This blog has been silent for some weeks. Why? Because it has nothing to add to what was obvious from the outset of the wholly sorry process, namely, that there was and is no realistic possibiity of the UK escaping the jurisdiction of the EU insitutions. Why? Because we need a deal that the EU cannot make. Hence, the only question was, as it remains, whether we stay ‘half in’ as a voting member with the special deal we aleady enjoy, or ‘half out’ as a ‘rule taker’ with much less if any say in how the EU and we, its vassal state, are run and developed in the future. It should, as argued in past blogs, be a ‘no brainer’.
Beyond that, for the moment this blog will only record a conversation recently overheard in a pavement cafe in Rome. It arose when the waiter asked a group of Irish business people if they wanted an “English Breakfast”. The half joking refusal was then followed by a heated discussion about “the English” and Brexit. All agreed that the English “never change”. Arrogant, untrustworthy, mendacious, careless of their neighbours and particuarly dismissive of Ireland and the Irish with recollections of English “crimes” against the Irish littering the conversation. The tone was one of deep anger and affront. It should have been heard by all those who dismiss this, the latest manifestation of the ‘Irish Question’, as mere fear mongering or politicking by the Taoiseach.
