Britain and the EU - Revolt may have impact in Ireland

The topic may not dominate or even feature at the more glittering dinner parties in Ireland this weekend but the momentum building behind Britain’s Eurosceptic Tories about an in-or-out EU vote deserves, from a purely selfish Irish view, some serious consideration.

That David Cameron seems to lack the ruthlessness needed to quell dissent or sideline inconvenient, avoidable issues as some of his predecessors might have, gives further impetus to those considerations.

That he must balance the complexities of sustaining a coalition with the strongly pro-EU Liberal Democrats and the demands of his increasingly boisterous Eurosceptics makes the task even more difficult. That he must do so while he and his less strident backbenchers are constantly goaded by today’s iteration of Little Englanders in politics — the United Kingdom Independence Party — makes it even more difficult.

Neither was his job made any easier by Wednesday night’s Commons vote, in which growing anger towards Brussels led to some 114 of his MPs voting to back a rebel amendment calling for more urgent groundwork for an in-or-out national poll.

If all of that was not challenging enough President Barack Obama, earlier this week, said America felt very strongly that Britain’s place was in the EU and at the very heart of European affairs. As America’s strongest ally among the more powerful EU countries it is hard to imagine America ever adopting any other position.

If all of that is not enough to provoke some concerned interest then maybe some imaginative speculation on what might happen if Britain did leave the union is needed.

What would such a decision mean for all of the work that has begun to bear fruit in re-establishing relationships on this island if the North’s six counties were no longer in the EU? The implications for cross-border co-operation seem profound. It would be nice to think that a British withdrawal would not stir the old insularity that so very recently led to three decades of violence, but that might be foolish. How would Britain treat Irish farm produce, one of our great sources of export revenue? It’s hard to imagine that food produced here, all heavily subsidised through the Common Agricultural Policy, would have unfettered access to a market where farmers are struggling with the consequences of losing that lucrative subsidy.

These concerns will divert the chattering classes for some time, but at the very least a strong rump of the Tory party seems determined to demand, at the very least, considerable reform of how the EU functions and draw limits to its powers.

Despite the publicly declared opposition to leaving the EU by nearly all of Britain’s business organisation and trade unions, despite opinion poll after opinion poll endorsing British membership, it is at least possible that the Tory revolt, however it plays out, will have some important implications for Ireland.

It’s not time to prepare for the worst — a British withdrawal — but it is certainly time to consider the generally negative possibilities of what seems to be a growing and potentially divisive renewal of nationalism right across the EU.