The former Irish president Mary McAleese has urged the British to vote to remain in Europe, warning of the return of border controls in Northern Ireland and potential drift in the peace process.
In her first intervention in the EU referendum debate, McAleese said it would be a major concern if Britain’s “formidable” voice were absent in future from the European project.
Her warning came as the chancellor, George Osborne, was due to say that Northern Ireland would suffer a profound economic shock if Britain left the EU. The chancellor, who will begin a two-day visit to Northern Ireland on Thursday, will say that Brexit would lead to 14,000 extra people on regional dole queues and house values falling by almost £20,000.
McAleese, speaking at an event organised by Irish builder Ballymore, which is urging its staff to vote to remain and closing its offices at 2pm on voting day to enable them to do so, said a vote to leave Europe would be a threat to the continent’s future peace. It could fuel further destabilisation of a political project that she said was born out of a desire for lasting peace after two world wars, she argued.
McAleese accepted that Europe had become “faceless” and it was “difficult to lock in the hearts” of voters to this grand vision of peace and democracy, but that the debate over the EU should be used as the starting point for the next round of talks within the EU on its future shape.
“When we joined the EU in 1973, we did not join a 43-year project, we joined … a project to turn our backs on the default position of war,” she said.
“This is a project for generations and centuries, we’re still in the startup phase,” she said.
McAleese, who was president for two terms and was considered one of the most formidable European leaders of her generation, said Britain had a formidable voice in Europe, a strong voice that counterbalanced the rightwing, anti-democractic undertones emerging in some quarters.
“The absent voice would not be heard,” she said. “The idea of the British voice being absent worries me,” she added.
On the future of Ireland, McAleese lamented what she said were false assurances by the leave campaigners that the open border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic would remain.
She said the “chances of customs controls being reconstituted are probably greater”, as they had been eliminated by EU laws and not by Anglo-Irish efforts.
She said the common travel area that allows British and Irish citizens to travel between the two countries without passports would also come under pressure and she worried what effect that would have on the 600,000 Irish in Britain and the 300,000 British in Ireland.
Frequently repeated claims by the leave campaign that the position would not change could not be determined by its leaders Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. “I don’t know that [to be true] and they do not know that,” she said.
“If Britain removes itself from the EU, the only land border between the UK and Europe will be the land border between Northern Ireland and Ireland,” she said.
“The hardening of the border will send all the wrong signals,” she added.
On a two-day trip to Belfast and the border city of Newry, Osborne will also warn that the border with the Irish Republic “would harden” if the UK voted to leave the European Union.
“It is also inevitable that there would be changes to border arrangements,” Osborne will say. Leave campaigners who suggest this is not the case are simply not being straight with people. On any level, that is simply not a price worth paying.”
