The Prime Minister hailed a ‘new era’ of friendship between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland last week, as the two governments met for a summit in Liverpool. This event was supposed to mark an official ‘reset’ of relationships. The Irish claim these broke down because of Conservative unreasonableness in the wake of Brexit and that interpretation suits Keir Starmer, who still occasionally trades on claims that the ‘adults’ are back in the room, now Labour have returned to power.
The idea that the two countries should work more positively together was laudable enough. Unfortunately, though, in typical Starmer style, the Prime Minister was happy for Britain to assume all the blame, while asking very little in return from his Irish counterparts. The Republic, for example, is still pursuing an interstate case against the UK at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, challenging Troubles ‘legacy’ laws that Labour have already pledged to replace. It refuses to drop this action and there was no evidence that it was asked to do so last week.
The notion that the Conservatives were irresponsible or unreasonable towards Dublin during the Brexit negotiations suited their opponents and hardcore Europhiles, but it was always an obvious distortion. Often, Tories were strikingly weak and naive in their dealings with Irish ministers. They continued to assume that the then Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, and his deputy, Simon Coveney, would show goodwill and restraint, despite repeated warnings that this was not the case.
As negotiations with the EU got underway, Theresa May immediately ruled out a harder border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Rather than taking this as a sign of Britain’s good faith, the Irish exploited her promise, showing no sensitivity towards the Province’s place in the UK. In the face of uncompromising demands from Dublin and Brussels, the government eventually agreed to put a hard border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, rather than insisting that any barriers should apply to the existing international frontier.
Two Tory prime ministers vowed that they would ‘never accept’ such an extraordinary arrangement. But both May and Boris Johnson relented in the end, breaking their promises to British citizens in Northern Ireland rather than facing down hostile Irish ministers and nationalists in Ulster.
The Conservatives at least showed more resolve on the legacy of the Troubles. To nudge along the peace process, successive governments had issued royal pardons and letters of comfort, which, as the decades passed, amounted to an effective amnesty for terrorists. At the same time, thanks to incessant Irish republican campaigning, inquests, civil cases and other investigations focused on relatively few killings blamed on the security forces. The Tories’ Legacy Act finally acknowledged this reality by trying to prevent further prosecutions and concentrating instead on reconciliation and ‘information recovery’.
In December 2023, Conservative ministers reacted angrily when the Republic sued the UK over this legislation. Dublin’s approach, they argued, was nakedly hypocritical. The Irish government refused to examine its own country’s role in arming and providing sanctuary to the IRA. It had even decided, according to the former justice minister, Michael McDowell, to implement its own de facto amnesty and ‘not go back over the IRA’s campaign of violence’. Now, it was effectively siding with Sinn Fein and helping it to distort the history of the Troubles.
Unlike the Tories, Labour have pledged to repeal the sections of the Act that protect members of the security services and prevent former terrorists, like Gerry Adams, from receiving compensation from the state. The author, and director of Policy Exchange, Lord Godson, recently wrote that ‘anti-state activists and republicans’ were being allowed to re-litigate the Troubles in a way that turns the ‘world upside down – the sorry tale of a state that will not adequately protect and honour its finest servants’.
Despite this British capitulation, the Republic’s Deputy Prime Minister, Simon Harris, last week said that his government was still not at the point where it could drop the case in Strasbourg.
Labour, in contrast to Ireland’s persistence, have also scrapped the Rwanda Act, which ministers in Dublin improbably blamed for their own influx of refugees. As the Irish public reacted angrily to the rapid increase in newcomers, Harris demanded that Rishi Sunak’s administration sign a ‘returns deal’, so that migrants arriving in the Republic could be sent to the UK. There was no better example of Dublin’s inclination to blame anything and everything on the Britons, while also taking care to claim the moral high ground.
This attitude underpins the country’s neutral status in international affairs, which has caused increasing unhappiness in the US, Britain and the EU. The Republic spends a tiny percentage of GDP on its own defence, while sheltering under the protection of Nato countries, particularly the UK, and administering high-minded lectures on foreign policy.
In the joint statement that emerged from last week’s summit, there was little evidence that Starmer pressured his counterpart, Micheal Martin, on any of these issues. The document was full of bland initiatives, like an ‘Ireland UK Youth Forum’, and language aimed at reassuring Dublin about Britain’s good intentions. Meanwhile, Starmer was unable even to secure a commitment to drop the legacy case, let alone a promise to lower Irish Sea trade barriers.
The Prime Minister’s foreign policy strategy seems to be to keep giving, but never to ask for anything in return. Rather than getting a reward for his generosity, this approach is only ever likely to be exploited by his rivals.
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