Simon Harris stayed up all of Thursday night and into Friday morning, watching the results of the UK election before putting on a bright red tie and heading into Government Buildings to declare: “It is time for a great reset.”
Addressing the media shortly after 8.30am, before Rishi Sunak had even resigned, the taoiseach said he wanted to make his relationship with Sir Keir Starmer “not only what it should be, but what it could be”.
It could not have been more effusive and for some in government circles slightly too gushing, but among most in senior coalition circles there is discernible delight at Labour’s victory. “It’s great,” said one senior source. “It will reignite east-west relations in a big way.”
The flurry of phone calls between London and Dublin on Friday evening was no accident, having been carefully mapped out in advance. Micheál Martin, the tánaiste, spoke first to David Lammy, the new foreign secretary, and then Hilary Benn, the new Northern Ireland secretary, within hours of their appointments.
Then the new prime minister rang Harris and asked if he was free for dinner in Downing Street on Wednesday week, the eve of the European Political Community (EPC) meeting at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire the following day. Their call was not a detailed chat on the various policy issues, but rather about putting in place the structures that ensure a substantive relationship.
Advertisement
“It already feels different from before,” observed one British official this weekend. Harris will invite Starmer to Dublin, a visit that is likely to take place after the summer.
Much has been made of Starmer’s close inner circle and its Irish links, including his chief of staff Sue Gray, who personally played a role in ensuring Harris was high up Starmer’s initial call list and the dinner invitation. A former senior civil servant in the North, Gray is the daughter of Irish immigrants, married to a country music singer from Co Down and during a career break in the 1980s, at the height of the Troubles, she ran a pub in Newry.
There has long been speculation in Westminster circles that Gray is a British spy and at least one senior civil servant in Dublin is convinced that is the case, but Gray has always categorically denied such suggestions. Then there is Starmer’s campaign chief, Morgan McSweeney, a Macroom native whose cousin, Clare Mungovan, is an adviser to Harris.
But like Blair and Bertie and David Cameron and Enda Kenny, the most important relationship will be between Starmer and Harris. As a second senior coalition source in Dublin noted, lots of European leaders will be in London the evening before EPC, but it is Harris who will dine with Starmer. “He could have invited Macron,” they added.
For Dublin this is an indication of how seriously Starmer is taking his role as co-guarantor of the Good Friday agreement and all that goes with it. “That hasn’t been the approach taken by the last few prime ministers,” said the second senior coalition source.
Advertisement
Sunak had arguably been the best of a bad lot. Cordial and professional, he rang Harris on his first day as taoiseach and the pair swapped stories about their children. Before that, Sunak’s government, by far the least chaotic Tory administration since the Cameron era, hammered out the details of the Windsor framework on goods crossing the Irish Sea from Britain and, by extension, his administration ultimately played a role in restoration of power-sharing at Stormont. “He honoured his word unlike the shitshow that went before it,” the source added.
But all this could not make up for a series of sharp policy differences between London and Dublin, not least on issues such as the Legacy Act, which has halted Troubles-era inquests, and which Labour has pledged to repeal and replace.
Starmer’s appointment of Benn, who served in the cabinets of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, is seen as evidence of the importance he is attaching to the role. Dublin expects a decision on funding the redevelopment of Casement Park in Belfast in time for it to host Euro 2028 football championships to be made shortly.
Starmer’s desire to improve relations has been evident for some time. He made clear in discussions with Dublin when he was leader of the opposition his desire to “repair relations and rebuild trust”, as one British official put it, after several fraught years.
One Irish official who was involved in discussions with Starmer and the new chancellor Rachel Reeves some time ago noted their interest in the success of the Irish economy, its skilled workforce and its third-level sector. Britain’s third-level sector is creaking and it is beset by issues with productivity. Bridget Phillipson, the new education secretary whose grandparents are Irish, visited Ireland in March last year on a fact-finding mission as she devised Labour’s childcare policy.
Advertisement
Above all, there is a sense in Dublin that Labour will pursue a more equal relationship with Ireland than their Tory predecessors.
It is difficult to overstate the degree to which relations deteriorated during the Brexit years. Neale Richmond, the junior finance minister who was Fine Gael’s Brexit spokesman, recalled this week a day in October 2019, as Boris Johnson’s government teetered on the brink of a no-deal EU exit, when he did 15 interviews with UK media. “The sheer intransigence and consistent hectoring,” he recalled as he was told by his interviewees or co-panellists that the EU would “throw Ireland under the bus”.
Another notable low point was when Priti Patel, a Conservative MP and former cabinet minister, suggested using the threat of food shortages in a no-deal scenario to get Ireland to drop its demand for a backstop. Patel is among those tipped to run for leader of a Conservative Party now likely facing a long period of existential crisis.
By contrast, Starmer, who is said to have a favourite sandwich shop in Belfast, is a former member of the Northern Ireland policing board and has a much deeper understanding of the North and its political and cultural intricacies.
Even leaving that aside, the language of the Labour’s manifesto made clear to the Irish government that a new era beckons. “What Britain has voted for is a reset on Northern Ireland, migration and the attitude towards things like legacy,” a senior Irish source concluded.
