EU Withdrawal — House of Lords, 2019-02-13
Topic: International Affairs
John Alderdice (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I listened with some interest and considerable agreement to the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton. I cannot, however, go along with his final enthusiastic flourish: that we must continue to argue for what we believe in. I say that not because I do not argue for what I believe in, but because both sides of this argument have been arguing for what they believe in for the past few years and we have not got to any agreement—or even increased understanding of each other. This is a phenomenon not just of this country, but a global one: countries and communities are split down the middle because people are arguing for what they believe in, come what may I am quite used to that. I am used to people taking to weapons because of what they believe in. I have spent a good deal of my life trying to persuade people to look beyond what they believe in to a better future for their shared community. I agree largely with the Motion in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon. However, it means two quite different things among the people supporting it. Some say that they will not leave the European Union without an agreement—and they want an agreement. Others say that they will not leave the European Union without an agreement, while rather hoping that there will not be one, so that they will not have to leave. We need to be a little more straightforward if we are to find any resolution in the interests of our country There has been a good deal of talk about the backstop, and I will focus on that, because there is a considerable lack of understanding about what is involved. As the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bengarve, pointed out, the key issues are not those that many people speak about. I hear many people speaking about the Good Friday agreement, but quite a number of them have not read it, or if they have read it they have not understood it, or if they have understood it they are disingenuous about it and are using it to promote one side or other of a Brexit argument that has nothing to do with it What happened with the agreement? First, the British and Irish Governments realised that they had been poles apart for a long time, and that that was not in the best interests of either country. They agreed to come together to build a new relationship, and reach a political agreement that will provide a basis for that. The basis was not the Good Friday agreement but the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985, which was a very flawed process. I will not revisit that—I see the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, nodding his head—but it brought the British and Irish Governments together at the level of Prime Ministers, Ministers and civil servants, and, over a period, to build and develop a relationship with each other. That enabled, in the context of the European Union, and with the support of our friends in the United States, a new agreement to be produced—the Belfast agreement of 1988. That addressed the disturbed relationships within Northern Ireland, between north and south, and between Britain and Ireland Let us be clear, however: the key relationship was between London and Dublin—between the British and Irish Governments. That was the driver that kept it going, and when they forgot about that it was a disaster. The noble Lord, Lord Trimble, is not in his place but he, the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, and others will remember those occasions when Bertie Ahern, as Taoiseach, allowed Mr Gerry Adams and his colleagues to go to Dublin and start external negotiations, and then the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, went to London to talk to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. The whole process began to fall into disarray. Some of us had to publicly call for them to come back to Belfast, to the chairmanship of George Mitchell, to try to reach an understanding. The key thing was to keep the British and Irish Governments together When, therefore, I hear people saying that the British and Irish Governments cannot negotiate on questions like the backstop without doing it through Brussels, I do not find it easy to believe. Brussels never complained when the British and Irish Governments were negotiating on Irish border issues; on the contrary, they took pride in the fact that it was being done, that the model of the European Union was being adopted, and that funds could be made available to promote it. The reason that we are having this problem is that the British Government, having dealt with the Irish problem, did what the British Government usually do with the Irish problem; that is, ignore it and hope that it will now go away, and not pay proper attention to the Irish Government and their relationship with them. What then happens? Surprise, surprise, a decade on, they run into difficulties.