Policy Lab: Borders and Brexit

(1 Credit Hour) · Undergraduate

The United Kingdom’s 2016 decision to leave the European Union came as a surprise: few expected the referendum to pass, and little or no planning had been done for what would come next if it did. In Ireland it was a shock. Since the Good Friday Agreement there had been peace on the island of Ireland. The gun had largely been removed from Irish politics. Key to this was the joint membership of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland in the European Union. People could move freely - that had been true for years - but so could goods. The border itself was increasingly vestigial: a change in mobile phone provider; signage in miles not kilometer; pounds not Euro. Unification remained an aspiration for many but few thought it imminent. Brexit called all of this into question. Would there have to be a ‘hard’ border? Customs checks at Newry and Dundalk? No one knew. Certainly, the British did not. Resolving these questions fell to a great extent to the Irish government, led between 2017 and 2020 (and again 2022-2024) by Leo Varadkar. How this process was navigated is the subject of this course: how did the Republic of Ireland seek to maintain its position in the face of British indifference, and at times hostility? What role did the European Union play? How did the Irish ‘win Brexit’, as the New Statesman recently put it?