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When the new British prime minister visits this place on his obligatory skite round what the BBC calls “the nations and the regions of the UK”, the question the traditionally compliant unionist media here ask is, what difference will he make here?
The answer is very simple: absolutely none. As Sarah Creighton wrote in this paper on Monday, Burnham will tell the NIO “to sort it out and immediately put Stormont out of sight and mind”.
Burnham is concerned first and foremost with the north, but by that he means the north of England; next come Scotland and Wales. This place has no part in Burnham’s strategy. His main objective is to fend off Reform and restore Labour’s electoral fortunes.
He has no votes here. People here don’t vote for British parties. End of. The problem here is different. It’s partition, not Reform’s votes.
Is Burnham going to reduce VAT here to the lower hospitality VAT rate across the British border in this country? Of course not.
Is he going to reduce corporation tax to compete with the Republic’s tax regime to attract foreign direct investment? Of course not. Politicians in Scotland and Wales would go nuts.
The problem is on this island and slowly the Irish government is beginning to address it, or at least one party in the Irish government, Fine Gael, is. In June, Simon Harris announced he would produce a blueprint for what reunification would look like.
Last week, as minister for finance, he made a remarkable contribution in the Dáil to a debate on the cost of reunification to the open astonishment of Sinn Féin. He pointed out that recent studies had produced “widely different conclusions”.
At one extreme, a ‘study’ (not peer-reviewed) and largely rejected as preposterous, concluded reunification would cost €20 billion a year for 20 years. At the other extreme, research by DCU last month showed the cost to be €3 billion in the first year and the need for a British subvention would disappear in nine years. As the Tánaiste said, there’s a need for a straightforward answer so that the government can plan.
However, his most important point was that the matter “is not simply what a united Ireland would cost but what a united Ireland could create”.
He said there were “significant opportunities in services, access to the EU single market, labour mobility and a single currency.
“If the euro was used across the island it would eliminate exchange rate risk, reduce transaction costs for business and consumers, and would simplify trade and investment.” All these factors have to be taken into account when assessing the cost of reunification.
There was another straw in the wind a couple of weeks ago which didn’t attract any publicity. It emerged in the Taoiseach’s Shared Island Forum on June 29 that he had told the south’s IDA “they really need to think on an all-island basis with Invest NI, Enterprise Ireland and Inter Trade Ireland”.
Professor Seamus McGuinness of the Economic and Social Research Institute said it was “an important step. It’s something we have called for before in terms of a joined-up cross-border approach in foreign investment, education, skills and infrastructure”.
McGuinness pointed out the number of people employed by foreign direct investment firms in the south increased by 268,000 between 2015 and 2021 compared to 7,000 in the north. Piggy-backing on the IDA and operating on a cross-border basis can only be good, especially in border counties north and south.
Now that Sinn Féin runs the Economy and Finance departments in Stormont, there’s a real opportunity to enhance the links the Taoiseach was talking about.
Caoimhe Archibald has already taken initiatives in tourism to strengthen the all-Ireland approach in contrast to the DUP’s dog-in-the-manger, pig-in-a-poke approach to keep the north isolated and impoverished, known internationally only for its rabid incendiary racism which unionist parties do nothing to confront.
So, even if Burnham does nothing to change the rules of the game here, which he can’t and won’t, at least the Irish government is stepping up its game materially.
Harris’ overtures in the Dáil left Sinn Féin open-mouthed. Mary Lou McDonald warmly welcomed the Tánaiste’s remarks. “I want to commend you actually for this,” she said. “I think this is a very, very significant moment for all of us.” For her, she added, the question is, “Can we afford partition any longer?”
SF’s TD Rose Conway-Walsh went further and told Harris, “I think Michael Collins would be pleased with you today.” One Dáil sketch writer said Harris was “dumbstruck” by the warmth of SF’s response.
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