Sir, – The British, southern Irish, and northern Irish, have been together in the European Community for the last 40 years. It has proved a good place for all of us. But the dream of recreating the spirit of a long-dead empire that once gave the British status, superiority, grandeur and polish has grabbed the heart, mind and good sense of the Tory leaders in Britain who are now hell-bent on leading a grand cavalry charge out of the European Union into something akin to the old order of greatness.
This has hard reality implications for everyone.
The British stand to lose the comfort of a well-defined and lucrative export market with Europe; the Northern Irish unionists are for marching with the British into a no-man’s land, losing trade links with southern Ireland and destabilising carefully worked out relationships; southern Ireland will suffer a trade embargo into Britain; the international agreements on the future of Northern Ireland could well unravel; the Northern republicans are already appealing to old dogmas and crying out for the protection of a United Ireland.
It is a time for our government to hold firm on its European credentials, to defend the “backstop” to the last, and to remind the British that their grandstanding imperils the Belfast Agreement and leaves us exposed to a multitude of problems.
Our only hope is that the British people will realise that the Tory grand march towards decoupling from Europe is an unthinkable and self-destructive folly. – Yours, etc,
SEAN Mc ENTEE,
Dublin 6W.