a little too much about his prejudices during his appearance before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee last week.

No one could accuse the Conservatives of being a friend to Ireland. But Mr Raab seemed to go out of his way to berate Dublin and the taoiseach in particular for their determination to avoid a hard border.

In a paper-thin attempt to sow discord between Leo Varadkar and his deputy Simon Coveney, Mr Raab claimed the taoiseach leaked “inaccurate” details of a confidential meeting the ex-Brexit secretary had had with the tanaiste.

Insisting that he had kept the conversation “confidential”, Mr Raab essentially accused Mr Varadkar of undermining his own colleague - an odd political move since the taoiseach and tanaiste have done nothing but stick to a consistent position.

Mr Raab said he was “surprised” by Dublin’s political approach and sniped that the Irish government were “taking a very firm line on a (Brexit) deadline”.

(Although this is the same man who admitted last year he "hadn't quite understood" that the island nation of Britain relied heavily on goods coming from Calais to Dover; the same man who supposedly negotiated a Brexit deal then voted against it and resigned in a huff.)

Mr Raab seemed astounded that Ireland - once Britain’s oldest colony - was refusing to obey its former master. The message he hammered home was that it was the Dublin government’s supposed intransigence that was holding up a Brexit deal.

Political relations between the UK and Republic had grown relatively warm since the Good Friday Agreement but Brexit has heralded a definite freeze.

The Tory government cannot seem to understand that, fearful of Nigel Farage’s paper tigers, it was the party that made the disastrous mistake to put Britain’s membership of the EU to a referendum. Then, when it didn’t get the result its leader wanted, it decided to blame everyone but itself. That reluctance to take responsibility ran through Mr Raab’s comments to the committee like a particularly bitter stick of rock.

Unfortunately, after he easily batted away soft questions from Ian Paisley and Gregory Campbell, he came up against a tougher proposition well versed on border issues.

Camlough-born Labour MP Conor McGinn seemed deeply unimpressed by Mr Raab’s attempt to soft-soap him by praising the "beautiful rolling hills along the border".

He was even less impressed when the former Brexit secretary waffled that he had been advised not to bother stopping at the frontier to ask the people who will be most affected by customs checks how the UK’s exit in March will change their lives.

"I think the advice was to avoid what would inevitably end up being a political scrum because you'd get local political representatives trying to hijack that,” the Tory MP claimed, while not bothering to say who gave him this advice.

Showing an impressive lack of knowledge, even for a former Conservative minister, he twice got Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald’s name wrong - referring to her as Mary Lou Donaldson. The republican politician would no doubt be alarmed to realise she’d been married off to the DUP’s Jeffrey Donaldson without her knowledge - as would Mr Donaldson.

Mr Raab’s chilly confidence was all the more disturbing. Coming across like a minor Bond villain who gets killed off early after insisting that his evil plans are coming along swimmingly, he seemed proud that he had deigned to spend the “best part of a morning” being driven along the border by the PSNI. Brief visits to Warrenpoint Harbour and the Port of Larne were presented as evidence of his deep regard for the natives and their piffling problems, or as he frequently said “our Irish friends”.

If Brexit has exposed Britain’s deep-seated issues with race and immigration, it has also highlighted ingrained anti-Irish attitudes which permeate straight to the heart of government.

With friends like Mr Raab who in the Dublin government needs enemies?