The treatment of Ireland tells us a lot about the UK and our independence

Here were two sovereign states, reconciled with their shared, often antagonistic histories, determined to go forward in a spirit of greater equality and mutual respect. Power asymmetries remained, certainly. In population and economic might, the UK remained the larger of the two partners. But the tone of voice had notably changed.

Reflecting on the importance “of being able to bow to the past, but not be bound by it”, the Queen spoke of “the strength of the bonds that are now in place between the governments and the people of our two nations, the spirit of partnership that we now enjoy, and the lasting rapport between us”.

But as Dr Freud taught us, the things we repress have a nasty habit of returning to visit us. As Ireland has come increasingly to realise it is a post-colonial nation, Britain’s ruling party shows every sign of remaining cheerfully shackled to its yesterdays.

Streak forward seven years from the Dublin Castle speech, and elements of the Conservative Party and their media cheerleaders have done everything within their power to undermine the quiet optimism of its scenes.

Pursuing Brexit with scant regard for the implications for Northern Ireland remains one of the most shameful derelictions of governmental responsibility in recent memory – but the cavalier indifference it expressed is hardly novel. It is telling that many historically-minded British politicians are inclined to characterise Brexit as “the worst crisis for this country since Suez” – or perhaps, since the Second World War.

You might well think the outbreak of decades-long armed conflict within the boundaries of your own jurisdiction would be regarded as a memorable collective trauma. During the Troubles in Northern Ireland, 3500 men, women and children died – civilians, servicemen, paramilitaries. Many more were injured, including a slew of Conservative politicians. In most states, this might rank as a major crisis for national policy. It might stick in the memory. But in the United Kingdom? Not so, apparently. Nostalgia always hitches a lift with amnesia.

In the wake of the 2016 vote, some Brexiteers confidently prophesied Ireland would be battering down Britain’s doors to leave the EU and apply for admission to the “land of milk and honey” which our buccaneering new North Atlantic anglosphere would represent. The knocks never came.

Instead, the Irish got busy, projecting influence through their existing political networks. As Nicola Sturgeon has since observed, the nimble way Leinster House has been able to shape the EU negotiating agenda demonstrates “the power of a small independent member of the EU” when the stars align. “Compare and contrast with the UK Government’s treatment of devolved Scotland,” the First Minister said. Well, quite.

Last week, another former Tory minister – exasperated by how effectively Irish diplomats had been able to shape the European Union’s approach to the Brexit negotiations – told the BBC: “We simply cannot allow the Irish to treat us like this. This simply cannot stand. The Irish really should know their place.”

In recent months, these sentiments have found considerable echo in parts of Britain’s right-wing media, with one outrider suggesting this week that by representing the interests of his own people in the Brexit negotiations, the Irish Taoiseach was proposing a “practically imperial belief that what is good for his government — his foreign government — is more important than what the British people themselves, in their millions, voted for”.

Vassal states, colonies, imperialism – Dr Freud also had a thing or two to say about the phenomenon of psychological projection. Trapped in a mindscape of empires and colonies, the unreconstructed Flashmans who govern us show little sign of abandoning their swagging nostalgia, even as the rest of the world moves on. Scratch your “one-time Tory moderniser”, and you turn up the faded red, white and blue of John Bull’s waistcoat, as blimpish, and ignorant, and hectoring as ever.

In May 1882, Robert Louis Stevenson (below) published an article entitled The Foreigner At Home in the Cornhill Magazine. “John Bull is ignorant of the States; he is probably ignorant of India; but considering his opportunities, he is far more ignorant of countries nearer his own door. There is one country, for instance – its frontier not so far from London, its people closely akin, its language the same in all essentials with the English – of which I will go bail he knows nothing.” Whether we’re talking about Ireland or Scotland, 136 years on, little appears to have changed.

For proponents of Scottish independence, the resurgent romantic nationalism of the Conservative Party poses at least three new challenges – both in terms of how you present independence to the Scottish people, and what you can make of it, if you persuade a majority to back it.

Firstly, Brexit blows the timescale. The 2014 White Paper suggested an 18-month timeframe for independence negotiations. As one SNP politician told me this week, the Brexit process has shown this hopelessly optimistic timetable is “for the birds”.

Secondly, the Brexit negotiations has given Scots – perhaps for the first time – a more unflinching insight into the realities of international negotiations, including the impact of power asymmetries, the unwillingness to identify your own priorities, the costs of misreading of your opponents, and the terrible dangers of trussing yourself up in a series of red lines. With Brexit or Scottish independence, just unshackling the unicorn won’t cut it.

Thirdly, 2014’s pitch for Scottish independence was premised on the idea of re-casting existing relationships in a more constructive way, in the spirit of Dublin Castle in May 2011. This prospectus for how independence could and would unfold presupposed a certain rationality on the part of the UK Government.

If the people determined that Scotland would leave the historic union, the SNP argued, we would work soberly and sensibly to divide assets, agree sea borders and associated marine resources, strike accords on topics of common interest, erecting the infrastructure for a currency union, work out what to do with Trident, and with Britain’s help, seamlessly accommodate the new state in the European Union. The party’s MPs also went to often tortured efforts to try to persuade the electorate that breaking up Britain would leave their Britishness intact.

This proposition may have seemed optimistic in 2014. The Brexit adventures of the Conservative Party through 2018 suggests it is downright Quixotic.

Indeed, if Scottish independence emerges in the wake of a humiliating departure from the European Union, the impetus towards petty Tory responses to an emerging Scottish state look considerably enhanced. How do you talk rationally to a lamed, gumsy, gouty British lion who still believes he is King of Beasts?

None of these are arguments against independence, but they make the case for being unsentimental and unflinching with ourselves about where the challenges lie. They also suggest that any second independence campaign will struggle to muster the optimism of the first. As independent Ireland is finding out, when you’re dealing with Brexit Britain, there are no easy answers.