Towards the end of his speech to the Institute of Directors in Dublin yesterday on the prospects for North/South economic co operation the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, Mr Trimble, remarked that "the economic arguments are largely irrelevant when national identity is at stake". He made the case that business contacts have developed quite strongly without the stimulus of cross border institutions bearing a concealed political agenda. The potential for much greater economic integration is limited and would be damaged by the imposition of new layers of bureaucracy, which might endanger the North's more important ties with Britain.
It is good to hear Mr Trimble put his case in Dublin and well to pay close attention to it as all party negotiations approach. His speech was calculated to appeal to a business audience which might be expected to be naturally suspicious of too interventionist an approach to economic development and likely to have reached similar conclusions about the potential of North/South trade, compared to that with Britain and continental Europe. Indeed there are many interest groups in the Republic - in tourism, industrial promotion and agriculture, for example - that might be as loath as Mr Trimble to transfer sovereignty within an Irish setting for fear of being put at a competitive disadvantage.
Nevertheless the argument from national identity cuts both ways. Nationalists do not share unionist identification with Britain, however much they benefit from the UK exchequer's subvention. It is, therefore, not surprising that they should aspire to see cross border institutions expressing their own identify as well as promoting economic development on this island. Nor is it surprising that by and large they take a different attitude to the capacity of such institutions to promote such development.
Mr Trimble's argument is minimalist, non interventionist and relies largely on trade statistics. He scoffs at grandiose arguments for a Belfast Dublin economic corridor, which would exclude the west and ignore the greater British market across the Irish Sea. But he misses the most important part of the case for such a corridor. It draws on the most up to date industrial policy within the context of the emerging European single market - an argument that has been found convincing by many Northern business people of a unionist background. Clustering enterprises in order to maximise economies of scale, EU subsidies and marketing opportunities, makes much economic sense in an all Ireland context; but it would require political institutions to put such a policy in place. Likewise, it makes much sense for both North and South to pool promotional, marketing and lobbying efforts, not least in representing Irish interests in Brussels. This Mr Trimble finds "most subversive of all to our interests", especially if it would endanger the UK subvention.
Unionism thereby recreates a dependency on a UK that is itself going through a traumatic crisis of political identity - a fact with which Mr Trimble's party is only very slowly coming to terms. London looks more and more at Ireland as a whole. It has an enormous economic as well as a political stake in a stable Ireland at peace with Britain, and is therefore much more willing to explore cross border co operation than Mr Trimble. One must agree with him, however, that the best interests of both parts of Ireland would be served by a settlement which removed the fear of hidden political agendas from the case for economic co operation. That is precisely why the forthcoming talks are so important and why his political arguments must be listened to in Dublin even more carefully than his economic ones.