Is Dan O'Brien channeling the Cruiser?

Dan O'Brien and the late Conor Cruise O'Brien. A rather random association you might think. Where did that come out of? There's nothing linking them apart from a common surname and your humble aurhor putting them in the same sentence just there. And maybe the fact that they are both examples of Irish public 'intellectuals', albeit in different fields with differing levels of accomplishment who wrote in different times. But otherwise chalk and cheese.

Except for one very distinct aspect of the Cruiser's political philosophy with regards to matters Anglo-Irish. In reading some of economist Dan O'Brien's recent columns on the Brexit "Backstop", I intuitively knew that there was something I specifically didn't like about what I was reading but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. Then it hit me reading his latest article this morning; Dan O'Brien is basically channelling the Cruiser. That is, the writings of Dan O'Brien contain clearly identifiable elements of Cruiserology. I shall explain.

What is Cruiserology? One of the best essays I have read on the Cruiser is Barra O'Seaghdha's "The Celtic Tiger's Media Pundits" contained in the book Re-Inventing Ireland. There is a lot in the essay worth reading but one of the main takeaway points for me was a story on how a bad personal experience in either the late 60s or early 70s had a significant influence on Conor Cruise O'Brien's thinking on the National Question going forward. The Cruiser was in the North one day during the Troubles and ended up somehow getting beaten up by a group of Loyalists. O'Brien's general reaction to this was very unusual. Instead of being filled with a justified and quite rational anger against loyalism and its brutish violence, as you might expect, he paradoxically directed his indignation at Irish nationalism instead.

Crucially, this wasn't because he thought Irish nationalism was in the wrong and loyalism in the right.  That didn't matter. Rather, because he perceived loyalism as being more violent and dangerous than nationalism, he quite literally and physically feared its backlash and believed it was up to nationalists to refrain from goading or provoking it in any way. When they didn't that made him fearful and angry at them. Effectively, British loyalism was something to be appeased out of a fear of its power. It didn't matter if it was right or wrong, but only that it could hurt us.

So where is the Cruiserology in Dan O'Brien's writings? Let's look at his latest piece. Today he writes that the "backstop chickens are coming home to roost". For him, the backstop is a gamble by the Irish government. And as the prospects of a No-Deal Brexit become more likely (though it is still unlikely overall in my view as the British are bluffing) Dan O'Brien sees the gamble as potentially failing. This view is deeply flawed for two reasons.

Firstly, leaving the Cruiserology aside for a moment, this is wrong on a purely factual basis. After Britain voted to leave the EU, British government policy sought early in the process to leave the customs union and the single market. The logical outcome of such a position, then, was that the 6 counties would, at some point, leave the customs union and the single market too. In such a case, you would have a scenario exactly the same as the appalling no Deal vista that O'Brien describes, where Ireland is forced to choose between economic access to Europe on one hand and an open peacful border on the other. The only difference is that by not having a backstop, you kick the can down the road on that decision. It may or may not be more orderly, we do not know. If the backstop is a gamble, then that is no more a gamble than fudging until a later date.

And that's assuming that Brexiteers would not have a found another excuse to threaten 'no deal' anyway. Afterall, up until the last week or so, the European Research Group viewed the backstop as just one problem among many with the Withdrawal Agreement.

Rather than creating this risk of a hard border, the backstop is a way of avoiding it. If there is no deal because of the backstop, then we are no worse than if we had a Withdrawal Agreement that paved the way for a British exit from the customs union and the single market, or indeed a crashout no-Deal because the ERG or the DUP found something else they didn't like. A withdrawal agreement without a backstop is just as bad as a backstop that could cause there to be no withdrawal agreement.

Secondly, there is something more disturbing about Dan O'Brien's approach. By reducing the conversation to one of pure realpolitik, games of chicken and gambles, we lose sight of the bigger moral picture here too. I know, very quaint. This is where the Cruiserology comes in. Basically, moral hazards don't matter to Dan O'Brien. It doesn't matter that the British have acted in bad faith by:

• Trying avoid a backstop, even though they are signatories of the Good Friday Agreement, the spirit of which a hard Brexit would violate
• Going back on a previous commitment to observe the backstop, a commitment given in response to EU/Irish concessions
• Allowing the DUP, a minority party in the North, to use a fortuitous position to hold the process to ransom

What only seems to matter is the end result. And so he sees the "Backstop" not first and foremost as something that the Irish government is morally right and even obliged to insist upon, but just as a move in a game that can only be evaluated by its economic consequences. It doesn't matter that the British are in the wrong, just that they can harm us significantly. The general gist of his anti-Backstop stance is a 'might is right' consequentialism seemingly triggered by fear, if not dubious loyalty, rather than any kind of moral clock.

I don't wish to reduce to this to a realist versus idealist debate because i don't see this distinction as  valid. The Irish government have been realistic. They are also doing what is right. If right does not prevail because of uncontrollable factors, that doesn't mean they should become the object of blame. And by dispensing with any regard for moral idealism, Dan O'Brien is not being realistic. Because as Irish history shows, nothing moves people more than a sense of injustice.

Brexit and English Nationalism

Fintan O'Toole has a lot to say about Brexit. One of the big assertions he makes is that Brexit represents "English Nationalism", i.e. it is an expression of the idea of England as a distinct political community. I believe this is at best over-simplistic and at worst wrong. Before I discuss why I wish to  clarify my understanding of the Brexit impulse.

Firstly, my view has always been that Brexit has two dimensions; an elite dimension and a popular one. These two dimensions are distinct from each other and in some ways are even incompatible with each other.

Politically, the elite dimension emanates from an overlap of Eurosceptic and Thatcherite factions within the Tory party. Its support base is overwhelmingly concentrated in southern England, the home counties and to some extent the City of London and comprises those sections of the British society with an economic interest in deregulation and free markets.

This political tradition has been around since Britain joined the EU but really started to raise its profile in the 1990s around the time of the Maastricht treaty. It has often been referred to as the 'little Englander" tradition, though this is misleading because the economic liberty and freedom it desires is contingent on Britain exerting power and influence on a global level, centred around the concept of the Anglophonic world and building upon existing structures such as the Commonwealth. For this reason, the political tradition invokes a certain nostalgia and romanticism for the British Empire.

Meanwhile, the popular dimension to Brexit is something quite different. Its political base is not made up of well-do-do Tories but natural Labour supporters located mainly in the rust-belts of the West Midlands and the North of England. These are working class people who feel alienated and disaffected by the de-industrialisation brought about by deregulation and globalisation. These people are anti-immigration because they perceive it as directly causing a decrease in their living standards and working conditions. They have no interest in the global Britain promoted by the elite group and in fact will be hurt even more by such a project, as it will involve a repeat of Thatcherism-style economic shock therapy and economic austerity.

Where does this leave us with O'Toole's claims? In relation to the elite group, his claim that Brexit represents English Nationalism is simply wrong. This group are not English nationalists but British globalists. While they don't exactly want to revive the British empire itself, they certainly want to revive the idea of a Anglocentric world-order, economic if not military, with the British elite at the apex. They care not for the principal of national self-determination, and their objections to the EU stem not so much from its alleged hierarchical anti-democratic nature than from the fact that it is France and Germany, and not Britain, at the top of the food chain. In order words, elite Brexit is hegemonic in character.

Ulster unionists demonstrate this mentality perfectly. The Democratic Unionist Party are emphatically not English nationalists but very much are attracted to Brexit because it bolsters and doubles down on the ideology of British unionism. English political nationalism would be dangerous to the DUP because it contradicts the central idea that the whole of the UK constitutes one political unit.

How about the second group? Here, I would say the answer in inconclusive. It could be argued that this group is more nationalistic and isolationist than the first group. This is certainly the case economically where the appetite for de-regulation and institutionalised global piracy would be less. Politically, however, it is a mixed bag. While some might not shed a tear if Scotland broke away and formed another political entity, others would have a more reactionary unionist mindset that sees Scotland (and Ireland) as being naturally subordinate to England. When has British imperial nationalism not been a vehicle for England's interests? The fact that Scottish concerns are arrogantly dismissed is nothing new and is not of itself a sign that they we are dealing with a new phenomenon.

Overall, one cannot help but feel that Fintan has become wedded to a certain narrative and, not for the first time, has become entrapped in it.