Cheltenham 2020 was a turning point in our relationship with Britain

As we tell the story of the Anglo-Irish relationship there are several moments that have come to define the uneasy nature of the comity. We can wend our way through the loops and arcs of history past the plantations and through Wolftone’s rebellions, bids for Home Rule, the War of Independence, the Troubles and the signing of the Belfast Agreement.

There is a sense that the catastrophic, or violent, or tragic set-pieces are waning in frequency and being replaced with bureaucratic fiddly bits: Ireland’s membership of the European Union, Britain’s decision to leave that union, the signing and subsequent attempted mangling of the Northern Irish protocol. This is, as we are told, the direction that history is supposed to take.

Amid all of this there is a contemporary moment in danger of being forgotten and cast aside as unimportant. In such a long and fractious history it may seem even frivolous to mention. But little things can take on enormous significance. And when we tell the story of the two nations with all the benefits of hindsight, the Cheltenham Festival in March 2020 – two years ago, nearly to the day – might just qualify as a totemic turning point.

The Covid pandemic itself is seismic. In some part because it gave another reason to consider the long-term feasibility of the constitutional arrangement on the island of Ireland, as two states attempted to mediate separate epidemiological jurisdictions either side of an open border. But we may be better off understanding that as just a logical progression to discussions about the Border that have been rattling on since its inception.

Taking sides and Ireland’s neutrality

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Questions for Census 2022

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Proud to be Irish

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Can Ireland feed itself?

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No matter the technical differences between the approaches, what matters is that they diverged in the first place

No, rather two years on from March 2020, as the pandemic began to sink its teeth into Europe, we can see Cheltenham for the watershed moment it was. It is important not just thanks to its long-held place in horse racing rivalry, nor because of its status as a historic meeting point between the English and Irish (an important motif though it may be).

But because at Cheltenham 2020 it became abundantly clear that Ireland would chart a different course from England in the pandemic. And that from here on, even in matters of epidemiology, and even in spite of sharing an open land border with the United Kingdom, Ireland would take its cues from the European Union and not the United Kingdom. If Cheltenham was the moment that this departure became clear then its significance to this era of the Anglo-Irish relationship can hardly be overstated.

When then taoiseach Leo Varadkar gave his historic speech in Washington DC announcing Ireland’s lockdown there was a general sense dawning on the nation that the unfolding crisis was being taken seriously. Schools were closed, large-scale events cancelled, the St Patrick’s Day Parade called off. Meanwhile, 250,000 punters descended on Cheltenham, tens of thousands of them from Ireland, and packed into bars and crowded trains. By the third day of the festival case rates in England had doubled on the previous day.

Widening dissonance

All the while British prime minister Boris Johnson and his advisers were parading a widening dissonance with their European colleagues, as prevention measures remained loose and herd immunity was touted as a possible route through. This was quickly reversed, of course. But it set the tenor for both countries throughout the pandemic. The UK was decidedly more swashbuckling, several times to a fault. And Ireland inherently more cautious, also several times to a fault.

But no matter the technical differences between the approaches, what matters is that they diverged in the first place. Ireland had naturally been cleaving to the EU for a while, in no small part due to the support the bloc offered the Republic through Brexit as successive Conservative administrations demonstrated paltry concern for their closest neighbour.

But when Ireland followed a different path to the UK in health policy there was a sense that a final hurdle had been cleared. It is an area where the neighbours have long been close and may have credibly remained close in spite of Brexit. This divergence, then, indicated that Ireland’s process of psychological distancing – set in motion by Brexit – was more or less complete. And though this distance is patent, it is one that some contingents of the United Kingdom have still failed to accept.

Of course, history emerges from whoever tells their preferred story the most convincingly. Already, Johnson has cited Brexit as the source of Britain’s successful vaccine-rollout and attempted to spin a somewhat-deserved triumphalist yarn. And meanwhile Ireland has leveraged its comparatively lower death rate as proof it made the right decision to deviate. The varying merits of these claims may come out in the wash eventually.

But Cheltenham allowed us to see something important laid bare. And though it is terribly difficult to understand the significance of events and their impact when we are currently experiencing them, this seemingly small moment on our shared radar might just represent a point of no return.