From top: Yesterday’s London Evening Standard; tweet from spoof Daily Mail account

These attitude mirrors the conveyor belt of myths perpetuated against Scottish independence; subsidy junkies, Arc of Insolvency, Skintland etc etc, and it’s no surprise to see them wheeled out again against Ireland’s entirely legitimate issues about a hard border.

All of this is entirely consistent with the politics of Leave: blame foreigners, blame immigrants, blame Bureaucrats, blame anyone but take responsibility. The political narrative of false-grievance, exceptionalism and stoking resentment will however soon run its course.

The problem for Brexiteers and English xenophobes is that the Irish have been deeply embedded in European politics for a very long time, and whilst goodwill for the British is spent, Ireland has considerable allies who will support her.

Cogadh!

The Subsidy Junkies (Bella Caledonian, Don’t Read Everything You Believe)

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44 thoughts on “Blame Paddy

  1. Charger Salmons

    Who are these considerable allies and are they the same as the ones who came to this country’s aid when it was bankrupt ?
    But hey,if Ireland really wants to disrupt Brexit talks and there’s no deal which country in the EU do you think will be hit the worst by a Hard Brexit.
    Doh !

    1. SOMK

      €3.84 billion out of a €85 billion package, a loan with interest, not a gift, Ireland was hardly bankrupt, at no point did the fabled ATMs close, at no point were state wages not paid.

      It’s one thing for a neighbour to cut off their nose to spite their face, it’s another when they insist on including one of your nostrils in the performance.

      It’s a phased negotiation, phase 1 has three issues, EU migrants in Britain, the Brexit bill and the border. These must be satisfied before moving on to phase 2 (trade), which is estimated to take until mid next decade (ie. far longer than the 2019 cut off point). British have failed to offer anything substantial on the border issue, so Europe and Ireland have taken the initiative for them, this is what happens when you trigger article 50 without having your house in order. A hard Brexit will be entirely the fault of the British side, especially the Tories as it was their daft internal politicking with help from the good friends the mad right wing media that led to a referendum in the first place.

      And don’t forget Northern Ireland voted to remain, so the imposing of a hard border is fundamentally undemocratic and against the will of the people on both sides of the border, never mind that it pisses all over the good Friday agreement to boot.

      A soft Brexit with a hard border is no soft Brexit at all.

      A hard Brexit may indeed hurt Ireland disproportionally more than the rest of the EU, but it will hurt Britain far, far more (for one our planes will still be able to take off!) and Ireland will have a mutual trade area to fall back on as well as a good deal of political goodwill (assuming the SDP don’t end up running the Bundestag), plans are already afoot to circumnavigate Britain, Dublin port is being expanded to handle larger ferries, trucks will ship directly to Belgium rather than driving through Britain to get the continent, in the grand scheme of things the misery of a hard Brexit will be a relatively minor one in the history of misery Britain has inflected upon Ireland.

      It’s their mess in our backyard, of course we’re insisting they clean it up.

      1. Mr M

        Excellent reply. That’s the best explanation I’ve read regarding Brexit.
        They didn’t have their house in order, not in the slightest. Also it wasn’t exactly a landslide victory vote.
        From listening to many Brexiteers, (over here in Blighty) their biggest issues are two, one is the extreme amount of immigrants continually flooding the country and the other is the control from Brussels. Historically they are used to having their own empire. My fear is that it will f**k up the border etc. etc. The best result would if it united the island and then there would be no issue of border etc.

  2. Glass Eyed Willy

    Get used to it Britain. You’re the one who decided you actually wanted to be the small fish. I wonder would they have voted for Breixt if the real question was asked on the ballot paper, that being ‘Should we allow any more darkies and packies in’ because that’s what average Eddie Punch Clock was really answering. The panic comments from DUP & Pro Brexiteers etc really must suggest they’re now finally seeing end game and it aint pretty.

  3. Charger Salmons

    The notion that Paddy is being rather ungrateful after being bailed out by his nearest neighbours when no-one else would touch him with a barge-pole does rather spring to mind.
    But Blighty will remember that when Paddy puts together his next amateurish bid to host the World Bog Snorkelling Championship or whatever the rest of the world things he might not have the facilities to cope with.

      1. Charger Salmons

        Very good.
        You can actually be quite droll when you avoid the spittle-flecked approach to posting.

          1. Warden of the Snort

            And a virtual shillelagh under his arm, clubbing online transgressors who don’t meet his strident Code of Online Conduct in discussions. He’s a silly

  4. Joe835

    Ireland would be mad not to use its veto in this instance; we have a real chance to intervene in our own interest here and Leo Varadkar has the chance to build up real political capital at home by being obstinate.

    Plus it suits the rest of the EU as well; no-one on the EU side is in a rush to complete the Brexit talks – in fact it’s probably a good idea to string them out long enough for the May government to fall and a new, probably Labour, government takes power. If they definitely want to proceed with Brexit, fair enough – you have both main parties committed to it. But chances are, Labour will have internal strife of their own over Europe and may stop it happening at all.

    The UK hasn’t had the massive economic crash for voting for Brexit that was predicted simply because key decision-makers, economists and corporations i.e. experts who aren’t in the Tory party simply didn’t believe it happened/will happen. That’s the underlying thinking behind every economic decision that would be impacted upon by Brexit. You might ask why Goldman Sachs continue work on a new European HQ in London when the city will be outside the EU within 16 months, with no passporting rights – the reason is that they think it won’t leave the EU. The man in charge of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, tweeted the other day that Britain should reconsider – you won’t hear any senior Labour or Tory politician say that but that’s the thinking in the corporate world.

    Or at least it is up until now. From January 2018, there’ll be a real need to make decisions and companies that need to be operating in the EU will have to start making plans to leave the UK on the basis that yes, they really are leaving and there is no political will to stop this madness.

    I think it’ll be this ‘Brexodus’, combined with the inevitable poopshow that will be the European Council meeting on 14-15 December, that will bring into sharp focus just what these lunatics are bringing about with their Brexit.

    In the face of that, Leo will look like a lone voice of sanity on these islands and will get a free pass to be awkward as he likes. He might even be tempted to call an election on the back of his increased popularity for this.

  5. martco

    straw pollwise….
    like most here probably I have good friends/family in England & I work with a good few brits & I can tell you that NONE of them think like this. mostly they are embarrassed for the position this has put Ireland in and are sympathetic. the response has been mostly “well what else does Boris expect Ireland to say here?!?” type
    Daily Mail is a fupping comic book anyways…amazes me how anyone gets worked up about anything they write up (or bot up) :)

  6. Charger Salmons

    Ah the innocence of Paddy who really believes that no Irish people living in the UK voted for Brexit.
    Just dem awful little Englander Daily Mail readers – all 17 million of them.
    Wise up Spuds.Little Leo Verruca will do exactly what he is told to do by Merkel even though she herself is struggling to form a government.
    The UK has already put together a deal behind the scenes offering what is to them chump change to get the trade talks going in the New Year.
    Verruca will be too busy showing off his musical novelty Christmas tie and matching socks to know what the really important players in Europe are getting up to.
    And if the whining over losing out on the Rugby World Cup and various EU agencies is anything to go by most Irish politicians will be whipping themselves up into a frenzy about why their EU allies are so beastly towards them.
    That’s when they’re not drinking themselves into a festive stupor.

      1. Charger Salmons

        Facts:
        Britain’s factories enjoyed their biggest deluge of new orders in nearly three decades this month thanks to a fall in sterling and growing global demand.
        Nearly 300,000 new jobs have been created in the UK since the Brexit referendum.
        And that rather than the predicted Brexodus of EU workers since the vote new figures show there are actually 112,000 MORE EU workers in the UK than before the referendum.
        Not that you see this reported in the Irish Times.

          1. Nigel

            I guess his Nazi aristocratic tones, naked hatred of the Irish, and jingoistic return-of-empire propaganda about an incompetently executed potentially disastrous political and economic project really speak to some people’s profound inner self-loathing.

          2. Charger Salmons

            Spud-tastic from Nigel who has been at the thesaurus all day for this post.
            I do like this tweet from Sir Christopher Meyer,a legendary and highly experienced British ambassador.

            ” But EU Commission is using the GFA to blackmail the UK in phase 1-one of the most cynical manoeuvres I’ve seen in 40 years of diplomacy. With goodwill from Brussels, so far notably absent, an open border would not be the problem it’s become. ”

            Wise words Spudders.

          3. Papi

            British Ambassador. Military Intelligence. Act Naturally. Deafening Silence. Alone Together……..
            Oxy
            Moron.

          4. bisted

            …don’t know where you get the self-loathing thing from…true, I’m not that fond of you but I don’t loath anyone*

            *maybe zionists…and priests…and

          5. Charger Salmons

            But,but,but …. that’s homophobic !
            So now we’re all gay racists are we ?
            How very dare you ….

          6. bisted

            …ah you know what I mean Charger…remember that story where the old chums from Eton meet up for mid-morning gins and one asks if anyone has heard from Carruthers:
            Yes, Carruthers…apparently he’s living on a South Sea Island with a chimpanzee
            A chimpanzee…really…male or female?
            Oh female of course…nothing queer about Carruthers…

    1. Jack Kelly

      I think Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage got the U.S.A. to interfere with the Britexit voting. It makes sense only Donald duck,ops sorry Trump, Nigel in the land of Farage, and Doris sorry Boris Johnson could scheme something as stupid as the British European exit. The three Stooges are alive and well.

  7. The Ghost of Starina

    “The political narrative of false-grievance, exceptionalism and stoking resentment will however soon run its course.”

    LOL no it won’t. That’s the English way.

  8. Naoml

    @ Charger

    Will you, your ego and your KKK white pointed hat be putting in an appearance on Broadsheet On The Telly tonight?

    1. Charger Salmons

      I doubt it.
      We’re having early evening drinks then heading off to a dinner party.
      Yourself ?

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