What would a Reform government mean for trade with the UK?
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Breakfast Business with Enterprise Ireland on Newstalk. Welcome back to Breakfast Business with me, Tom McEnany, standing in for Joel Lynham.
What does a Reform government mean for UK trade?
Now, with the UK's Reform Party leading Labour and the Tories in opinion polls, the question we have to ask is, what would a reform government mean for trade with the UK? And in particular, the special arrangements agreed for Northern Ireland post-Brexit. Our next guest is Anand Menon, Professor of European Politics at at King's College, London. Professor Menon, you're in Dublin to speak in a conference titled Ireland, the UK and the EU, what's next for international relations and trade? It's organised by Rockwood Public Affairs. I presume you're looking at, one of the things you're looking at is what a reformed government in the UK would mean for trade relations with us and indeed the rest of Europe.
Yeah, indeed. We're looking at lots of things. Reform will be one of them. You've got to always have this health warning which is Whatever the polls are saying now, we're a long way away from our next election in the United Kingdom. A lot can change. But there is no doubt that if we ended up with a reformed government, they would have an impact on UK-Irish trade, not least because one of the things they've said quite boldly is... The Labour government is trying to negotiate an agricultural deal with the EU that will make trade between GB and NI and between Ireland and the UK easier. Reform will scrap that if they come in. So they will have an immediate impact on trade, I think, should they become elected.
OK. And we have, as you know, indeed you're a world expert on that subject, we have special relations on the Windsor Agreement in relation to Northern Ireland.
How might Northern Ireland's special arrangements change?
Is that likely to be affected? Yes. Has the Reform Party given us any indication of what their policy might be in relation to cross-border trade and indeed in relation to continuing to not impose a border between North and South?
They haven't spoken about this as yet, so there's no clear policy on this. What I would say is, I think what we can expect is that the relationship between the UK and the EU continues. will turn much chillier with a reformed government with Nigel Farage in charge, and that will have repercussions on the relationship across the piece, I would say. Remember, one of the things we've seen since Brexit is a significant increase in trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. And that's because of the Windsor framework. So I think any government's going to have to think long and hard before tampering with that.
And in relation, of course, as part of the EU, in relation to the EU generally, what's the temperature of the reform position? What's their general feeling towards relations with the EU and how might that impact with their trade relations?
Well, I think Nigel Farage came to prominence as a Eurosceptic, so we can expect the tone to become a lot chillier. We can probably expect to go back to the days in British politics when being at loggerheads with the European Union was seen as good politics, which is something that Keir Starmer has moved us a long, long way from.
OK. You're also an expert in Brexit. It was an item that we spoke about on an almost daily basis on this show. And indeed, I remember on an almost daily basis, there were people pronouncing that this would be Armageddon, particularly for trade with the UK. What's actually been the effect?
Well, the impact on UK-Irish trade has been quite interesting in the sense that a lot of Irish exports, which used to come either directly to the UK or to the UK on the way to the European Union, now go directly on ferries to the European Union. So Irish exports to the UK have suffered. What we've seen is an increase in UK-Ireland trade, but that is driven almost solely by the increase in Northern Ireland-Ireland trade because with the Windsor Framework, that trading relationship has become a lot stronger now I think trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic used to make up about 10% of UK-Irish trade.
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