Where we are now - the road behind and ahead

Northern Ireland made its last net contribution to the UK’s GDP in 1949.

It has been a recipient of piecemeal funding ever since – a period during which the Empire that once ruled the waves became a token of pride for Unionists living in its reflected glory, hopeful that NI’s war effort would be rewarded by post-war investment. But the NI economy became an afterthought in London and continues to lack the critical mass needed to regenerate itself.

Why does this matter? Because it stands in the way of making political progress. Failed economics means failed politics. Brexit and the NI Protocol have created unique circumstances for resolving the Irish Question This now risks becoming an historic opportunity lost amidst post Brexit confusion.

Except for WW2, since the creation of NI 100 years ago, the UK has not faced economic recovery costs on the scale of the Covid pandemic. Nor has it found itself outside the security of a major trading alliance, its buying power now too small to benefit from best trading terms.  Nor has it faced so urgent a need to strengthen its defences, to fund penal climate change expenditures, or to save an overburdened NHS – all from the remains of an economy shrunken by a 300 year record 9.9%.     

Once we set these UK priorities against the annually recurring c£13bn costs of the Barnett Formula for NI, we can see the attraction to any UK government of cutting its losses. The issue is how?

The next 10 years of the political landscape of the British Isles is already unfurling before us. It will shape itself around new trading alliances and focus both our struggle to build a green economy, and the way we take the pressure off nature to save the future for our children.

We can see right now  it is shaped with spiky Covid tentacles reaching out to touch every part of our lives, dying to latch on to any surface, to cripple or kill us if it can. As the wind of change fills its fabric the skeleton of our economy rises like a tent from a disoriented anchorage of stakes, defining our place on the land, making it ours to refashion. Being global, it will force global changes.

Now we are seeing the consequences of Brexit – in a world heaving in debt, grief, and anxiety from the pandemic - and it is this wider world picture we must understand if we are to make sense of our more local predicament.

We have no map, but neither had those who urged the re-pitching of our tent - getting out of the EU was their bottom line and we must adapt. The pandemic gave us an extra mountain to climb and will test our competitiveness. All that most of us can think of is getting ‘back to normal’ – even if that means, for the sake of our sanity, we let the green and orange bits stay the same - the devil you know being preferable to the devil you don’t. But we know that nothing will be the same.

How do we know? Because the cloak of the Union that has covered our flaws for all our lives is slipping off and we have no plan for slipping it back on again. The NI Protocol, necessitated by the DUP, does not allow it. And, after all the tortuous difficulties of Brexit, the British people have no appetite for intervening on behalf of Unionists whom they see as throwbacks, bankrupt of ideas.

The Protocol is imposing changes in relationships within the UK, the first since the Acts of Union. While the wider world continues in its search for alliances to secure advantage or defend gains, in Northern Ireland we are set to replay our divisions all over again, this time without the surety that someone else will pick up the bill.  Mired in our expectation of the same result and without the prospect of a promised land, we are simply unable to imagine how to stop losing ground.

Up will come the cry ‘United Ireland!’ followed by ‘No Surrender’. We will hear the old songs reprised. The feet will stomp and another generation will be called to the fight! This is our built-in knee-jerk reaction kicking in again. But our situation now is quite unlike what it was in the past.

What we are not seeing is the route that can be followed through this debris that leads to casting off the dependency culture that dogs economic progress on this island, north and south.

Surprisingly, thanks to Brexit and the DUP there is now a resolution to this – a cooperative plan in which NI chooses to work with the Republic of Ireland for the long term, intradependently, as separate countries in a united island. Both in the EU and both in the Commonwealth. Both attracting those GB businesses wanting to stay in the EU to cross the Irish Sea rather than the English Channel. Incentivised by London. Not a knee jerk reaction. A brain jerk – for a mutually transformative win.

Trading alliances

Britain built its empire on trading alliances and its ability to apply the rule of law in the countries it subjugated. But it was never prepared to dig in for the long term if this could not be justified economically and militarily. Now, while NI is integrated within the UK and is not a colony, neither of these grounds applies and the government has said so. Therefore a different relationship between GB and NI may now be preferable for all parties in the aftermath of Brexit.

The shift from Empire to Commonwealth, coinciding with the UK’s newfound nuclear leverage at the end of WW2, left the UK consolidating its power with a seat at the UN’s top table. But the immediate post-war years saw the growth of economic power in Europe – built on coal and steel production – and the UK felt exposed by a Franco-German pact on its doorstep. So it joined the EU to contain this threat and capitalise on the economic advantage.

The severing of this link ends that leverage and leaves the UK in one of its weakest positions, militarily and economically, since the days of the Spanish Armada. So what about allies? Its one remaining alliance, with NATO, has been shaken by 4 years of Trump uncertainty.

We may be sure that the UK’s primary objective, post Brexit, will not have changed down the years – to grow its power, influence and financial strength in the world. So, having given up its position in Europe, it needs to trim costs and discard deadweight to compete. That will now include NI.

Territories no longer able to justify a continuing military presence, nor willing to contribute to the Empire, morphed into independence as members of The Commonwealth - leaving the City of London to capitalise on the commercial assets and defence agreements left behind by the military. Why would this pattern not continue?

The City is the fading jewel in the crown of what remains of the former Empire. But it is still the apex of UK soft power. And it is now vulnerable. In less than 6 weeks since leaving the EU, London has been overtaken in world wide share dealing by Amsterdam. Such a challenge to the UK economy will outweigh Covid before long and refocus Westminster minds on structural alternatives.

Unionists should be reviewing theirs too – and, along with all other parties, prioritising the economic future of NI outside the UK. The time for cool heads to think the unthinkable is now. The road ahead? A united Northern Ireland.  The route? Intradependence.