Electile dysfunctions in Brexistential Breakdowns

I’m going to try to keep this short (because Brexit entries tend to be longer, take longer to write, it’s been fucking ages since I’ve been here and have a lot of catching up to do, and also I have like three essays to be getting on with) but I just wanted to quickly sum up what’s going on right now because it’s… Interesting…

So, after triggering the article 50 process which formally notified the EU of the UK’s desire to leave the bloc and officially began the countdown timer on a two-year process (by the end of which the UK should’ve extricated itself from and renegotiated more than forty years of complicated international treaties, agreements and deals), Theresa May decided that the best course of action would be to waste two of those twenty four months by holding a general election, ostensibly to give the nation a chance to rally behind her by all voting Tory, increasing her parliamentary majority and strengthening her negotiating hand for when the time to sit at the table with the EU27 came.

Unfortunately, she lost the bare-majority David Cameron had managed to scrape together in 2015, seeing absolutely devastating swings across the country to Corbyn after her - and I am being so unbelievably charitable with this next statement that I’m applying for tax-exempt status for it - somewhat lacklustre performance on the campaign trail managed to dissuade enough people from voting for her that the Conservative party was now unable to form a majority government. With Labour wolves baying at the doors, the Tories managed to find the support of the Northern Irish DUP (who Americans might call a “traditional values” party, where “traditional values” is sanitised media speak for “right-wing religious zealots, and all that entails”), whose six seats in Parliament was tempting enough for May to offer them a billion quid for their support, money harvested from the magic money tree she’d said didn’t exist.

Now, if Brexit happens and the UK leaves the EU, that means there has to be border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (Eire), as Eire is an EU nation. Historically, borders between the two countries have (and this is a far more charitable statement than my earlier assessment of May’s election performance) not been a good thing, and by far one of the most significant factors in continuing peace in Northern Ireland is the open border and fluid movement and trade between the two countries thanks to EU membership. A return to border controls is something absolutely nobody in either country wants, and would be, it is fair to say, not a good thing.

Given how important this issue is, naturally absolutely no thought has been given to it by the UK media, politicians or the Department for Exiting the EU, and absolutely no preparations have been made to deal with the issue, just like everything else that’s actually important like air space/air traffic management, shipping lanes, fisheries, farming and agricultural industries, medical standards agencies, basically everything that’s not a curved banana or a blue passport cover or immigrants. So the news that Eire basically has control of the Brexit process - it’s in the EU, it has a veto, and all member states have to unanimously agree to any deal so if Eire isn’t happy with border arrangements out goes the deal - has kinda taken people by surprise today, the day when the EU and the UK were supposed to agree that they have done enough work and are ready to take talks to the next stage.

To ease things, Theresa May had met with Eire’s PM Leo Varadkar to try to sort out the border issue, essentially trying to gain an exception for Northern Ireland which would mean that it technically remains inside the Single Market and Customs Union, allowing for a continued open border, while the rest of the UK leaves the SM/CU and becomes a non-EU country. The DUP, however, are not happy about “regulatory divergence” from the rest of the UK, and having a few concerns about concessions given to Eire by Theresa May, which is a bit of a problem when the DUP are the reason Theresa May can still run the country.

The situation in Northern Ireland can go one of two ways; option A is that the concessions to Eire in order to keep the border open offend the DUP and prompt them to withdraw their support, leaving May without a working majority and effectively unable to govern. This leads to a general election, one that May looks unlikely to win. Option B is that May concedes to the DUP, bringing border controls and checks to Ireland as the Brexit process continues, a situation which would result in Eire using its veto and bring a screeching halt to Brexit (which will probably damn the UK to a “no-deal” scenario, universally accepted as another “very bad thing”).

Since a B&Q shelf’s worth of spanners have been thrown into the works, Scotland figured it might as well chuck in a few more of its own, pointing out that if Northern Ireland gets special exemptions, why can’t they? After all, all of Scotland voted to remain, as did Northern Ireland, so if Northern Ireland gets to remain, why can’t Scotland?

Regardless, neither of these outcomes is tenable for Theresa May, and Ladbrokes has just slashed the odds of another general election in 2018 to 2/1.

2/1!

I don’t know how this situation will resolve itself, I’ve stopped trying to actually predict things because nowadays fuckin’ anything’s possible, but many people have been trying to drag the attention of the UK, nah fuck it, the English nation to the looming problems with the NI/Eire situation ever since before the Brexit referendum, and the wilful ignorance fermented by the media cannot be sustained for much longer. This may be sorted out, it may be the most significant development yet, it may even end Brexit and usher in a different government, I just don’t know. But it’s a notable enough event that I thought it worth a quick update, as the thought of another election, another government, and even the possibility of another referendum that might finally stop all this madness is still the nicest fantasy to indulge, and this might be the spark that finally burns the whole thing down.

In the mean time, I’ve got essays for all three subjects to be getting on with, and other demands on my time. I’ll try to be back soon though, I miss writing (about things other than Marx, Freud and Lombroso) and reading (about your lives instead of the theories of dead white dudes with big beards).