Posted by Jim on November 26, 2018
The former Foreign Secretary doesn’t want the DUP to bring down the government, because he wants to take it over
Tom Peck.Independent. London. Saturday, November 24, 2018
Boris Johnson is still occasionally whispered of as a rockstar politician, so we hope the former foreign secretary understands there is absolutely no shame whatsoever in being 54 years old, well past your best, and having to come all the way to the junior ballroom of a business hotel on the outskirts of Belfast just to find a crowd that still wants to hear the only tune you’ve got.
In the Boris Johnson Story as imagined by Boris Johnson, this is not where Boris Johnson was meant to be by now, which is to say being the hype man for the annual conference of a once obscure and soon-to-be-obscure again Northern Irish political party, firing off material about bendy buses that is so far beyond its best before date as to pose a significantly greater risk to public health than anything ever threatened by the buses themselves.
Still, at least Boris Johnson and the Democratic Unionist Party have finally found each other, and together must be wondering how such a blistering run of combined victories appear to have brought them to the brink og humiliating defeat.
At this event last year, in the wake of Theresa May’s disastrous general election, the DUP’s deputy leader Nigel Dodds modestly concluded that it was probably god himself that had decided to intervene and give Nigel Dodds and the DUP so much power over British politics.
Fast forward 12 months and you’ve even got Boris Johnson on hand to lend to this year’s event a kind of Winners Anonymous feel, like a support group for people who’ve got precisely what they wanted and can’t quite work out how it’s ruined their lives.
Yes, it’s a real headscratcher, this one. Ask absolutely anyone at DUP conference what they cherish above all else, and contrary to popular belief, it won’t actually be their Werther’s Originals, it’ll be The Union with Great Britain. It is “the guiding star through the darkness”, the never ecclesiastically under-clubbed Dodds said on Saturday. “We don’t gamble,” he added. “Not with The Union.”
But history kind of intimates otherwise. They backed Brexit, for a start, that thing that absolutely everybody said would risk breaking The Union, and they won that one. And then, as a little bonus, they got an election that allowed them to dictate terms over the actual government.
So how on earth has it come to be that, as of now, Brexit, the very thing they wanted, and through the medium of a prime minister over whom they claim to hold sway, is looking rather like it might, whisper it guys, actually, erm, kind of break up The Union?
God, in his unknowable ways, has really[messed] this up, hasn’t he Nigel? Still, as the search for someone to blame for all this hurtles towards its most desperate phase they really should be thanking the Almighty for putting himself in the firing line at this opportune time.
“It’s hard to imagine how the results could have done more to maximize our influence,” were Dodds’s precise words last year. And yet here we are, long past the point at which the negotiations were meant to have been finished, with a deal on the table that the DUP won’t tolerate, and with precious few ideas what to do about it, other than to use their fully maximized influence to smash everything to pieces because they can’t get their own way.
It’s proper mad stuff, this Northern Irish politics, even if they’re doing their best to emulate it over on the mainland.
That the DUP can be pro-Brexit, put their beloved Union in peril, then clean up the electoral advantages, that come from claiming to be the only ones who care about it, is the sort of national gaslighting that would make Donald Trump jealous. Then there’s the fact that they can squeeze a billion quid out of Theresa May, and when a plan comes together, namely the backstop, that almost all Northern Irish businesses agree would be an absolutely wonderful “best of both worlds scenario”, they’ll gladly give the money back to make sure it doesn’t happen.
There are such things as “liberal unionists”, who aren’t heard so much from anymore, who’ll admit to not having a clue who to vote for. Welcome to 2018. Fun isn’t it.
More to the point, if it’s ideas the DUP were after, I’m afraid to say they flew in the wrong act. Having to listen to the Brexiteers constantly fight the same absurd battles was the price Remainers imagined they’d have to pay for winning the referendum not losing it.
Watching Boris Johnson continuing to fight the referendum campaign two years after winning it is one of Brexit’s most troubling realities.
Every ingredient was there, it’s just that the EU has become the backstop. There were lies about EU regulations that restrict British businesses, this time pertaining to hovercrafts. There was Brussels “having the UK exactly where it wants it.” There was the “freedom to do our own trade deals,” all that stuff that should have come to pass so easily by now, and the mere fact that absolutely none of it has should not in any way lead you to believe that none of it was ever true.
And of course, there was the promise, again to build a bridge to Scotland, over Beaufort’s Dyke, an unexploded Second World War munitions dump at the bottom of the sea, and for precious little economic benefit to either side. “The problem isn’t Beaufort’s Dyke,” he said, “The problem is a lack of political will”.
It was the perfect distillation of eau de Boris, a fragrance of which everybody recognizes the smell. Who knows, maybe he’ll build the thing one day, and when the central supports are suddenly blown away in the middle of rush hour by some giant German bomb everybody told him was there, that too will be the EU’s fault.
But the real purpose of his attendance was clear enough. He knows very well that all that either he or the DUP have come up with by way of a solution, which is to “bin the backstop”, is something the European Union could hardly have been clearer they will not countenance. The answer, both he and the DUP think, is to “carry on negotiating”, to “use the time we have left” to come out with a different solution, one that, in a few short months, can resolve the irresolvable questions that no one has managed to resolve in the last 18.
The only solutions at the DUP’s disposal are a series of very drastic levers, and he has to make sure they pull the right one. In the last few days, Arlene Foster has publicly flirted with ending the “confidence and supply” arrangement with the government, an agreement her senior colleagues already speak of in the past tense. This may very well not be in the national interest, not even in the DUP’s interest, but most of all, it wouldn’t be in Boris Johnson’s interest, and that definitely will not do. So, after savaging everything Theresa May, and his own government, has achieved in the last 18 months, it was, all of a sudden, “absolutely vital that we keep this partnership going”.
Don’t bring down the government, in other words, just bring down the Brexit deal. Let’s keep this machine ticking over, and I can slot right into the driving seat. Then we can do wondrous things together, in this precious United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, that together, me through my utter lack of all shame, and you through your mad flag waving nationalistic self harm, will have brought fully to its knees.
Posted by Jim on November 25, 2018
Reporting: Tony Connelly, Reuters, AFP, PA. RTE. Dublin. Sunday, November 25, 2018.
All 27 European Union leaders have endorsed the Brexit deal at today’s EU summit, urging Britons to get behind Theresa May’s package despite furious opposition in the British parliament.
“EU27 has endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the future EU-UK relations,” Mr Tusk said after less than an hour of the leaders’ summit.
The 27 leaders adopted an official statement in which they also committed “to take the necessary steps to ensure that the agreement can enter into force on 30 March 2019, so as to provide for an orderly withdrawal.”
The statement also promised “as close as possible a partnership with the United Kingdom” after Britain leaves on 29 March, 2019, and thanked Michel Barnier, the bloc’s Brexit negotiator. They urged the UK parliament to back the deal as well.
Earlier, President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker said that Brexit is a “tragedy” but the EU will not change its fundamental position in the event that the withdrawal treaty is rejected on the British side.
Speaking at an emergency summit of EU leaders in Brussels to formally adopt the Brexit treaty, the EU’s most powerful official said that the Brexit treaty is the best possible deal for Britain.
He said the EU will not deal with the hypothetical case that the UK parliament might reject the deal.
He dubbed it “a sad day”, and said he thinks that the UK parliament will ratify the deal.
“To see a country like Great Britain… leave the EU is not a moment of joy nor of celebration, it’s a sad moment and it’s a tragedy,” said Mr Juncker.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said this morning: “now it is time for everybody to take their responsibility.”
“This deal is a necessary step to build trust between the UK and the EU, we need to build in the next phase of this unprecedented and ambitious partnership. We will remain allies, partners and friends,” said Mr Barnier.
A last minute agreement was reached over the weekend on how Gibraltar will be managed once a future EU-UK trade deal is negotiated.
Speaking at the summit, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he still regrets that the UK is leaving the EU, and that “the best outcome for Ireland and I think for Britain and the European Union would be for the UK to stay in the European Union, to stay in the single market and customs union. But we respect their decision not to do that.”
“We spent two years trying to negotiate an agreement that protects our interests, our citizens and our economy, and I believe we have that,” added Mr Varadkar.
Mrs. May wrote a so-called letter to the nation in which she said the withdrawal agreement would work for the whole country – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – whether people voted Leave or Remain.
On 19 June last year, David Davis, the Brexit secretary, arrived in Brussels to begin the divorce proceedings.
Now those negotiations will be formally closed. But it has been a gruelling journey with the path littered with ministerial resignations, failed initiatives and dashed expectations of how Brexit might unfold.
The UK is more divided than it has ever been, and even today’s formal endorsement is only a pause before more bloodletting within the Conservative Party, and a widespread expectation that the House of Commons will reject the deal.
DUP leader Arlene Foster said that if Mrs. May wants the party’s continued support, it means removing the Irish backstop from the withdrawal agreement.
But at the Brussels summit, EU leaders have endorsed the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration which sketches out the future relationship.
The European Council also pledges to remain vigilant to ensure a number of issues are followed through, including reciprocal access to UK waters for European fishing fleets, and the Irish backstop, the issue which became the defining dilemma of the Brexit negotiations.
Posted by Jim on
By Gerry Adams (for Leargas)
When the news broke that a withdrawal Brexit agreement had been reached
between the British government and the EU Sammy Wilson of the DUP
responded in time worn fashion. It was, he said “a punishment beating
for the UK because they dared to vote to leave the EU”.Even before he
had read the agreement Wilson declared that the DUP would not support
it. Later he told Channel 4 News, “If the EU think that what the IRA
couldn’t achieve, they’re going to achieve, they have another thought
coming to them.”
Outside the Westminster bubble loyalist activist Jamie Bryson was
warning that the Brexit deal would “almost certainly trigger a
grassroots unionist reaction that would dwarf the anger of the flag
protests and Drumcree”.
This type of excessive threatening language has long been part of
political unionism’s response when faced with the prospect of change.
It’s a combination of hysterical exaggeration and threat. It’s the
language of dire warnings, of civil war and armageddon, and of fear.
It’s the language of 1998 when the DUP stood outside the negotiations as
the Good Friday Agreement was achieved and then opposed it during the
referendum campaign.
It is the language of 1985 when the DUP and UUP raged against Thatcher
and the Anglo Irish Agreement or when hundreds gathered on a cold
mountain waving their firearms certificates in defence of the union.
It’s language which in the past excused and justified sectarian murder,
and defended thousands of masked men in red berets marching through
towns and villages.
It is the language of inequality and division which fed unionism’s
anti-civil rights – anti-Catholic – attitude in the 1960s, and which 50
years earlier had created the apartheid orange state through partition.
DUP anger at Theresa May’s Brexit deal boiled over on Monday evening
when its Westminster group voted in one instance with Labour against
Theresa May and abstained in a number of other budget related votes in
the British Parliament. The focus of the DUP now appears to be on
joining with those remaining Brexiteer Ministers in the British Cabinet
who believe that it is still possible to renegotiate the Brexit deal –
something which has been ruled out by May and by the EU. They have only
days to achieve their objective before an EU summit at the weekend signs
off on the deal.
What happens if, as likely, they fail to change the withdrawal
agreement? Will May survive? Have the dissidents in the Tory ranks the
48 signatories to demand a vote of no confidence in her leadership? Have
the DUP overplayed their hand?
For most citizens living in the North the political machinations around
the decisions which will shape our lives for decades to come has been
reduced to a spectator sport. It’s a moment of high drama which has seen
the North’s business community and farming sector publicly oppose the
approach of both the DUP and UUP.
However, it is also a crisis with political implications that extend
beyond the economic consequences of Brexit. It is always short sighted
to judge any development solely by the discomfort it causes our
opponents, notwithstanding the entertainment this provides. The reality
is that the Good Friday Agreement now faces its greatest threat.
It is important to recall that in the section of the Good Friday
Agreement, under Constitutional Issues, the role of the British
government in the North is explicitly spelt out…”the power of the
sovereign government with jurisdiction there shall be exercised with
rigorous impartiality on behalf of all the people in the diversity of
their identities and traditions and shall be founded on the principles
of full respect for, and equality of, civil, political, social and
cultural rights, of freedom from discrimination for all citizens, and of
parity of esteem and of just and equal treatment for the identity,
ethos, and aspirations of both communities.”
This fundamental role as joint co-guarantors of the Good Friday
Agreement – of being impartial – has been significantly undermined.
While many of us, including me fein, remain justifiably sceptical about
this, it is what the British government signed up for. The British
refusal to defend the rights of Irish language speakers; to protect
equality and human rights for gay and lesbian citizens; to implement
agreements on legacy; or to honour outstanding Agreement commitments,
for example on establishing a Bill of Rights, and create a Civic Forum,
are all evidence of the absence of ‘rigorous impartiality’.
Moreover, following Brexit the British Conservatives remain wedded to
ending the role of the European Court of Justice and getting rid of the
Human Rights Act which protects the equality and human rights principles
of the Agreement.
All of this heightens the need for the Irish government to defend the
Good Friday Agreement and for the North to have a special relationship
with the EU that reflects our unique situation. This is essential if the
Good Friday Agreement is to be protected.
In this context the objective of Irish unity takes on a greater
significance and imperative. This is a logical, common sense outcome to
the political, social and economic fractures imposed by partition but it
also makes sense in the current Brexit provoked crisis. Reunification
will allow for the North to again become part of the EU. Hard border?
Soft Brexit? Better to have no border at all.
Posted by Jim on
This is the time of year when republicans traditionally remember those
‘faoi ghlas ag gallaibh’, behind bars in the cause of Ireland. This is
the current list of prisoners as collated by welfare groups, families
and friends. They are preceded by the relevant prison address for
sending cards or letters.
Castlerea Prison
Harristown
Caslerea
Roscommon
Ireland:
Eugene Kelly
Robbie O’Toole
John Costelloe
Kevin Devlin
Darren Gleeson
Joe Finnegan
Hydebank Wood Gaol
Hospital Road
Belfast BT8 8NA:
Christine Connor
Portlaoise Gaol
Dublin Road
Portlaoise
Co Laois
Ireland:
[E1 Portlaoise]
Donal Billings
Sharif Kelly
Vincent Banks
Paddy Kennedy
Jonathan Hawthorn
[E2]
Charles Anthony Deery
Garret Mulley
Seamus McGrane
Ryan Glennon
[E3 & E4]
Philip Barney McKevitt
Patrick Brennan
Stephen Hendrick
Dean Byrne
Donal O Coisdealbha
Edward McGrath
Connor Hughes
Darren Fox
Conan Murphy
James Smithers
Joe Walsh
Sean Walsh
Mick Gilmartin
Martin McHale
David Murray
Dylan Cahill
Jim Smyth
Colm Mannion
Brian Mannion
Kevin Braney
Ciaran Maguire
Dean Evans
Robert Day
Julian Flohr
Kevin Hannaway
Sean Hannaway
Edward O’Brien
David Nooney
Dochas Centre
N Circular Rd
Inns Quay
Dublin
Ireland:
Eva Shannon
Magahaberry Prison
Old Road
Ballinderry Upper
Lisburn
BT28 2PT
Ireland:
[Roe House S.S.U.]
Barry Petticrew
[Roe 3]
Tony Taylor
Conor Hughes
Ciaran McLaughlin
Seamus McLaughlin
[Roe 4]
Brendan McConville
Vincent Kelly
Darren Poleon
Sean McVeigh
Joseph Hughes
Gavin Coyle
Patrick O’Neill
Matt Johnston
Brian Carron
[Quoile House]
Brian Walsh
[Bann House]
Niall Lehd
[Erne House]
John Paul Wottoon
Posted by Jim on
Britain’s Direct Ruler in Ireland, Karen Bradley, has been widely
condemned for comments that families of victims of British war crimes
are part of ‘the problem’ for seeking coronial inquests, and that she
was ‘outraged’ by the legal pursuit of the soldiers involved.
The comments were made by Bradley while she was attending the
Westminster parliament’s ‘Northern Ireland Affairs Committee’.
Asked about creating a statute of limitations for British soldiers and
other military personnel accused of crimes, Bradley said it wouldn’t
stop inquests from taking place.
“Those inquests are much of the problem, they are civil matters, they
are not criminal and no statute of limitations could end those,” she
said.
Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill described the comments as “highly
offensive” and “traumatic to families of victims”.
“The comments by Karen Bradley are entirely unacceptable and a
fundamental breach of her government’s supposed support for the legacy
proposals agreed at Stormont House,” she said.
“The British Secretary of State needs to clarify if she is rowing back
from commitments made on legacy by the two governments and the political
parties in the Stormont House Agreement.
Families seeking the right to an inquest are not ‘the problem’, said Ms
O’Neill.
“The problem is that the British State continues to deny families access
to the truth and to due legal process.
“Karen Bradley may well be outraged about but her anger is centred on
the fact that State forces might actually be exposed and held
accountable for crimes they committed during the conflict.
“Her suggestion that the judicial system is biased against British state
forces is absurd and she must stop interfering in the judicial process.”
JOHN McKERR
Meanwhile, the inquest into the Ballymurphy massacre has heard the final
family testimonies.
Anne Ferguson wept as she told the inquest into John McKerr – one of 10
people shot dead by British soldiers in a small west Belfast community
over 36 hours – her family need to “set the record straight” about his
death.
British military officials briefed the media in 1971 that the
father-of-eight “had a gun in his right hand”, despite him having lost
that hand while serving in the British army during the Second World War.
“It would have been important for our daddy to have the misreporting
corrected,” she told coroner Mrs Justice Keegan.
“My father had been a soldier in the British army in the Royal
Engineers.
“He was proud of his military career and was a member of the British
Legion. He would not have wished to be associated with any paramilitary
or terrorist organisation.”
The family discovered Mr McKerr was critically injured after his
daughter Maureen read it in a newspaper as she waited for a lift to
work: ‘A Willie John McKerr had been shot and wounded in the Whiterock
Road area the day before’.
“Mo showed her [mother] the newspaper and she says she can remember
Mum’s screams to this day,” Mrs Ferguson said.
Mr McKerr died in the hospital a week after the shooting. His youngest
child, eleven-year-old Bernadette, tried to visit him before he died but
was “advised by a nurse not to go to see him but to remember him as he
had been”.
JOHN LAVERTY
Meanwhile, Carmel Quinn told the coroner her brother John Laverty “is
not just another statistic of the conflict”.
“He was a son, a brother, an uncle. He was deeply loved,” she said.
Mr Laverty, who was just 20 when he was “shot in the back” on August 11
1971, was “called after his uncle John who fought in the Second World
War”.
“A kind, loving child who grew up to be a 6-foot-tall laid-back, easy
going lad,” he worked for the Belfast Corporation and “to the outside
world… was a quiet big fella but in the comfort of our home he was a
prankster”.
“John always tried to look after us. He helped our sister Tilly, who had
two daughters at the time. He would mind them on a Friday night to make
sure Tilly and her husband Edmund could get a night out.”
Their mother Mary McKerr refused to leave her husband and sons when
women and children were being evacuated from Ballymurphy ahead of
internment, so her 24-year-old daughter Sue went instead with Mrs Quinn
and her sister Rita.
“John helped us over to our local community centre, carrying our bags
for us.
“I began to cry because I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave my
mummy and my family. I remember having a real sense of fear.
“John told me that it would be all right, I was only going on a holiday
and when we come home everything would be OK again.
“We got on the bus and left. Our John stood waving to us until we
couldn’t see him any more.
“Unknown to us, this would be the last time we would see our beautiful
brother.”
When John and his brother Terry went missing, it was 36 hours before
their parents found out one was dead and the other arrested and tortured
by soldiers and military police.
“One soldier said to [Terry]: ‘I have already shot one Irish b*****d
dead, another won’t matter.’ Terry, at this stage did not know he was
talking about our John,” Mrs Quinn said.