From top: Sky News’ Adam Boulton: Dan Boyle
Let’s admit that this is hard for them. The reflected glow of Empire no longer sustains them in their dotage. The strain of being considered just another country has really become too much for them to bear.
The realisation other nations have interests that may equal or supercede theirs, is a thought that they never before have had to countenance.
Within the British political class this level of ignorance is more easy to understand. Politicians, after all, are generalists. They can’t be expected to know everything.
It is the ignorance of many within the British media that truly astounds. A media that it meant to be informed so it can inform, seems particularly easy to manipulate.
No one British ‘journalist’ seems to exemplify this more than Sky News presenter, Adam Boulton. Already compromised though working with Rupert Murdoch’s UK version of Fox News, Boulton’s puffed out vanity has led him to believe that his access to the British establishment makes him an integral part of that establishment, entitled to speak on its behalf.
The wedding for his second marriage to Anji Hunter, then Head of the Policy Unit at 10 Downing Street, was attended by her then boss the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair.
But romantic New Labour is dead and gone. It’s with Dr. David Kelly in his grave. It’s the Tory line that Boulton now has to spout. And spout he has, particularly during his recent interview with Simon Coveney.
I like Simon. I get on well with Simon. That’s despite the fact there are many, many things on which we politically disagree. However, to give him his due, he was spot on in identifying Boulton’s questions to him as nothing other than British/Brexit spin.
Boulton could have phrased his question as the British Government believe that you… Instead he parroted the British Government line as if it were absolute truth. It was shoddy, shoddy journalism.
Wading into the twitter storm that followed, his use of the Ivory Coast flag instead of the Irish, and claiming the dismissive phrase ‘You Irish’ was the type of ‘You Guys’ banter no one should take offence at, is typical of an English arrogance we used to describe as being phlegmatic.
And yet…
Maybe this is the best opportunity we have ever had to rid ourselves of this national inferiority complex. The people we have been feeling inferior towards are idiots. At this point of our history we have a glorious chance to crush forever the pre-internet meme the ‘Paddy the Irishman’ joke.
Say it loud. Say it proud. Boris the Brexiteer walks into a bar…
But let’s not be so cruel as Punch magazine was for many, many decades in caricaturing the Irish as apes. Apes are more evolved than Brexiteers.
Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator. His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle
Meanwhile…
Looking for a political stocking filler?
Dan Boyle’s new book ‘Making Up The Numbers – Smaller Parties and Independents in Irish Politics‘ published by the History Press is available at all good bookstores now.
Meanwhile…
Ah here.
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