Brexit and Ireland

 

With Brexit barely a month away, some Americans may still be scratching their heads.  What's all the fuss?

I have to admit to some confusion myself.  My particular confusion arises over the phrase 'hard border'.  At present, both the UK and the Republic of Ireland (hereafter just 'Ireland') are members of the EU, which means that goods may transit freely between Northern Ireland and Ireland.  Post-Brexit, Northern Ireland will not be part of the EU (even though NI voted to remain — the rest of UK voted otherwise) and if there is not a hard border, goods from outside EU will easily flow into Ireland.  The EU is apparently upset over this and is demanding that Ireland and UK fix this.

Now, the border between Ireland and NI is about 160 miles long and there are hundreds of places where people cross willy-nilly all the time.  'Fixing' this means halting the free passage of people back and forth between NI and Ireland.  This is not going to go down easily.  When the two Irelands were plagued by "the troubles", it took a very large contingent of the UK military to police the border, and they were far from effective.

The alternative is to make the Irish Sea the 'hard border' and let NI continue as if they were part of the EU.  I'm thinking that if that's the solution that's settled on, it won't be too very long before Irishmen on both sides of their soft border start thinking it may be time to do what East Germany and West Germany did.

How do you say "wiedervereinigung" in Gaelic?  Athaontú, perhaps?  One can only hope...