Taoiseach Leo Varadkar can relax on one score. It seems that he is not going to be confronted with the difficulty of finding a way to climb down, even a little bit, on the Border backstop as the new British prime minister, Boris Johnson, seems hell bent on confrontation rather than compromise.
Johnson's savage cabinet purge and his appointment of the Brexit campaign's chief strategist Dominic Cummings as he adviser indicates that he has gone into full Prince Hal mode, and is staking everything on routing the dreaded Brussels bureaucrats and the mere Irish by October 31st.
That will have enormous and unforeseeable consequences for the people of this island, as well as the UK, but as far as Varadkar is concerned the politics of it are straightforward. He will simply have to act as the Irish champion standing up to the English bully. That will not be a difficult role to play, particularly as he will have the full backing of our European partners.
Johnson’s purge of almost the entire leadership cadre of the Conservatives and his aping of Churchill’s “we will fight them on the beaches” rhetoric on day one of his premiership has stripped away any lingering illusions about what his intentions are. He is careering towards a no-deal Brexit at the end of October as his favoured option.
He possibly believes that this strategy may force the EU to back down, but there is simply no incentive for European leaders to deal seriously with Johnson in this mode or to put pressure on Ireland to modify its line on the backstop as such a course would undermine the legitimacy of the EU itself.
In purely political terms it is possible that a confrontation with the EU will pay political dividends for Johnson. The depressing lesson of history is that it is the patriotic hard-line that is always the easy political option even if that has disastrous consequences for the people of the country involved.
Political decisions
Economic arguments often have very little bearing on political decisions, as our own history testifies.
Eamon de Valera was elected to lead this country in 1932 on a promise to tear up the provisions of the treaty of 1921. The economic war with Britain instigated by his decision to abolish the oath and default on our national debt by ending payment of land annuities was an unmitigated disaster for this country. Far from undermining support for Dev, the economic war galvanised a majority of people behind him in a do-or-die battle with the British, and it cast WT Cosgrave and the former leadership into the role of aiding and abetting the enemy.
This is the danger now facing the various political forces in the UK who attempt to stop Johnson leading them to a no-deal Brexit. The fevered atmosphere which will inevitably develop in the coming months will make it difficult for the doubters inside the Conservatives to take a stand. His contemptuous dismissal of David Liddington’s sensible intervention in the House of Commons on Thursday was a case in point.
There may be an outside chance that substantial figures like Philip Hammond and David Gauke may be able to rally enough moderate Tories to put a real obstacle in Johnson’s way, but he may well respond to that by calling an early general election. How that would go is anybody’s guess.
One way or another, the fate of the UK is in the hands of its own politicians, and there is nothing anybody on the outside can do that will make a difference at this stage.
There is little the Government in Dublin can do at this stage except prepare for the worst as it doesn’t much matter anymore what the Taoiseach or the Tánaiste say about the backstop.
What does matter is how the country prepares for the kind of Brexit that is coming. It is time to get over the coyness about spelling out the nature of the checks on trade that will be required in order to protect the EU single market. People need to know the details as soon as possible if they are to prepare for the worst.
It is impossible, of course, to be completely ready because nobody knows how exactly things are going to work in the new world we will find ourselves in after October 31st. Johnson has already teed it up to blame the EU for the inevitable checks on trade that will arise as a result of a no-deal Brexit, and Irish people need to be properly informed so that they do not fall for British propaganda.
British bluster
Politically the fallout here is almost as impossible to predict as that in the UK. Varadkar may well get a bounce for standing up strongly in the face of British bluster, but the damaging consequences of Brexit for the Irish public could accelerate the slide in the Government’s popularity.
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has played a long and wise game on Brexit. He has been seen to adopt a responsible national position, and avoided creating instability at a crucial time for the country. That will leave him in a strong position to take the Government to task for its lack of preparations even if adequate preparations are practically impossible.