Unionism

On 23 June 2016 a small miracle happened in Northern Ireland. Despite polls placing the percentage of Northern Irish voters who were going to vote to leave the European Union at 13% in late 2015 and just 26% in the days before the referendum, 44% of Northern Irish voters turned out and voted leave.

To put that in context, that’s a far greater proportion than Scottish residents who did. And a larger proportion than Londoners. One Northern Ireland constituency, North Antrim, polled over 70% for leave and in several other constituencies it wasn’t close. Even metropolitan Belfast partly bucked the trend, with East Belfast narrowly voting leave and North Belfast coming within in whisker of doing the same.

The longer the campaign went on, the more people saw the logic of leaving the EU and, given how the polls saw leave gradually gaining ground, with another fortnight to campaign, there’s no reason to believe that Leave wouldn’t have gained the backing of over 50% of the Northern Irish electorate. Three people in every 100 voting the other way would have done it, after all.

Despite cold hard fact determining that the referendum really was a very close run thing, continuity remainers, have attempted to construct a mandate that doesn’t really exist. Firstly it relies on the assumption that Northern Ireland represented something more than a mere counting area in the referendum. It didn’t, yet this hasn’t stopped Sinn Fein, who’ve never accepted the state exists, to bizarrely claim to speak for ‘the North’. Secondly, the devolved institutions, as were and perhaps will never be again, have zero say on constitutional issues. They’re a reserved matter and the courts agreed.

While this pretty persistent whinging has no doubt been for political gain – Sinn Fein were against every single European treaty – the assumption of remainers that they speak for the whole of Northern Ireland has been left largely unchallenged by the media. And now, with the advent of a General Election, they are now attempting to use it to draw out support for remaining in the EU or the impossible ‘special status’.

Our politicians are notoriously myopic and have grown comfortable existing in a little tiny corner of the world where the EU, like some sort of benevolent overlord, showered money and attention upon them. Any change, even for the better, is just too much for them to bear. This mindset was probably best demonstrated by the constituency result in Foyle. With the importance of EU funding in that part of the world impressed upon them, three in four voters opted to remain. Yet very few voters questioned whether Londonderry’s general economic malaise, frequently commented upon by its residents, was in any part due to the EU.

Having initially clung on to the belief, perhaps encouraged by Europe’s frequently ignored referenda, that Brexit would never happen, the latest delusion manifested itself in an attempt at forming an Anti-Brexit pact, aimed at beating leave-supporting MPs in several constituencies. Even if it had of been successful, the idea that it would have had any bearing is as equally ungrounded in reality as the propositions underpinning ‘continuity remainers’. The new reality and one to which these people must adjust is one that opens up Northern Ireland to the world, and where the best intentions will not be facilitated by the EU, but only ever frustrated by it.

The best example of this is the Irish border. This issue has been largely seized upon by Sinn Fein, who have played on border community folk memory to drum up fear of a time when isolated roads were closed off and security checkpoints were placed on both sides to deter smuggling and terrorist-related activity. Evoking images the past, as is often the case in this part of the world, may create a powerful narrative but the 21^st century reality is much different.

Borders fulfil several roles, namely the control of trade, security and the movement of people. At present the border is free-flow and you would barely know it was there. But with the right North-South deal, similar to that Norway and Sweden enjoy, there is no reason why it would need to change. While Sinn Fein MEP Martina Anderson obviously took great delight in telling the Prime Minister to “stick a hard border where the sun doesn’t shine”, it’s really not Theresa May she needs to be whinging to. It’s the EU. Free movement between the two nations will not be curtailed – the Common Travel Area agreement is a rolling ministerial one so has not, and can not, be supplanted by EU law. However customs can only be managed in one of two ways. A free trade agreement, such as had existed prior to 1973,  with the Irish Republic which would render the need for controls meaningless. However this can only come in through the EU. A single integrated system managed by the UK and Irish Republic however is a different matter.  Automatic number-plate recognition and a single system for applying necessary, and hopefully avoidable, tariffs, can ensure that traffic and people continue to cross the border unabated. All this is a far cry from the images haunting the fevered dreams of Republican propagandists.

But even if the above wasn’t the case and Northern Ireland wasn’t able to trade with the Republic outside of WTO rules, the problem wouldn’t be fatal. If you listened to our media you would believe that Northern Ireland has developed an economy which is totally in sync with that of the Irish Republic. And why wouldn’t it be? The EU has, after all, spent a clean fortune attempting to bolster North-South trade through various infrastructure projects. But the figures don’t bear that assumption out. The latest year for which figures are available, 2014, reveals that only 7.8% of our trade turnover involves products that go south, while 8.3% is accounted for by the rest of the of the EU. By contrast 45% of our trade is tied up with Great Britain and 17.1% – more than involves the Irish Republic and the rest of the EU combined, is with the rest of the world.

In short, Northern Ireland’s economic reality is bound up with the rest of the UK and the rest of the world.  You could theoretically put a huge wall along the border to completely cut off movement and trade and it wouldn’t be anywhere near as damaging as the United Ireland tragically mooted by some as the alternative.

After Brexit, Northern Ireland will benefit from better access to the global markets it quite clearly excels in, despite having to operate within the narrow confines of trade deals agreed by 27 member states. Currently, Northern Irish businesses must operate in a system that ensures our prospects are consistently curtailed by trade deals agreed by powers so remote as to be rendered useless to us. Bringing the needs of Londonderry and Ballymena closer to the negotiating table will be hugely positive. Right now, they’re an afterthought.

Our curtailed opportunities are one of several reasons that Northern Ireland is heavily reliant on its public sector to the extent that its economy is completely out of kilter with anything that a serious economist would recognise as being in any way normal. The public sector’s widely acknowledged drain on competitiveness completes a vicious circle that we’ve just been handed an opportunity to break out of.

It beggars belief that the debate about Brexit has been wholly dominated by those who backed the status quo because the potential for Northern Ireland outside the EU is bright. But unless Brexiteers start to shout about the opportunities during this General Election campaign then Northern Ireland will be sold short once again.

Neil Wilson is CfL Campaigns Director. Follow Neil on Twitter: @libertyneil

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History, especially that section of history which passes into the national consciousness, is rarely fair. That is why it’s entirely possible that the present Government will be remembered, above all else, as the administration which lost the Union.

The exact Brexit deal which is agreed, and its wider impact, will be a historic footnote compared to whether Britain survives as a political unit. The Union’s contribution to Britain’s security and prosperity is hard to overstate, and its collapse will essentially mark the end of the UK as a great power. Consequently, preserving the Union should be the top priority for both the Government and wider Conservative movement.

The Scottish Nationalist Government has announced its intention to hold another independence referendum. In 2014, then SNP leader Alex Salmond described the upcoming referendum as an ‘once in a generation’ opportunity. Perhaps he was using the lifespan of a rabbit as his reference point.

To be fair, it’s undeniable that, at least to some extent, Brexit has changed the playing field. The UK outside the EU won’t have the same economic, and to some extent political, relations as the country Scotland voted to remain part of in 2014. Thus, whilst Sturgeon’s call for a second referendum is currently being blocked by the Prime Minister, a stance backed by Scottish public opinion, another referendum as some point looks highly likely.

I’ve noticed that a small, but significant, section of English Conservative opinion has become increasingly defeatist regarding the Union. With a few exceptions they don’t want Scotland to leave the UK, but they think she could well do and that it doesn’t matter all that much if she does. Defending the Union, unlike say ensuring Brexit, isn’t an issue which would drag them to the barricades. I’m convinced this view is mistaken.

The British Union has, by my reading of its record, been an almost unparalleled success. Let’s focus on that most fundamental duty of any state; ensuring the security of its citizens. Since the 1707 Act of Union the island of Great Britain has not been successfully invaded by any hostile power. Can anyone seriously contend that peoples of Britain would have been safer, when confronted with the likes of Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler, had we not been politically united? British unity greatly enhanced our internal security, allowing Britain to become an outward facing power exporting both its governmental system and people around the world.

Some of the above may strike you as alarmist. But when considering a question as fundamental as the Union we should be thinking in terms of decades, if not hundreds of years, rather than electoral cycles. It’s very easy, when you live in a country as stable and peaceful as Britain, to come to the erroneous conclusion that this is the natural state of affairs. You hardly need to be a keen weather watcher to have noticed dark clouds on the horizon.

The current American President’s commitment to NATO, and indeed to Liberal Democracy, is conditional at best. Putin shows no signs of reconciling himself to the current borders of Eastern Europe, whilst the radical Right could plausibly make a breakthrough in one of several Western European states. Now is hardly the time to start undermining the fundamentals of our national security.

A view has formed in certain quarters that the end of the Union is, at some point, virtually inevitable. That the forces of nationalism are too strong, bending the Union until at some point it snaps. I’m confident this is nonsense. Nationalist movements can, and have, been defeated in countries similar to the UK before.

There was a time when Canada’s survival in its current form looked pretty unlikely, especially after the 1995 Quebec independence referendum when the Canadian Union survived by a whisker. Catholic and French speaking Quebec is surely culturally further from the rest of Canada than Scotland is from England. And yet the Quebec question now looks settled in favour of unity. A recent poll found that 69% of Quebecers believe the sovereignty question has been resolved, with an even larger majority favouring continued union with the rest of Canada. Meanwhile, the vote share of the main nationalist party in Quebec has fallen sharply as a result of, and I hope your listening SNP, incompetent performance in Government.

The importance of the Union as the bedrock of the British people’s security, and hence prosperity, should not be underestimated. Its collapse would be a historic catastrophe, making Suez seem almost trivia. To her credit, Theresa May seems to appreciate this.

The British Union has achieved an enormous amount, and could achieve a good deal more in the future. It is absolutely worth protecting.

James is a liberal-conservative blogger. He graduated from Oxford University in 2014, and has a years previous experience of working in Westminster. You can follow him on Twitter at @JBickertonUK

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The views expressed in this article are that of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Conservatives for Liberty

There’s a cartoon floating about the Remain pages on Facebook just now. The strip depicts a Brexiteer galleon sailing towards a precipice while the canny Scottish crew-members have liberated a skiff and are making for the shores of the European Union. There are two things wrong with this sketch; firstly, the shores of the EU are not necessarily welcoming; secondly, the skiff is depicted with paddles. Scotland doesn’t have any.

On March 13th Nicola Sturgeon announced she would seek permission from Westminster for a second Independence Referendum. Although Theresa May dismissed the announcement as “playing politics” she is unlikely to refuse the request for fear of reinforcing the impression of Tory Imperialism over Scotland. Sturgeon is looking for a date around autumn 2018 to spring 2019; when the UK is in the midst of the Brexit negotiations, so the Nats can manipulate the uncertainty surrounding the deal-making in their favour. Theresa May, quite rightly, wants a date after the Brexit talks are completed and the Scottish people can make an informed decision with knowledge of their future prospects. Morbid as it is to say so, delaying a plebiscite could mean there are fewer of the elderly voters around who saved the day in the 2014 Independence referendum, while more younger voters, keener on separatism, could be of voting age.

Despite wanting to leave the EU in the 1975 membership referendum, the SNP now claims to have EU molecules in the party’s genetic constitution. However, a recent Scottish Attitudes survey carried-out between July 2015 and January this year showed that 43% of respondents want the EU’s powers reduced and 17% want to leave, more than at any time since 1999. This compares with 43% favouring reduced powers and 22% wanting to leave the UK as a whole. This means that over 60% of people in Scotland can be classed as Eurosceptic, just five points below the figure for Britain as a whole and higher than recorded by any previous Scottish Social Attitudes survey. Given also, that the Nats are a zibaldone of opinions from across the political spectrum united only by their love of Braveheart, tying independence with EU membership to tightly could be a dangerous existential game for the party.

As mentioned above, the shores of the EU are not necessarily welcoming to an independent Scotland. Spain’s foreign minister Alfonso Dastis recently stated during a visit to Peru that “Spain supports the integrity of the United Kingdom and does not encourage secession or divisions in any of the member states. We prefer things to stay as they are”. He then added that “If by mutual agreement and under the constitutional regime, Scotland ends up being independent, our thesis is that it can’t stay in the EU. It would have to queue up, meet requirements and go through the usual negotiations”. Also, the Icelandic foreign minister Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson has torpedoed the auxiliary option of EFTA membership for an independent Scotland by stating that applications would not start until the country is fully independent, which could take several years, leaving Scotland deeply indebted and economically rudderless.

This brings me onto the metaphor of a paddle-less skiff. According to the IMF World Economic Outlook for Spring 2016, if Scotland was an independent nation, its deficit would be -10.1% of GDP , twice as bad as Japan (-5.2%) the next most indebted nation, and more than twice that of the UK as a whole (-4.4%). Even if the EU conditionally accepted Scottish membership, the deficit would need to be below -3% for entry. Such a debt-restructuring process required would make the current Tory austerity regime seem very tame.

Scotland’s greying population and weak tax base has long been offset by the bounty of North Sea Oil, but the OBR now forecasts revenues to average around £0.7 billion a year between 2015–16 and 2019–20, rather than the £2.6 billion a year it anticipated just a few months ago. According to the Financial Times, Scottish GDP in the third quarter of 2016 grew 0.2 per cent while equivalent UK growth was 0.6 per cent. Compared with the same period of 2015, Scottish GDP was up only 0.7 per cent, against the UK-wide figure of 2.2 per cent. Despite a financial black hole of an estimated £15 billion that has risen under the SNP’s watch, a HM Treasury report from autumn last year showed that £10,536 of public expenditure is spent, per capita, each year on people north of the border. That’s £1,460 more than the UK average of £9,076.

Out of nearly £591billion of UK public spending in 2015-16, England accounted for £483bn, Scotland £57bn, Wales £31bn and Northern Ireland £20bn. The Scottish government’s own figures from January this year demonstrate that 63% of Scotland’s trade worth £49.8 billion is done with the rest of the UK, compared to 16% worth £12.3bn with the EU. Only someone who believes the Battle of Stirling Bridge was fought in a field, could deny the exponential benefits of Scotland’s 320-year old Act of Union with England.

Now I have a confession to make. Though initially supportive of Brexit, I turned towards the Remain-side and eventually voted to stay. I did so because as campaigning wore on, I became disillusioned by a creeping populism and xenophobia, that I feel, won the day to an extent. I also felt it logically inconsistent to have campaigned for ‘the bigger picture’ during the 2014 Independence Referendum, only to quibble about my gripes with the CAP, CFP and European Arrest Warrant, during the EU Referendum. However, it was the UK as a whole, that voted to leave the EU, not the constituent parts, and I accept that decision.

At a recent PMQ’s Theresa May confronted the SNP’s deputy leader Angus Robertson’s threat of another Scottish Independence Referendum by declaring “Scotland will be leaving the European Union, either as a member of the United Kingdom or if it were independent, as it is very clear from the Barroso document that it would not be a member of the European Union. What we need now is to unite, come together as a country, and ensure that we can get the best deal for the whole of the United Kingdom”. And that I believe is what Remainers like me must do. Another Independence Referendum will only disrupt and misdirect energies that should be channelled towards pressuring the government for a suitable deal with the EU that preserves free-market access and secures a solid base for the UK’s future prosperity.

Callum is a free-thinking Whig politically and plant machinery operator professionaly 

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The views expressed in this article are that of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Conservatives for Liberty