Laughing at all the Irish takes of,— Stephen Wigmore (@stephen_wigmore) February 11, 2020
"We vote for a terrorist front group because of legitimate concerns about *housing*.
Other countries vote for nasty populists because they are racist and bad"
The very large silver lining in the very dark cloud cast by Sinn Fein is that their winning the highest number of votes in the Irish election means Northern Ireland will not leave the UK for at least a generation. But this would have been extremely unlikely to happen in any case, because Boris Johnson's Brexit deal will give the province the incredibly enviable position of being in both the EU customs union and the UK customs union. It is easy to imagine multinationals moving to the Six Counties for this reason.
Even when the day comes when Catholics outnumber Protestants they would be insane to throw that away. In any case many Catholics always wanted to stay in the UK.
The Anglo-Irish Agreement and the Good Friday Agreement were disastrous. The IRA was being defeated by the British Government - but instead the decent Unionists and Nationalist were replaced by the wild men. One of Tony Blair's terrible, irrevocable changes that have so weakened his country, like unprecedented immigration from Europe and Scottish and Welsh devolution.
The very wide powers he gave away to the EU, on the other hand, have turned out not to be irrevocable after all.
Why would it be such a disaster for Northern Ireland to leave the UK? Or Scotland for that matter? If Brexit was a good thing then surely the same arguments that were made for Brexit would apply to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales? They should choose their own destinies.
ReplyDeleteThe secession of Scotland would be disastrous for English self-esteem. It would also be a disaster for the Scots. Northern Ireland's going would matter to very few English people. I am one.If only we had given Northern and Southern Ireland Home Rule within the UK. Ireland would have been much happier in the UK.
ReplyDelete