Opinion

Tom Collins: Boris Johnson’s ‘interest’ is selfish and strategic

Tom Collins

Tom Collins

Tom Collins is an Irish News columnist and former editor of the newspaper.

For UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Brexit chickens are coming home to roost. Photo: Frank Augstein/PA Wire.
For UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Brexit chickens are coming home to roost. Photo: Frank Augstein/PA Wire. For UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Brexit chickens are coming home to roost. Photo: Frank Augstein/PA Wire.

One of the reasons we get so much fun out of films is our ability to ‘suspend disbelief’.

We believe what is being played out on the screen, even though we know the characters are actors, the costumes are from a giant dressing-up box, and the sets are pieces of painted plywood.

We do the same in real life. It’s called ‘magical thinking’. And there’s a lot of it about.

Unionists believe they are living in an integral part of the United Kingdom, nationalists believe the south would have them at the drop of a hat, we all believe that somewhere, beneath the bluster, all politicians here really want to make a difference to voters’ lives.

Perhaps the biggest bit of magical thinking is that Great Britain has no ‘selfish strategic or economic interest’ in Northern Ireland, that it’s an honest broker, and a co-guarantor of the peace process.

Peter Brooke’s phrase was critical to the choreography leading to the ceasefires and Good Friday Agreement. At the time there was a real sense of a shift in Britain’s approach to this island. It accepted that responsibility for the political future of Ireland rested with its people, and them alone.

It moved from being a combatant to being a guarantor of that new political dispensation alongside the Republic, the US and, crucially, the EU. Common EU membership made the land border in Ireland an irrelevance.

We all knew there would be bumps along the way – and there were. But little did we think that the historic settlement of a conflict which had it roots in the middle ages would be torpedoed by one of the guardians of the peace process.

An English government (let’s not tar the Scots or Welsh with this) has wilfully put the peace process at risk for a policy based on the whimsical belief that Britain is better off outside one of the most important economic and political hubs in the world.

The Leave campaign was told explicitly what the consequences of Brexit would be. The instability today is a direct result of that act of self-harm. Brexit is an English Nationalist folly; a folly opportunistically exploited by the DUP which saw an opportunity to undo the Good Friday Agreement, and re-establish a hard border in Ireland.

Along the way, the Tory party found that it did have a selfish strategic interest in dabbling in the politics of Ireland. Theresa May’s foolhardy election in 2017 left her dependant on the DUP for a majority in the House of Commons; and Boris Johnson saw in the DUP a route to power. Deposing May with the DUP’s help.

Selfishly and strategically, the UK government is using and abusing its role in Ireland to secure its grip in power.

Meanwhile, the Brexit chickens (chlorinated or not) are coming home to roost. The British economy is in freefall, millions are hungry, energy prices are going through the roof, and the government is crumbling under the weight of its own lies, accusations of corruption over the procurement of PPE, and a wave of Covid fines for partying while people died.

Such is his distance from reality that after his visit this week, Johnson claimed all the main parties had issues with the NI Protocol. Furthermore he, and his excuse for a secretary of state, have wilfully misread the outcome of the assembly election.

In a double-whammy on Tuesday we were presented with so-called legacy and reconciliation bill and Liz Truss’s proposed protocol legislation to undermine a binding international treaty.

Rather than operating as an honest broker and respecting the election outcome, the UK is dancing to the DUP’s tune.

The reality, of course, is that the DUP cannot and will not be satisfied. It has no vision, and nothing to offer people here –including its own voters.

The DUP has painted itself into a corner, and should be left there. We all know it is beyond persuasion.

Those parties which want to see the assembly work must instead do all they can to persuade vote DUP voters there is a better way.

As for Johnson, the only thing all parties (including the DUP) know is that he cannot be trusted.

In Britain people are waking up to what Brexit really means. Johnson is on borrowed time. When he falls – and it will be sooner rather than later – it might then be possible to make the British government live up to its responsibilities.