This is the second time in one week that I have to engage with something written by a British academic on their assessment of Brexit & Ireland. In this case @HelenHet20 in @NewStatesman 🧵

1. @HelenHet20 Europe’s vaccine crisis has revealed the true nature of the EU?? Ireland has been a member state since 1973, has had more refs on EU topics than any other country & thus its political & administrative elite knows & understands EU @BrigidLaffan
2. Said elite & electorate never idealised EU-small states are acutely aware of limits of their power & deploy capacity with care-the Swedes coined the term smart states. Small states understand they have to be smart. @BrigidLaffan
3. Since 24th of June 2016 Ireland has been shown unstinting solidarity from 26 EU states & EU institutions. During this time, its nearest neighbour tried to power it off the diplomatic pitch & kept thinking that It could peel Ireland off from EU solidarity. @BrigidLaffan
4. On the vaccine debacle & it was one the lesson the Irish will take is that having a seat at the table & voice matters-it took an Irish Taoiseach & Foreign Minister a couple of hours to sort this out. @BrigidLaffan
5. Assertion that Commission sees Northern Ireland as leverage is bot bourne put by the facts-Commission worked very hard led by @MichelBarnier to try to find a workable solution to border on the island of Ireland. @BrigidLaffan
6. As to describing Northern Ireland as a U.K. ‘geopolitical weakness’-well that is one way of putting it. I would rather see it as divided & vulnerable society that has experienced a traumatic violent conflict. It is not post conflict -just largely post violence. @BrigidLaffan
7. #Brexit greatly disturbs the delicate balances on island of Ireland & within Northern Ireland. Brexit was not made on Ireland & given historical context no London Gov should play politics with it & this is what @Conservatives have done @BrigidLaffan
8. As to Ireland becoming collateral damage in EU’s need to cover its own vulnerability-what an assertion!! Again misunderstands Ireland’s preferences & interests. Ireland is a member state & has always shared interest with its partners to protect the single market. @BrigidLaffan
9. Ireland may be small but it has state capacity & an ability to navigate a world of deep interdependence. Part of that is EU membership as an anchor but it is not limited to EU. @BrigidLaffan
10Might be useful to put oneself in shoes of a late 19th early 20th century Irish nationalist. If you told him/her that 100 year after independence Ireland would be a member of a treaty bound polity based on formal equality not dominated by the UK-would be seen as a great outcome

More from Brexit

A not-so-little thread on how post-Brexit work permit regulations will apply in Scottish football and why it’s, broadly, not a good thing...

1) Work permit calculations are based on the points formula from this site -
https://t.co/sjqx8Df7Zg

As things stand, while this article deals with England, the system applies to Scotland also.

The goal is 15 points and the article shows various ways to get there. Essentially, play regularly internationally or in a top 5 league and you’re in. But read the article because it’s a bit trickier than that.

2) There are elements of this I’d dispute. For example, here’s the banding of leagues and, lower down, it’s an absolute mess - Denmark (ranked 14 in coefficient table) and Serbia (16) banded lower than Croatia (20), Greece (18) and Czechs (19)? It’s wholly random.


I get the point that leagues should be banded, but there doesn’t seem to have been loads of sense applied to how these things are actually banded, rather they’ve just shoved a bunch of leagues together and hoped for the best.
A quote from this excellent piece, neatly summarising a core impact of Brexit.

The Commission’s view, according to several sources, is that Brexit means existing distribution networks and supply chains are now defunct and will have to be replaced by other systems.


Of course, this was never written on the side of a bus. And never acknowledged by government. Everything was meant to be broadly fine apart from the inevitable teething problems.

It was, however, visible from space to balanced observers. You did not have to be a trade specialist to understand that replacing the Single Market with a third country trade arrangement meant the end of many if not all of the complex arrangements optimised for the former.

In the absence of substantive mitigations, the Brexit winners are those who subscribe to some woolly notion of ‘sovereignty’ and those who did not like freedom of movement. The losers are everyone else.

But, of course, that’s not good enough. For understandable reasons Brexit was sold as a benefit not a cost. The trading benefits of freedom would far outweigh the costs. Divergence would benefit all.

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