After being elected to the EU Parliamentary Fisheries Committee, Farage then spent several years failing to turn up in order to set policies. He then spent the Brexit campaign telling the gullible that the UK had no control over its fisheries.
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Yeah… kind of my point. They know that people believe EMPIRE BAAADDD, but they think EMPIRE GOOOOOD, but don’t want to get “canceled”, so they pretend like they aren’t trying to create a new empire.
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Seven of them at the last count.
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On the upside, what are the chances Brexit gives Northern Ireland the excuse to break away from the UK and unite with Republic of Ireland?
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I posted this once already today but I think it’s worth it here. Nigel is such an unpopular name that more kids here were named Lucifer last year.
Toxic.
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Seemingly increasing.
Recent electiony stuff has seen the DUP and other hardline Unionist parties lose ground in both the UK parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly. Though in NI it seems to be progressive and “Unity” parties that are stealing their shit.
In the UK consolidation behind the Tories basically cut the DUP out of their important position propping up the Pro-Brexit coalition.
That has lead to Nationalists outnumbering Unionists in government. Even if they’re not a majority.
On the Ireland Ireland end of things Sinn Fein had their electoral upset just before the pandemic, taking a majority of votes for the very first time in the Republic after reframing themselves as a more general progressive party. Though they didn’t run enough candidates to form a government, and got kind of closed out of a coalition.
But even normally “maybe one day” sorts of major party politicians seem to be talking about how they expect to see Reunification in their lifetimes.
Public opinion in both Irelands seems to be shifting a bit. Polls aren’t far off where they’ve been since the Brexit vote, but that support has usually disappeared when you put a time line on it. More recently it seems to stick around even if you add a “within 5 years” tag to it. Which is very new.
And generally there’s just a lot more open discussion about it, and how to actually do it than I’ve ever seen.
While the UK is still dumbfucking the subject. Their recent shit fit about the NI Protocol is pretty explicitly a complaint that NI is doing OK, and buying shit from Ireland/Europe instead of the rest of the UK. Where there is no milk or gas.
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To be fair, Nigel No-Mates was an schoolyard insult back in the 80s, but Farage has surely nailed it shut.
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It sounds plausible to anyone who doesn’t know the country well, and in truth, things are heading that way, but it will be a long time before it happens. I mean, a hundred years or more. The Unionists haven’t yet grasped the fact that the British Empire is no longer there, and the economy of Northern Ireland is now a great deal smaller than that of the Republic of Ireland whereas at partition it was the other way around. Unionists would rather flay and set fire to themselves, their spouses and children, than imagine unifying Ireland. Ireland isn’t that keep on adopting a bunch of bigoted, quarrelsome Unionists, either.
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Mr Farage himself does not make that clear, nor do his followers. In addition, if they are appointed by elected members, the distinction is a fine one. I consider that my observation stands.
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Pedant here: there was nothing “accidental” in that. Someone very deliberately asked him to say that thing, and he very deliberately said that thing. It’s not like he fell over and accidentally exclaimed “oh, Éire go brách!” or something.
He ignorantly endorsed the IRA is what happened.
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Ireland is equally not enthused about picking up the bigoted quarrelsome Republicans from the North. The history there is not one of the Northern IRA groups seeking Reunification or supporting the government of the Republic.
The thing to point out with that is that neither end of that particular problem goes away with Reunification.
But the major stumbling point is the economic one. NI gets a lot of subsidies, it’s economy is largely agrarian. It’s cities and ports underdeveloped. It’s one of the poorest parts of the UK, pretty much the poorest part of Ireland. Taking on NI is expensive, and complicated, and will likely require significant changes to the Irish state.
That’s been shifting a bit, most of those subsidies came from the EU to begin with. The economic situation in NI is generally more stable than it was 30 or 40 years ago. Cross border economic ties are both deeper, and part of the reason for that. Moderate Unionism, the sort that could actually be convinced on Reunification, is a lot of what’s driving that political shift to progressive and Unity parties.
But the economic situation always seems to be the “not now” reason, on Ireland’s side. It’s the first thing mentioned, it’s the one that get’s hand wringing think pieces.
That is very much why Brexit stands to shift things a bit, and already seems to be doing so. It very much pulls the economic rug out of the status quo.
I think its very much down to how badly Brexit impacts Ireland as a whole that is going to determine how quickly. If Johnson had managed to skate on the Irish Backstop it’d be going down fast. Right now things are a little calmer.
But the increasing economic and trade ties between the two Irelands in response to Brexit look a bit more like a slow roll erosion of that economic disparity. And that’s more of decades thing than a century or more thing.
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