The preoccupation and worry in Dublin with the outcome of the UK general election is unusual. They usually matter a bit. This time, a lot.
A subtext of the election, really a sideshow, arguments about the UK's EU membership hang on the outcome because of the promise by David Cameron to hold a referendum in 2017 on a renegotiated treaty. And the possibility of British withdrawal – "Brexit" – has become a central preoccupation of Irish diplomacy, some say one of its greatest challenges yet.
The potential political and economic consequences here are seen as huge – trade barriers, restoration of the Border, loss of free travel arrangements, loss of a political ally in Europe, and the degrading of a now-warm bilateral relationship that has flourished in recent years largely underpinned by EU membership . . .
Reflecting those concerns, the Government has responded institutionally by creating a new section in the Department of the Taoiseach to assess the challenges department by department, while the Institute for International and European Affairs has produced an important study (Britain and Europe: the Endgame – an Irish Perspective, editors Dáithí O'Ceallaigh and Paul Gillespie) setting out the implications, and launching a debate on an Irish response.
Not least among Dublin’s concerns is the sense Brexit has become a runaway train, out of control of the political class, particularly the Tory leadership – Cameron has warned of the UK “sleepwalking towards the exit” and, bizarrely, sees his referendum pledge as a way of regaining control. But it’s a rod for his own back – although repeatedly lowering expectations about his renegotiation ambition, it is difficult to imagine any “reformed” treaty (there may not even be any treaty changes proposed) satisfying an electorate already poisoned by bile from the tabloid press and Ukip.
Uninterested electorate
The issue is far from central to the UK election – voters, polls suggest, are uninterested – but it has become a means for Labour to detach sections of the business community from the Tories, and to show up the latter’s divisions and beholdenedness to Ukip.
It is crucial the Government should assess and analyse the implications, and prepare national strategies both to assist the renegotiation of the UK-EU relationship to minimise the danger of Brexit, and to plan in a detailed way for discussions, both bilateral with the UK – for example on maintaining a special relationship with the North – and between the UK and EU on maintaining open markets should the UK leave.
As the IIEA study argues, we can play an important facilitating and mediating role between the UK and our EU partners, as we have done in previous diplomatic crises. There are also parts of the Cameron agenda, like curbing red tape and welfare tourism, with which we can make common cause, issues on which the whole union can march in step.
Threat to EU values
But there are important limits to the extent to which we should be tempted to become advocates for the UK. Most importantly, by resisting any threat to the fundamental structures, ethos and institutions of the union, or to any idea of special classes of membership. These are not just core EU values but central to our relationship with the union.
There may come a point when we say simply "let them go". Let us create a new marriage contract, as Jacques Delors suggested in 2012. Brexit would be pricey, but not the end of the world. The UK has never been "clubbable", has dragged its heels over EU integration, in effect forcing on the union its clunky and unwieldy variable geometry that means increasingly there is not one union but multiple overlapping unions, multiple speeds. Integration is grinding to a halt and will stop dead if the UK does not leave.
Cameron has explicitly asked to be excluded from the Treaty of Rome commitment to "ever-closer union", an obligation that has little legal force but is politically important. "The [EU] has a very small motor and Britain is a big brake. We have to reconsider the marriage contract between Europe and the UK," Delors told the Financial Times. "There are certain things the UK will never accept . . . We can't go on in a situation that is irritating all sides."
Indeed, there is huge frustration in many EU states with UK footdragging – Cameron’s veto of the fiscal compact in 2012 was for many the final straw.
The truth is that although the UK membership adds importantly to the standing and economic and political weight of the union on the world stage, it does so at a price. Inertia. Helmut Kohl’s fear that the slowest ship should not determine the pace of the convoy might well become enshrined in the politics, if not the treaties, if Cameron gets his way. Let them go.