Ireland, Good Friday agreement, Brexit and peace

Peace in Ireland is precious. Brexit has made us forget that. 

Jonathan Freedland has written a very interesting and thought-provoking article about the dangers of Brexit, regarding the Irish border.

You can read it clicking here:

Peace in Ireland- The Guardian

You have here some extracts of his article:

Boris Johnson’s stance on the Irish border shows his casual disdain for the Good Friday agreement, a fragile accord that ended a bloody war. (...)

It is one of the stranger aspects of the Brexit debate. When the plea is raised to remember the Good Friday agreement, to do nothing that might jeopardise the fragile peace that has held in Northern Ireland for two decades, that plea usually comes in a continental European accent. Of course, Irish politicians have been saying it loudly from the start, but this week it was striking to hear French, German, Dutch or Belgian voices explaining to British TV and radio audiences why the EU couldn’t possibly accept Boris Johnson’s revised Brexit plan because of the risk it posed to peace in a corner of the United Kingdom where a bloody conflict had raged within recent memory. (...)

Still, amnesia and imperiousness do not alone explain this carelessness towards the life-saving document that is the Good Friday agreement. It may seem a matter of apple-pie consensus now, but the peace process and eventual accord faced strident opponents – today’s arch-Brexiteers among them. The DUP was hostile throughout, of course, but so was one Michael Gove, author of a 58-page jeremiad that compared the agreement to Nazi-era appeasement, describing it as a “humiliation” and “moral stain”. Is it a surprise that this government is risking a return to violence in Ireland when it includes those who loathed the very pact that ended it? (...)

It points to a glum truth about Brexit. Thanks to the complicated, bloody history and geography of these islands, leaving the EU, including the single market and customs union, means constructing a border between the EU and the UK in the one place where it’s just too dangerous to have such a border. Put another way, leaving the EU would be easier for every other member state than it would be for us. We should not be the first country to leave the European Union. In fact, given our past – our pain and the peace that ended it – we should be the very last.