Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, has used today’s meeting in Brussels with An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to remind the United Kingdom that maintaining the delicately balanced peace in Ireland is a priority for the European Union in all withdrawal negotiations with the UK. And to strongly rebuke those British politicians and commentators who supported Brexit with no thought or plan to mitigate the damage it would cause to the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998:
“The top priority for us remains the issue of the border on the island of Ireland. And the guarantee to maintain the peace process in accordance with the Good Friday Agreement.
There’s no room for speculation here. The EU itself is first and foremost a peace project. We will not gamble with peace or put a sell-by date on reconciliation. And this is why we insist on the backstop.
Give us a believable guarantee for peace in Northern Ireland and the UK will leave the EU as a trusted friend. I hope that the UK government will present ideas that will both respect this point of view and, at the same time, command a stable and clear majority in the House of Commons. I strongly believe that a common solution is possible, and I will do everything in my power to find it.
A sense of responsibility also tells us to prepare for a possible fiasco. The Taoiseach and I have spoken about the necessary actions in case of no deal; I know that you will also be discussing this shortly with the European Commission.
By the way, I’ve been wondering what the special place in hell looks like for those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it [out] safely.”
Predictably the press in London has reacted with fury to the scolding, as the Taoiseach suggested in a hot-mic comment to the former Polish premier, but Brussels seems to have reached the limit of its patience with UK dissembling and dishonesty over the question of maintaining the open border around the Six Counties after Brexit.
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
Well said Donald, its time for some straight talk and answers from the British
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The Brexiter bunch who loved to fling insults such as “Juncker the Drunkard” are like people who thought they had a winning lottery ticket. The cold fact is the EU has stood by Ireland and not throw us under the bus. Shelagh Fogarty on her radio show on LBC in October 2018, claimed a DUP MP told her they could build a border between the Republic and Northern Ireland “as high as they like”.
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/brexit-did-dup-mp-say-build-irish-border-as-high-as-you-like-37375843.html
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This video is a very entertaining compilation of Brexiters views on the “evil” EU, enjoy!!
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It brings a tear of pride to ones eye. Tally ho.
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Donal Tusk and the rest of the EU better wind their necks in or they will feel the wrath of Britannia.
And yes, in the North they will build a wall as high as they like.
Britannia is not to be messed with, and the quicker the EU and Paddy understand it the better.
You may think this a rant but it isn’t. England is seething at the dirty foreigners, the right wing establishment is fanning the flames, and yes, like 1930s Germany, the hostile environment is very much alive and operational.
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“The EU itself is first and foremost a peace project. ”
Ah. That’s why they’re talking about an EU army – sorry, peace force – then.
In fact there’s no need for Dantesque tortures for the Brexiteers. Just leave them standing around with each other for eternity, Johnson, Farage, Redwood, Banks… you couldn’t come up with some many different varieties of repulsiveness without a lot of effort and imagination.
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If you listen carefully I think you’ll find that Donald Tusk actually said “special place in Hull”…..
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From Hull and Halifax and Hell
Good Lord deliver me.
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here’s the conversation that happened afterwards between Mr Tusk and Mr UK britain, retired empire builder
https://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/abandon-hope-all-ye-in-gb/
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Moving off topic a tad but of interest is the news that a Scottish Tory MP had to be ejected by police from the House of Commons Stranger’s Bar due has going round fondling folks genitals.
Don’t know about elsewhere but if anyone went round touching up people’s privates in any other place they would feel the rigours of the criminal justice system – but not it seems in the home of the palace of sleaze.
What however is now surfacing is that allegations of sexual deviancy and blackmail within the Tory party in Scotland was widespread as this Reddit exchange from 2016 shows.
Not sure how the predominately so called conservative Presbyterian DUP will view their ideological soul mates. All part of the alliance one presumes, and of course Iain Jr has not been averse to a bit of hokey-cokey.
But aside of the extant hypocrisy the reality is that this failed soul should be a) prosecuted and b) suspended from his role as an MP. That way one less to Mrs May’s slender DUP / Tory majority.
.
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Meanwhile while everyone is distracted by brexit charade the real EU has shown its teeth and has readily joined forces with the CIA and the pariah president Trump to effect ‘regime change’, sorry, I meant ‘humanitarian aid’ in Venezuela! I guess Trump isn’t a pariah no more since he’s doing the bidding of the EU and CIA warlords now? Scandalous. Fair play to the Brit public; I hope they wreck the EU by not letting tranny May off the hook and making her honour the referendum.
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Having watched the excellent B.B.C. documentary over the last couple of weeks, which looks at the various crises which have assailed the E.U. over the last 15 years, I wasn’t at all surprised at Mr Tusk’s outburst. My impression of Mr Tusk, as displayed in these programmes, was that he came across as an extremely nasty piece of work, an individual only too willing to sneer at, and treat with supercilious contempt, those who don’t share his world view. I think this is rooted in the sheer disbelief that the U.K. government should actually implement the result the 2016 referendum, albeit in a pretty inept manner. This, of course, fails to follow the time-honoured E.U. tradition when a referendum goes against you : you either, (A) ignore the result, or (B) re-run the vote, accompanied by threats until you get the outcome you want. How galling and infuriating it must be for Mr Tusk that this familiar routine has not played out in the U.K. and that its political class has shown slightly more backbone than their counterparts in Ireland, Holland and France displayed in the past.
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Mr Tusk may be all that you say but in my humble opinion he is in no way different from the British establishment. A more abnoxious outfit it would be difficult to find. The bully boys of the world have finally been faced up to. No longer do the lesser beings shiver at the thought of the murderous redcoats out to civilise the world. The brits are no longer getting it all their own way and not out of time. The more who treat Britain with “supercilious contempt” the better. In my opinion anyway.
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I’m no fan of certain aspects of the EU, Ginger, but any serious analysis shows that far from the EU trying to stymie the result of the UK referendum it has accepted from the first day the legitimacy of the vote. It provided literally no comfort to those calling for a second referendum – nothing, nothing at all. And it would have been deeply inappropriate for it to do so. As to disbelief in the idea of a UK government not honouring the referendum result, that makes no sense given the actual negotiations the EU conducted throughout. All these were predicated on the UK leaving (and indeed the UK kind of has to in regard to Article 50).
As to the Irish referendum, etc, it has to be kept in mind that it was national governments that held second referendums. The EU itself couldn’t do so, and that in the Irish case there were significant changes in the substance of the second referendum brought to the people. Personally I think that in those instances the EU and the national governments would have been better to have not gone back for at least two or three years and preferably longer, but it wasn’t a case of a simple re-run on precisely the same text.
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People are calling The Irish Republic, “The Celtic Cali” (short of California) for holding so many referendum.
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Ah, it could be worse. Though just looking at the numbers, there was just 1 in the 1950s, 2 in the 60s, 5 in the 70s, 3 in the 80s, 10 in the 90s, 8 in the 00s, 10 or so in the 2010s. Though these are amendments and some of the amendments were voted on on the same day. Still, 3 or 4 amendments to be voted on this year!
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Not everyone who uses that term “Celtic Cali” is necessarily being critical of Ireland.
There’s a been a perennial debate in the US over whether we should allow even a limited level of Federal Referendum (almost NOBODY wants Constitutional Amendments done by popular vote!!), as opposed to keeping Referendum a state affair. Nearly all states allow ballot initiatives but the rules vary on when they are allowed, and only some states allow the people to vote directly on Amendments to the state Constitution.
Calfornia’s reputation as a “ballot initiative happy” state is more a joke than a source of true scorn-unless you are talking to reactionaries. “Celtic Cali” is mostly said in a similar spirit.
People do understand that Ireland is too small for such things to belong to county government.
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I would agree with the argument made about a second referendum that goes, “It’s not democracy if you never get to change your mind.”
Most countries or subnational units (state, provinces etc) that allow for a referendum have some kind of written standards, that would spell out the situation under which a second referendum or repeal effort get get called and when it cannot. Britain’s strange unwritten Constitution has no such thing.
While I have no problem with Britain leave the EU per se, it seems that this was a case of piss poor planning gone awry.
Britain has a moral obligation to honor certain things like the GFA, and for the good of its citizens should have had more advanced planning with regards to things like that Airbus plant that might get moved to Germany.
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+1
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https://metro.co.uk/2019/02/12/nhs-stockpiling-body-bags-prepare-no-deal-brexit-reveals-tory-minister-8574311/
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Slightly surreal, isn’t it?
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