Stanley Johnson, the right-wing political commentator and father of Boris Johnson, the United Kingdom’s former Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain programme, discussing the likely attitude of the late British premier Margaret Thatcher to the current impasse in the Brexit negotiations between the UK and the European Union, including Ireland.
“Do you know what Mrs. Thatcher would have said? She would have said, ‘It is quite intolerable that this whole question of a Northern Ireland border has come to dominate a decision about the future of our country’.
She would have said: ‘Look. If the Irish want to shoot each other, they will shoot each other, whether there’s a hard border or whether there’s a soft border. That is, y’know, something the Irish will do if they want to do it.’
Basically, Mrs Thatcher would not have had any truck with this scheme by the EU to elevate the border question into a way of making sure we stay in the EU.”
Aside from a pointed rejoinder by the ex-Labour Party MP George Galloway, the reaction from the show’s presenters, Susanna Reid and Piers Morgan, was rather jocular as they moved on to other matters. Because that is absolutely what British popular culture believes about the Irish untermenschen. As Carl Kinsella remarks on Joe.ie:
…the current political climate is a stark reminder that, as a nation, Great Britain is not our friend.
This DOES look a bit like the mentality of some people who in the 1980’s and early 1990’s were skeptical that any kind of peace process or any solution was likely to make a difference in that area.
Indeed, I remember one Ulsterman, I knew in the late 80’s. He and his cousin, both subscribed to the notion that their native region was more or less doomed to struggle with the same issues for all times-due to historical variables that can’t be changed AND/OR some “essential essence” of the region. And if you argue the International Community at least TRYING to see if something works you were told that you simply “didn’t understand”.
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These foul Ulster Tories have always ruined our party. Randolph Churchill to Lord Salisbury. A friend to neither community . Every.
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“Foul Ulster Tories”, Auld churchie wasn’t so “saft” as they would say round east Tyrone.
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Like son, like father.
Thatcher believed implicitly that the EU was vital to British interests.
She would have sacked Boris for even daring to go against her policies on Europe. So also May.
May is a traitor to Thatcher.
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Jesus. The apple didn’t fall far from that tree.
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His opinions have been pretty dire for years.
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