LABOUR’S Kate Hoey has been accused of “taking diplomacy lessons” from Donald Trump after claiming the Irish Government would have to pay for border posts after Brexit if the UK leaves without a deal.
The London MP intensified a major row over the border situation by saying Dublin would have to foot the bill for customs posts on the island if the UK crashes out of the European Union without a trade agreement.
“If it ends up with a no deal we won’t be putting up the border. They will have to pay for it because it doesn’t need to happen,” she told Radio Four’s Today programme yesterday.
To protests from her fellow guest, Irish senator Neale Richmond, Hoey then went on to suggest one solution was for the Republic of Ireland to leave the EU.
“We joined the EU together, you joined when we joined and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if we leave and are very successful you don’t start look at leaving as well,” she said.
Richmond tried to make the point that a majority of citizens in the Irish Republic supported remaining in the EU, but the interview was brought to a close. Hoey’s comments provoked outrage among other parties and prominent figures.
Cambridge University classicist Professor Mary Beard tweeted: “When Kate Hoey on @BBCr4today talks about the Irish having to pay for putting up the border between N and S Ireland if there is to be one, she sounds to me dangerously like Mr Trump and Mexico.”
Former Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain, a supporter of the pro-EU Open Britain campaign, said: “With her suggestion that Ireland will have to pay for any border, Kate Hoey seems to have been taking diplomacy lessons from Donald Trump.
“It really is astonishing how much damage Brexit is already doing to our country’s reputation. Even our closest friends, Ireland, are now becoming the target of unhinged attacks from hard Brexit cheerleaders.”
Ross Greer MSP, the Scottish Greens’ Europe spokesman, said; “Kate Hoey’s suggestion that the government in Dublin pay for a hard border in Ireland would be laughable if it wasn’t so insulting and so dangerous to the peace process.
“The Brexit catastrophe is a mess of Britain’s making, not Ireland’s and we cannot forget that voters in the north chose to remain in Europe. It’s as ridiculous as Trump’s plan to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.”
Mairi Gougeon, SNP MSP said: “The simplest way to resolve this issue is for the UK as a whole to commit to staying in the single market and customs union.”
The issue of a physical border on the island of Ireland has become a key stumbling block in the Brexit negotiations, with the Republic saying it will veto moves to trade talks unless Theresa May offers written certainty there will not be a hard border.
However, the Prime Minister’s DUP allies, who are propping up her government, said they will not tolerate any attempts to keep Northern Ireland within the EU customs union – despite voters in Northern Ireland backing remaining in the EU.
Richmond – who speaks for the Irish senate on EU affairs and chairs its Brexit select committee – said any kind of border controls “will be a target”.
He said: “You put up one watchtower or put up one customs patrol and they will be a target” he warned. “I would argue they would be attacked within a week of their going up.”
The row erupted after Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he would stop talks on future trade relations unless there were first written assurances of no physical border on the island after Brexit. Varadkar has said the condition is essential to protecting the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process.
The Irish Republic and the EU have suggested a new trade border in the Irish Sea which would allow Northern Ireland to remain in the customs union. But the Tories and the DUP have rejected that proposal.
On Friday, European Council president Donald Tusk gave May 10 days to come up with a solution to the Irish border, the “divorce bill” and citizens’ rights otherwise talks could not move on to a trade deal in December.
Hoey, a prominent Brexiteer, accused Dublin of being negative, and said both sides should look to Switzerland and Norway, which are outside the EU but have close trade relationships with it. She said: “A lot of the technology, at the Swiss border and in Norway, is done actually away from the border and of course the Prime Minister has said she doesn’t want cameras at the border.”
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