Irish border voice amplified out of all proportion

Last week, for the umpteenth time, the BBC broadcast a discussion programme from close to the border – this time from Newry. Scarcely a day goes by that a national broadcaster doesn’t air another programme from some bleak backwater along the Irish frontier. We’re told that this is necessary in order to understand properly how Brexit will affect Northern Ireland.

It’s become mandatory too for politicians to tramp the muddy lanes and fields that divide north and south. Back when there was some hope that Theresa May could still negotiate a respectable deal with the EU, the prime minister was harangued for visiting a farm outside Bangor – Northern Ireland’s third largest settlement – rather than following the well-worn path to Enniskillen or Londonderry.

She should apparently have copied various Eurocrats and Labour MPs who listened to carefully curated propaganda from nationalists, the Irish government and arch-remainers in the border’s vicinity. In the telling of some reporters, the residents of these areas have a special fund of knowledge and wisdom that is almost mystical.

In one feature in The Guardian, John Harris solemnly contrasted the “incisive eloquence” of a Derry rock band with the “casual indifference” of English youths. He was taken in by the drummer’s claim that every household in “the North” holds a copy of the Good Friday Agreement. “You could read it in a day.”

Now, the document was in fact posted to every house – back in 1998. It’s also 35 pages long, so that musician must be a slow reader, and it contains no content precluding a “hard border”, contrary to repeated claims to the contrary. The reverence with which Harris greets this supposed nugget of wisdom tells us more about English deference to nationalist blarney than so-called indifference.

You can understand why journalists and politicians like this formula. The border has become a symbol of the incredible complexity of leaving the EU and the Irish backstop has been by far the most intractable issue during negotiations. People who move regularly between Northern Ireland and the Republic are concerned about the impact that Brexit will have on their lifestyle and livelihoods.

Yet, voices in the border areas have been amplified far beyond anything that is justified by numbers or fairness.

It’s become easy to forget that Northern Ireland makes up a tiny part of the UK and its population is in any case concentrated in the eastern counties, around Belfast, rather than the west or the south of the province. This distribution reflects an economy that is dependent on trade with Great Britain rather than the relatively small volume of business conducted with the Irish Republic. Some 56% of Northern Ireland’s external sales are destined for the mainland, while 14% go to the Republic. Only 1.6% of southern exports go to the north.

It’s an extraordinary PR success for Dublin and the EU that the Brexit negotiations have focussed on the supposed threat of checks at the land border, rather than the far greater complication of a border in the Irish Sea. Their task has been made easier thanks to the political culture of grievance that exists in many of these frontier areas.

These places are overwhelmingly represented by Sinn Fein politicians, who are world class at nursing small complaints until they become perceived by their sympathisers as glaring injustices. Witness the grim pieces of street theatre orchestrated by the group Border Communities Against Brexit, cheered by its republican allies. They’re the ones who set up that famous picture of a supposed border guard stopping a car.

Remember that these stunts are taking place in the same neighbourhoods where the IRA carried out many of its most infamous atrocities, which made watchtowers and other security buildings necessary. Here, the terrorists found their strongest supporters and that is reflected in voters’ ongoing willingness to back a party whose movement butchered their neighbours. Sinn Fein holds each of the Westminster seats along the border.

This callous attitude is made possible by a culture of victimhood that is deeply ingrained. It’s a mindset that drives incessant demands both significant and trivial.

For years, Sinn Fein and others promoted the idea that the west of Northern Ireland was starved of government infrastructure and investment. This claim took no account of population density. Half of the province’s 1.9 million people live within the confines of Belfast’s “travel to work area”. County Fermanagh contains one tenth as many residents as County Antrim and only one fifth of Northern Ireland’s population live in a council district close to the border.

Nonetheless, Sinn Fein managed to secure major spending for projects such as upgrading underused roads in the west of the province, as part of the sectarian carve-up of resources that it oversaw at Stormont alongside the DUP. The justification was always that persistent myth that rural, nationalist areas were underfunded.

Border communities are of course close to the Republic of Ireland and they have stronger cultural, social and economic affinities than the rest of the country with the south. People who live in those localities are justifiably concerned about how Brexit might affect these links.

However, there is no reason why arrangements in Northern Ireland after we leave the EU should be tailored any more to address the concerns of citizens in Belleek and Bellanaleck than those in Bangor and Belfast. Indeed, more populous areas should be heard more loudly and more frequently than relatively sparsely populated places.

It’s important to debate Brexit thoroughly but we’ve already heard rather too much from grievance-mongers near the border. Their complaints need to be put in perspective. They’re a small part of the smallest region in the UK. By no means should they be ignored, but neither should they be allowed to shout down the rest of the country.