Knowing yourself to be Irish or British goes way deeper than compromises made in polling booths, stances taken up in argument or skimpily disguised behind that ultimate cop-out; ‘don’t ask me, I’m not interested in politics, they’re all the same, in it for what they can get out of it.’
You can’t tell people what to believe. Or you can, of course, but they will continue to believe what they choose. We have been here before on Brexit. Behaviour now as then has been coloured by how people think of themselves, as well as the danger they fear for themselves and those they love.
None of this is a surprise. Except, perhaps, to those fooled by a stereotype that some occasionally play up to. The laid-back Irish have taken – and largely respected – a strict, disciplined approach, adopted early, admired by the Irish here. Over 70s confined to their homes since March 12, everyone to keep within two kilometres of their home; these are not requirements easily borne. But borne they have largely been. Now with luck there is to be a systematic, disciplined exit, or if restrictions have to be reinstated, a renewal of discipline.
The Republic, or ‘Ireland’, as Dublin government and media now routinely entitle their state, is not saintly. There is no defending the 20,000 predominantly Irish who roared their way through Cheltenham Races, and the gulpins who packed Temple Bar pubs as restrictions began. Excess, though, may have accelerated the message. Publicans surrendered as disgust erupted, and closed before a government order. Thought of as traditionally rebellious and inclined to flout regulations, ‘the Irish’ in ‘Ireland’ buckled down and made the best of it. (As indeed have most of the Irish, and British, across the border.)
A Dublin government with no legitimacy, bust since February’s election, has looked and sounded in charge, grown-up. Frightened populations like that idea, at least while things are very bad. Social cohesion and respect for leaders in Germany, Sweden, New Zealand and elsewhere, many of them women, has brought at least the semblance of calm, some consolation. Scottish opinion praises first minister Nicola Sturgeon for calm, as much certainty as possible. Whereas UK official behaviour overall has splintered.
In Wales people are less admiring of Mark Drakeford, a recent poll finding a third think his government is handling the crisis badly but more than half think it is doing well. Unlike England.
Ministers of slim talent have bumbled through daily briefings and now big business-Conservative donors are impatient to reverse a shut-down so contrary to Brexiteer dreams.
The whole show has been coloured by the absence in hospital and on sick leave after earlier absences, of their prime minister. Boris Johnson needs all his showman’s tricks now to sell the phasing out of a lockdown, which was less than effective at least in part because of his stubborn libertarianism.
Cheek and brio make him the only political figure whose first name identifies him. (The un-charmed note with an eye-roll that he is Al, not Boris, to his siblings.) He has chosen bluff again, the drama of his own encounter with the virus, his need for ‘litres of oxygen’. No repentance.
Given that the biggest party here, first minister, health minister - and civil service heads - all see themselves unquestioningly as part of the British system and look to London for direction, some confusion was inevitable. But compliance depends on confidence that officialdom is delivering fact, not wishful thinking.
Maybe the north has held up better so far than could have been expected, or than officialdom deserves. We may have been expelled from ‘Ireland’ but we are on the same island. Empty calls to ‘pull together’ are self-indulgent in a divided society, mono-cultural rhetoric. And that wallop from the UK Statistics Authority cannot be spun away as the work of anti-British, anti-unionist critics. The health department had better fix how statistics are collected.
