Former senior Irish diplomat Ray Bassett gave a fascinating interview to the Irish News last weekend. His comments on Brexit were especially sharp.
“My opinion is that the EU used Ireland as a bit of a battering ram against the Brits,” he told journalist Pat McArt.
“Despite all the scare stories, there was no way they were going to put a border back on the island of Ireland. Not a chance. Too many people had died because of that Border.”
Bassett suggested that had the government under Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney been “less strident” during Brexit negotiations and acted with generosity in Brussels on the UK’s behalf, the “disasters” of prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss would have been avoided.
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Instead, the relationship between London and Dublin, painstakingly built up during the peace process, was destroyed – damage that is only now starting to heal.
Bassett was the Republic’s longest-serving official in Northern Ireland and a key figure in the peace process, before leaving Belfast in 2010 to serve as ambassador to Canada.
His observations on Brexit were all the more intriguing for being offered after McArt asked about a united Ireland.
The implication that Brexit has been a setback for unity runs counter to received wisdom, but it makes sense if unification is seen as a deep process of British-Irish negotiation – a diplomat’s perspective, admittedly. It would be ironic if Varadkar, who now champions unity, helped to make it a more difficult goal.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, of course, but Bassett warned from the outset that the government was mishandling Brexit.
At a 2017 conference in Belfast, one year after his retirement, he said the European Union was engaged in a humiliation exercise, dragging Ireland on to “the wrong track”.
“It is not in your interest to insult or defeat the other person and there is too much of that at the moment,” he continued, in remarks widely reported at the time.
He also quoted SDLP deputy leader Seamus Mallon’s philosophy on negotiations during the peace process: “Always make sure the other guy gets up with his trousers on.”
That was a daring quip in 2017, with Johnson as British foreign secretary.
The attraction of Bassett’s thesis today is how many people might agree with it, creating a new received wisdom that repairs relationships.
It casts everyone as a victim of the ruthless EU, a narrative even the EU could live with, as it seems to revel in its reputation as an unyielding, mechanistic negotiator.
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Much of Ireland might be relaxed about the idea that the UK got too much of a battering. It hardly insults the Republic to suggest everyone underestimated Irish strength and British weakness.
Almost everyone in the UK, whatever their position on Brexit, would welcome an acknowledgment that it could have been handled better from the EU side. The Republic is more likely to be thanked than blamed if it volunteered this suggestion, ideally from a contemporary political leader. Bassett said a Jim O’Callaghan-led Fianna Fáil could change the conversation on a united Ireland.
Within Northern Ireland, where the Brexit argument pivoted and still festers, many unionists are desperate to pin blame on Dublin and Brussels to try to absolve the DUP. They might seize on conciliatory statements with less than good grace.
Bassett mentioned the fragile condition of unionism in his interview, pleading for all sides “to be sensitive about people’s genuine concerns and fears”. A spell of post-Brexit peace processing is required.
Northern nationalists could take heart that this is about restoring British-Irish relations to the level necessary for any serious consideration of a Border poll or a united Ireland, or to reform Stormont, or to agree alternative governance arrangements for Northern Ireland should devolution fail again.
We all need to put the Brexit drama behind us to deal with the far worse dramas of the present. There must be a public appetite for this, if only due to exhaustion. Fine Gael tried to fight the 2020 general election on its assertive approach to Brexit only to discover voters were tired of the subject already.
Yet Brexit continues to destabilise Stormont and stir resentment at Westminster, causing problems for the Republic, directly and indirectly. Through self-interest alone, the Republic could still consider Bassett’s advice to speak generously in Brussels on the UK’s behalf. Helping the UK to make deals with Europe helps to reduce trading frictions in Northern Ireland, and vice versa.
The Republic has another self-interested reason to revisit its Brexit history. As the world becomes more dangerous, EU officials and member states increasingly criticise Irish defence policy by complaining that they gave the Republic unstinting support during Brexit.
It is time to consider ways to diplomatically point out that it may not have been quite that simple.
