The spectacle of Micheál Martin defending Keir Starmer and risking the wrath of Donald Trump in the White House on St Patrick’s Day says as much about the current healthy state of British/Irish relations as the warmly worded communiqué that followed the meeting of the Taoiseach and British prime minister in Cork a few days earlier.
A decade on from Brexit, and all the tensions and bitter recriminations between the two governments that followed in its wake, it is hard to believe that relations with Britain are returning to the warmth they achieved at the time of the late British queen Elizabeth’s state visit.
The principal reason for this is not simply Starmer’s obvious affection for this country, but his determination to act on it. After he became prime minister in 2024, he announced that one of his priorities was to engage in a reset in relations between the UK and Ireland, as well as the wider EU.
That led to a summit between Martin and Starmer in Liverpool last year when it was announced that this would become an annual event. Last week’s meeting in Cork was the second round of this process. Ireland is the only country with which the UK has entered into such a formal arrangement.
At one level, the annual summits are designed to compensate for the fact that since Brexit, Irish and British political leaders and their top officials no longer meet regularly at EU events. Close contact at EU level proved extremely important throughout the peace process and the absence of such contacts contributed to the misunderstandings that developed during the Brexit negotiations.
The communique issued by the two sides after last week’s meeting in Cork revealed the depth of the growing co-operation since Starmer entered Downing Street as well as the ambitions for a deepening of those ties in the coming years. This has taken serious commitment and effort from both sides.
The communiqué listed 43 points, many of them with a practical application to the lives of people in both jurisdictions. There was an emphasis on our shared seas through energy co-operation, both in the development of renewable sources and in the development of the interconnections between the two grids.
A related issue was the commitment to closer defence co-operation to deter threats in the Irish Sea and the North Atlantic. The leaders agreed to update a memorandum of understanding on defence which was agreed back in 2015 just before the Brexit rupture.
Starmer was accompanied to the Cork meeting by a number of his senior ministers including energy secretary Ed Miliband and Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn while the Irish side included Simon Harris, Helen McEntee and Jim O’Callaghan.
The summit probably came as a welcome relief to Starmer for the unremittingly negative and often misleading media coverage he has to endure at home. He certainly faces a challenging period ahead with local and regional elections which are expected to go badly for his party.
Given the way much of the media, including the BBC, were so spectacularly wrong in predicting his demise early last month, rumours of his imminent downfall should be taken with a grain of salt. His handling of the US-Israeli war on Iran and his refusal to become a lapdog for Trump seems to have struck a chord with the British public and should mark a turning point in his premiership.
British King Charles III, who has his own problems over the behaviour of his brother, has also facilitated the improvement in relations between the two countries. He has never made any secret of his affection for this country and has stated a desire to visit every county in Ireland.
In his message to the president for March 17th, starting with the greeting “A Uachtaráin, a chara,” he noted that: “St Patrick and his extraordinary pilgrimage across these islands is one of the many threads in a rich tapestry of historical links holding us together.” It is expected that the king will make a State visit here in the next couple of years to put the icing on the cake of the improved relationship.
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Another Englishman who has contributed to the improved relationship is the charismatic Irish rugby coach, Andy Farrell, whose ancestors came from Longford. It was amusing to witness the scene in my local pub last Saturday night as customers roared on England against France and some, tongue in cheek, even sang: “Swing low, sweet chariot.”
Of course, the reason for the newfound enthusiasm was the fact that a win for England would have made Ireland Six Nations champions – but the wider point is that our two countries depend on each other in so many ways that friendship makes far more sense than enmity.
Whether the current good relations would survive the election of populist flag-waving Nigel Farage as prime minister or, for that matter, if his Irish equivalent Mary Lou McDonald makes it to the Taoiseach’s office, is a moot point. But for now, at least the two countries are behaving like good neighbours.