NATO is ensuring that Irish neutrality is a very close second to truth in the Ukrainian war’s casualty list.

Ireland has witnessed nothing like this level of ignorant jingoism since the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland declared war on Germany, Austria and Hungary in summer, 1914 when Dublin’s thugs beat up German grocers and when Ireland’s barbarians blacklisted Kuno Meyer, the world’s leading Irish language scholar for being born German.

Although the horrors of the Somme, coupled with Dublin’s 1916 Easter Rising, muffled Ireland’s war dogs somewhat, they spent the next 100 years plotting their comeback, even as Ireland’s pro-active neutrality policy propelled Éamon de Valera to the front of the League of Nations and Frank Aiken, his foreign minister, to be the United Nations’ most respected advocate for peace, neutrality and non-alignment.

The Second World War was, the Irish always believed, De Valera’s finest hour as he kept us out of a war where our only contribution would have been a massive increase in the Irish body bag count. Not that Ireland got away scot free. De Valera, in his 1940 St Patrick’s Day address, explained that Ireland was more effectively blockaded than any country in history and one in five of Ireland’s merchant marine force made the ultimate sacrifice. De Valera and Aiken forged Ireland’s neutrality into an indelibly proud Irish hallmark, as demonstrated in this 1974 television debate when legendary Irish spy-master Dan Bryan spelled out the case for maintaining Irish neutrality.

Fast forward to Dublin’s 2022 St Patrick’s Day parade and, in a total break from long-established protocol, Ukrainian flags, not Irish tricolours, lined Dublin’s main streets, and Ukrainians, in their national colours, led the parade, smug in the knowledge that the Irish government will allow 200,000 more of them enter Ireland, a country where only four of its Southern 26 counties have populations larger than 200,000.

Although this is vastly more than either France or the USA are opening their borders to, it is not nearly enough for Ukraine’s Clown President, who is demanding Ireland abandon its neutrality and invade Russia, something Ireland’s Clown Prime Minister feels might cross a red line. Britain’s Clown Prince Charles, meanwhile, the future King who wants to be a used tampon is, in the most remarkable lapse of diplomatic protocol, castigating Russia as he tours neutral Ireland, a country he and his entire family have the most despicable track record in.

Although all refugees, Ukrainians included, deserve help and support, they are incidental to this open door policy, which is pivotal to the Irish regime’s deliberate collusion in destroying the very essence of Irish neutrality and nationhood and no less a person than current Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin has said exactly that.

And, even more incredibly, all major Irish political parties fundamentally agree with him and all are agreed on snuggling up to NATO, with the largely U.S. funded Sinn Féin joining Ireland’s other political leprechauns in calling for the expulsion of Russia’s entire diplomatic staff over matters Sinn Féin patently know nothing about the secret pact which gives the RAF unfettered access to Irish skies on the ludicrous pretext of defending Irish neutrality against Russia, whose nearest military base is thousands of kilometers away.

And what of the Russian delegation? Their Orwell Road premises have been under constant attack by mobs led by far right government minister Josepha Madigan and a very well organized and funded crew of Ukrainian, Polish and Hungarian fascists, who must be delighted that the Irish police allowed them free reign to unleash their terror on a peaceful, diplomatic mission.

And that Ireland’s Catholic priests are defacing the Embassy’s walls and Catholic Church suppliers are ramming the Embassy with trucks and being blessed by other dubious priests for their terrorism, whilst older Irish citizens live in fear Ireland’s Ukrainian imports will take a leaf from Kiev’s playbook and throw yellow and blue paint over them for having watched Yuri Gagarin orbit the earth in 1961.

But it is not just lilly lived Irish priests who are at fault. Ever since the Iraqi war, when NATO’s armies embedded journalists into their ranks, Irish hacks from Mary Fitzgerald cavorting with leading ISIS commanders to Orla Guerin lighting candles in churches with Nazis in Mariupol, have been widely deployed not only to pretend that NATO’s war coverage is somehow neutral and balanced but that “brave” Irish women, like “brave” Irishman Lord Haw Haw and other “brave” Irish Nazi collaborators before them, are showing the ignorant Irish the folly of their long-held neutrality.

But why should Irish neutrality matter at all, as the the damning February 2022 Commission on the Defence Forces shows the Irish could hardly carry the day against Iceland or Malta, never mind Russia or some other heavyweight, not least because the Irish naval services spend their time ferrying illegal aliens to Italy to soften up the Irish to abandon their neutrality heritage for a mess of NATO pottage?

Though joining NATO and PESCO will allow the Irish Army’s top brass and their political sponsors hob nob with the great and the good, it will more importantly deepen and widen NATO’s soft war options by extending the shelf life of the Good Friday Peace Agreement, which disgraced politicians Bertie Ahern, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and George Mitchell have been dining off for the last 24 years. Because this agreement’s pertinent international significance is that it allows its British and American architects pawn themselves off as peace-makers, not as the nation wreckers that they are, it is a valuable bauble, especially when coupled with the international standing joke of Ireland’s bloated NGO sector.

Then there is the strange case of Ireland’s Shannon Airport, which has been a major NATO hub for sending prisoners to be tortured and, in more recent years, as a stop-over refuelling and R&R hub for armed American troops heading off to pick up the white man’s burden in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

What is particularly noteworthy about those repeated American breaches of Irish neutrality is there is no need for them, as airports in Britain, Spain, Portugal, Germany or countless other NATO aligned countries would do equally well. However, making Shannon airport dependent upon servicing America’s war needs helps pull the greater Shannon airport area into the NATO orbit and that is its point. America abuses Shannon airport to subjugate Ireland’s economy.

Not only has NATO thoroughly penetrated Ireland’s military and political apparatus but she stands at the nerve centre of her economy. Most of Silicon Valley’s Fortune 500 companies have their European offices in Dublin and, to coin the old joke, Dublin’s rents keep doublin’ most years as a result. Not only do the workers these companies import pay over 50% of Ireland’s income taxes but NATO have impressed on Ireland, which has already surrendered its massive fisheries to her European “partners”, the need to radically cull its national herd and therefore to become even more dependent on these secretive companies and the retired NATO generals who sit on their boards.

Ireland, once synonymous with holy war, is being slowly ripped asunder forcing, as Zionist scholar Dr Rory Millers asserts at 12:23 in this instructive 2014 Tel Aviv talk, Jewish led sectarian alliances to square up against Ireland’s numerically insignificant but now very vulnerable Orthodox Christian communities, and Ireland’s Zionist apologists to defend themselves against Ireland’s Islamic war lords and NATO’s Antifa fifth columnists.

All these needlessly imported sectarian squabbles undermine Ireland’s home front, even as Ireland’s Foreign Minister chairs meetings of the UNSC to boost his CV while Ireland’s punch-drunk Prime Minister harrangues nuclear armed India that its neutrality is “unacceptable”, and Ireland’s UN Ambassador stupidly threatens to unleash further Irish hell on Afghanistan’s Taliban government to settle some grudges NATO still hold against the unfortunate survivors of NATO’s Afghan extermination campaign. Though these Irish jokers talk far too loudly and carry a tiny stick, the problem is that, as NATO controls their voice, their economy and their shillelaghs, what little remains of Ireland’s independence and neutrality will soon be sacrificed unless Ireland’s entire political apparatus is scrapped and time-honed and internationally honored values of neutrality, self awareness and self respect again become Ireland’s norm.

Nearly two years after finalizing its Brexit divorce with the European Union, the British Conservative government is now looking to scrap its commitments to the part of that deal known as the Northern Ireland Protocol.

In doing so, the British are gambling with peace in Ireland in the calculation that the EU will make more concessions to London.

London has repeatedly kicked the can down the road regarding its legal obligations to implement the protocol. For the past two years, the British have not introduced new customs arrangements on trade with Northern Ireland. They simply say, “it’s not working”. They have never tried to make it work.

Britain’s government was supposed to introduce customs checks on traded goods between the British mainland and Northern Ireland, effectively forming an Irish Sea border. The purpose was to avoid the creation of a hard land border between Northern Ireland (UK territory) and the Republic of Ireland which is a member of the EU.

The erasing of a land border was a key element of the Good Friday Peace Accord signed in 1998 which ended nearly three decades of deadly conflict in Ireland. The Nationalist population in Northern Ireland and Ireland more generally do not want to see the return of a land border that symbolizes Britain’s colonialist partitioning of the island almost a century ago.

Following the United Kingdom’s historic referendum in 2016 calling for Britain to leave the EU, the negotiations on the Brexit divorce were habitually hampered by the Irish question. The British could not opt for a “hard Brexit” as this would have necessitated the formation of a land border in Ireland to preserve the EU’s Singe Market. London and Brussels both said that protecting the Good Friday Agreement and peace in Ireland was paramount.

Hence, the fudge was innovated that Northern Ireland would remain part of the EU’s Single Market. That meant that goods transported to Northern Ireland from the rest of Britain would be subjected to customs checks to meet EU standards. What that created in effect was a constitutional split in the United Kingdom whereby Northern Ireland was different from the rest of Britain. And in effect, Ireland became a unified regulatory territory abiding by EU standards.

In Northern Ireland, pro-British Unionist political parties hated that outcome because it undermined their claims of being an integral part of the United Kingdom. There has been simmering violence from Unionist communities against the implementation of an Irish Sea border.

For the Brexiteer government of Boris Johnson, the arrangement is also galling. Even though he negotiated the Brexit deal and its Northern Ireland Protocol, and hailed it as a success two years ago, Johnson and his Cabinet have not come to terms with the fact that the EU still retains control over the United Kingdom via the special arrangement for Northern Ireland as being part of its Single Market. The European Court of Justice oversees trade disputes involving Northern Ireland. That is an affront to British pretensions of “independence”.

This explains why London has obstinately refused to implement the Northern Ireland Protocol for the past two years. That refusal to abide by an international legally binding treaty which Johnson himself signed off on has aggravated relations with the EU. Apart from the bad faith and perfidy, the practical consequence is that goods from Britain can find their way into the Single Market without checks or tariffs by going through Northern Ireland and thence to the rest of Europe. London is making a joke of the EU’s Single Market.

To get its way on the matter, the British chief negotiator for Brexit, the aptly named Lord Frost, has repeatedly threatened that Britain will walk away from the Northern Ireland Protocol if the EU does not make concessions on the Irish Sea border issue. This week, Frost warned of “historic misjudgment” if the EU did not re-write the protocol.

By “historic misjudgment”, the British government is tacitly threatening the return of conflict in Ireland and playing on the EU’s conscience as being responsible for that onerous outcome. If London were to abandon the Northern Ireland Protocol, as it repeatedly says it will, that would inevitably mean the EU having to set up a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In that case, the Nationalist population will be in uproar. The Good Friday Agreement would have become null and void, and a return to armed conflict would be a major risk.

This week, the EU proposed far-reaching concessions over customs checks on trade between Britain and Northern Ireland. The package on offer reduces red tape controls on trade by up to 80 percent. European Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic said the new proposals could work if the British authorities introduce labeling on goods stating they are not for resale outside Northern Ireland, that is, ensuring there is no back door into the EU market.

The EU is offering a generous compromise to break the logjam – a logjam that has been largely created by British intransigence to not implement a deal it negotiated and signed.

But even with this show of flexibility by the EU, the signs are that London is simply banking the concessions and moving to extract more from Brussels. The British side is now saying that it is unacceptable to them for the European Court of Justice to have jurisdiction over trade issues in Northern Ireland. The court issue is a red line for Brussels. Any member of the EU must recognize the ECJ as a fundamental institution of the bloc. And if Northern Ireland is to remain part of the Single Market then the ECJ must have jurisdiction there.

The raising of the ECJ issue is another case of London moving the goalposts of its Brexit divorce. A collision course is being charted by London rather than seeking a negotiated compromise.

When EC vice president Maros Sefcovic visited Northern Ireland recently he said that no-one raised objections to the European court having jurisdiction. The people with the problem are in London and they are making the issue a showdown. Johnson and Frost are now pushing the EU to not only water down its Single Market rules, they want Brussels to compromise on a foundational matter of the European Court of Justice.

Lord Frost is an unelected member of Britain’s House of Lords. He became the chief Brexit negotiator as a political appointee made by Boris Johnson. Yet, ironically, Frost is lecturing the EU that it is being undemocratic on insisting that Britain adhere to its international obligations over Brexit.

The British government pays lip service to protecting peace in Ireland by claiming that it does not want to create a land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. But cynically it is threatening to jeopardize peace by continually warning that it is ready to walk away from the Brexit protocol if the EU does not make concession after concession.

If the British rip up the protocol then the EU will be compelled to set up a border in Ireland to protect its Single Market. London is not only displaying bad faith and showing itself to be duplicitous with regard to an international treaty, it is recklessly playing with people’s lives in Ireland. London is betting that the EU will continue to blink and make concessions in order to avoid creating conflict in Ireland.

Of course, from a wholly different perspective the solution to all this is rather simple. Britain should relinquish its undemocratic territorial claim to Northern Ireland and allow the island to be reunited as independent nation, an outcome that the majority of the people on the island of Ireland would welcome. For the Johnson government to lecture the EU about democratic consent and jurisdiction in Ireland is nauseating hypocrisy.

Dublin City University says it is “astonished” over a complaint made by the Embassies of Georgia and Ukraine in Ireland about the university’s teaching of a course on the geopolitics of the Caucasus and Ukraine.

The two embassies sent a joint letter to the President of DCU, Professor Dáire Keogh, and copied it to a number of senior DCU academics and a senior official at the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin on 8 April.

The letter claimed the course was spreading “disinformation and Russian propaganda narratives” – a view flatly rejected by DCU, which says the criticism amounts to political interference and seeks to undermine the core democratic principle of academic freedom.

The course, “Russia and the post Soviet space” at DCU’s School of Law and Government is run by Professor Donnacha Ó Beacháin, an internationally respected academic on the politics of the region.

Prof Donnacha Ó Beacháin

A Georgian Embassy staff member was among the students from a varied international background who enrolled on the course, as well as Irish students. The module includes lectures with speakers from Georgian and Ukrainian backgrounds and also presents Russian perspectives too. A Russian professor and authority on the Caucusus, Sergey Markedonov, gave a lecture to the course by Zoom from Moscow.

DCU President Prof Dáire Keogh responded by letter to both embassies on 16 April.

“Academic freedom is a fundamental principle that applies in DCU as it does in all universities in Ireland. It is essential that within DCU we fully respect and uphold this principle, which is underpinned by legislation (the Universities Act 1997) and which is enshrined in our University Statutes. In accordance with the principle of academic freedom, it is important that the School of Law and Government should determine its own curriculum, taking into account university quality assurance standards, regulations, and feedback provided on the content of its courses,” Prof Keogh wrote.

“As you know, Professor Ó Beacháin is a highly-respected member of academic staff in DCU with an excellent reputation in his field, internationally as well as in Ireland. In relation to the module in question, I understand that Professor Ó Beacháin has invited guests from different backgrounds to expose students to their points of view, promote a better understanding of various conflicts in the European region, and explore prospects for the future.

“Those invited to contribute to the module include speakers from Georgian and Ukrainian backgrounds, including former officials. This reflects the extensive cooperation between DCU and Georgia and Ukraine, which we look forward to developing further with the continuing valuable support of you and your Embassy colleagues,” Prof Keogh wrote.

Speaking on RTÉ’s This Week programme, Prof John Doyle, Director of the Institute for International Conflict Resolution at DCU and one of the academics written to by the embassies, expressed astonishment at the diplomats’ action.

“This is absolutely unprecedented in my experience. I have taught international relations for more than 25 years in DCU. We’ve taught all of the major geopolitical conflicts and wars over that time … there hasn’t been a single other incident where not only did they write to the university president effectively asking them to censure a colleague but also CC’ing it to the Department of Foreign Affairs, trying to make some sort of diplomatic issue out of it,” said Prof Doyle.

“I’ve no difficulties with embassies presenting their views and in fact I’ve personally introduced the Georgian Ambassador to a group of students where he was allowed to present the Georgian point of view to our class without interruption and the students allowed ask him questions.”

Prof John Doyle

Prof Doyle said that another academic presented the Ukrainian position a week after the Russian academic gave his Zoom lecture from Moscow. He said this reflected DCU’s approach to teaching and learning which was to present a complete range of views for study.

“DCU is in the top 200 universities in the world for both politics and for journalism/communications, the only Irish university in both rankings. There’s no way you get into those sort of rankings if you’re perceived as a university in which your teaching and research just gives out one point of view, whatever the lecturer’s point of view happens to be on a given issue. You have to introduce people to all sides. We do that and we encourage our students and in fact we equip them with the skills to distinguish fact from fiction and to interrogate where there are clashing points of view.”

He said DCU had extensive contacts with Ukraine and Georgia and wanted that to continue.

But he added that that if the complaints had been driven by the foreign ministries of Georgia or Ukraine and not just the embassies in Ireland, this could have serious implications for both states’ attitudes to academic freedom as recognised in the European Union and in EU-funded academic programmes in which both countries take part.

“I think the Charge D’Affaires and the Ambassador are mistaken if they think this is just a normal intervention. They could have written to the Irish Times. They have spoken in DCU. There are other ways to do it but to seek to intervene with the president of the university to get them to change how a course is taught and what questions students are asked to address goes well beyond the limits of the role of an ambassador in a democratic society.

“The letter was unprecedented and it was wrong that they sent it,” added Prof Doyle.

The Ukrainian Embassy issued a statement to the This Week programme.

“We would like to note that our correspondence with the DCU never meant to impact our good and long-lasting cooperation with the University. Any allegations of our intentions to attack academic freedom are emotional and groundless,” the statement said.

The letter said both Ukraine and Georgia had been subject to Russian aggression.

“With respect to the essential principle of presenting alternative views, as the official representatives of our countries in Ireland, in the joint letter by the Embassies of Ukraine and Georgia to the DCU we delivered irrefutable facts of the ongoing Russian aggression against our countries that are internationally recognised and are the subject to a large number of resolutions by international organisations, as well as legal cases in international tribunals and courts,” the statement said.

“The Embassy fully shares the European values and educational standards. Definitely, the academic freedom, alternative views and perspectives are absolutely essential in teaching and learning in an academic context.”

The DCU course covers both Georgia and Ukraine which have been in conflict with Russia in recent years, with part of their sovereign territories under de-facto Russian control. South Ossetia and Abkhazia’s declarations of independence from Georgia are recognised only by Russia and a handful of countries.

In Ukraine, pro-Russian forces control parts of the east and Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014, in breach of international law.

Around 13,000 people have lost their lives and 1.5 million people internally displaced by the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

rte.ie

That thunderous impact is likely to be felt far more strongly across Canada: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, despite his eternally boyish appearance has already led his country for six years, desperately scraping home in his most recent parliamentary elections and surviving one embarrassing disastrous bungle after another. At first glance, this defeat should be another one. it does not directly impact on Canada’s wealth or security or the wellbeing of its people.. It is purely a prestige issue. But Trudeau has dug a fateful hole for himself and now he has fallen into it.

For like his father before him, late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau is a dedicated liberal internationalist who imagined he could thrive by voicing supposedly principled criticisms of Canada’s two Big Brother partners the United States and Britain while they were led by conservative nationalists Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. Of course, as is typical of liberal internationalists and especially so of Trudeau, it was always all hot air with no action that would make any real change or opposition to policies emanating out of London and Washington behind it.

But this time, Trudeau’s fabled charm and luck, which has enabled him to glide on the illusion of power and authority without ever actually having to do anything that required courage, sacrifice or good judgment looks like it is running out at last. The failure to win the Security Council seat is a ringing humiliation for al his centerpiece foreign policies on several fronts simultaneously, It displays vividly to the world that Trudeau’s fake pose of gutsy independence to the United States and Britain deceives nobody.

Canada is seen around the world as a loyal member-state of NATO: And Trump, Boris Johnson and Alliance Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg are trying to expand the alliance to the Pacific Ocean to embrace Australia, Japan, South Korea and even India.

That is a catastrophe which would complete the dark, insane neo-imperialist vision of dividing the world into two new Manichean power blocs of East and West with the West aggressively seeking to destabilize and ruin the nations of the East under the false mask of upholding human rights in them.

Trudeau has always quietly loyally gone along with that policy. But he thought he could have his cake and eat it too. Ottawa’s sham as a principled, independent peacemaker and pillar of the UN has now been humiliatingly exposed.

This hurts Trudeau on two fronts. His own new rising generation of liberal progressives, especially environmentalists are as disillusioned with him. And the conservative heartlands in Western Canada have always viscerally loathed him and will be given heart to pose a renewed challenge to him.

On the other side of the ocean, the change has already started. Another discredited liberal international leader Leo Varadkar in Ireland was humiliated in the last general election and has just ceded power to a three-way coalition led by the nationalist Fianna Fail Party led by new Taoiseach (Prime Minister), former Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin.

The highly experienced Martin has an impressive track record that includes taking principled stands on Cuba and the Palestinians that have defied and angered previous U.S. and British governments. He is also much more likely to challenge risk-taking and irresponsible behavior by London on Northern Irish affairs than the well-meaning but far from forceful Varadkar.

Canada’s ruling Liberals have always implacably supported the fundamental interests of Wall Street and the City of London behind their worthless facade of fatuous platitudes.

Trudeau’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is a classic example of this: She backed every West European and EU move to undermine Russia whether by imposing would-be crippling economic sanctions (they failed) or slandering the president of Russia as virtually a neo-Nazi. Freeland of course never mentioned that her own grandfather had been one of the most notorious Nazi collaborators in Ukraine during World War II.

New Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney has already shown he is prepared to stand up to Britain in defending the “backstop” open border between the Republic of Ireland and the still British-ruled North.

Change is coming in both Ottawa and Dublin, and its repercussions will be felt in Washington and London as well – very soon.

Trudeau’s government had spent twice ($1.74 million) as much as Ireland had in lobbying other UN member states to vote for its assignment to the Security Council. But it was Ireland – and another applicant Norway – which won the necessary two-thirds majority votes last week from the 193 UN member nations, beating out Canada.

The three nations were applying to take two places on the 10-seat non-permanent panel that augments the five-seat permanent Security Council. The latter comprises Russia, China, the U.S., France and Britain. The 10-seat panel has rotating two-year terms for which all UN member nations can apply. All 15 Security Council members have veto power over draft resolutions.

It is the fourth time that Ireland has been voted on to the Security Council over the past six decades: previously in 1961, 1981 and 2001. It will take up the new post in January 2021 and serve for two years.

The Irish government and media are celebrating the victory. Of course, there is a lot of self-indulgent congratulations claiming the result was acknowledgement of Ireland’s record for UN peacekeeping duties in various conflict zones, as well as the small nation’s outsized contribution to international development and humanitarian aid.

But what may have actually helped Ireland’s bid was that it was up against Canada. Since Justin Trudeau became prime minister in 2015, he has been proclaiming “liberal values” and a “feminist foreign policy”. When Canada lost its previous bid for the UN Security Council in 2010, the liberals “explained” that setback was due to the poor international image of the Conservative government of then premier Stephen Harper.

On election in 2015 Trudeau promised that “Canada was back” on the global stage for its presumed commitment to human rights and humanitarian values.

So what went wrong? Well, despite the flowery rhetoric, the reality of Canada’s foreign and domestic policies leaves a lot to be desired. In other words, Trudeau’s administration is seen as hypocritical and something of a “snowflake” – that is, superficial and weak when the going gets tough.

At least under the Harper government which had an odious servility to Washington’s foreign policy, people knew what they were getting. Under pseudo-Trudeau, there is the added contemptible dimension of deception and pretentiousness which translates into being unreliable and dilettante.

In many ways, Trudeau has made Ottawa just as servile to Washington, but with an added two-faced limpness. The UN Security Council debacle shows how Canada has lost international respect no matter who is in office.

U.S. President Trump wasn’t too far wrong when he called out Trudeau two years ago at a G7 summit for being “weak and dishonest”, by saying one thing to your face, while saying the opposite behind your back. The classic image was later seen at the NATO summit last December when Trudeau in an informal cocktail gathering was caught ridiculing and backstabbing Trump.

Despite his liberal disdain for Trump, Trudeau has shown a squirming deference to Washington’s diktat.

The detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Canada is perhaps the acme of Ottawa’s weak-kneed compliance. Meng was arrested in December 2018 in Vancouver and is awaiting an extradition trial to be sent to the U.S. The chief financial officer is accused by the Trump administration of violating sanctions against Iran. But almost everyone knows the real agenda is Washington’s geopolitical rivalry with Beijing and in particular America’s attempt to ostracize Huawei from the global telecoms market in favor of U.S. companies.

Trudeau has the power to intervene in the de facto hostage-taking debacle and to order Meng’s release. But he refuses to do so. He claims liberal values of “due legal process”. No, the reality is Trudeau is being a weak-kneed patsy for Washington’s aggression towards China.

There are many more illustrations of Trudeau double talk and double dealing. For someone who proclaims human rights, his Liberal government has done little to rectify the systemic injustices against Canada’s indigenous people who have suffered decades of discrimination, dispossession and destitution.

Despite all the effusive and emotive rhetoric about “humanitarian foreign policy”, that didn’t stop Trudeau’s government making multi-billionaire-dollar arms deals with Saudi Arabia, even after it emerged that the Canadian weapons were involved in brutal internal repression and detention of female activists. So much for “feminist foreign policy”!

Ottawa has also shown an unedifying obsequiousness to Washington’s hostility towards Russia, Iran and Venezuela.

When the chips are down the world has seen that Trudeau’s government is a willing pawn of American imperialism. Canada’s supposed “nice guy” image has long been discredited. One could say the same for the previous Conservative administration. But at least then we were spared all the sanctimonious and smug duplicity.

Ireland’s international image is lot overblown too. But it has slightly more integrity and independence than Canada, as seen for example in its outspoken spoken defense of Palestinian rights. Nevertheless, Ireland (and Norway’s) best attribute for winning election to the UN Security Council was that it wasn’t Canada. That was the luck of the Irish.

With Britain having officially exited from the EU that seismic shift has fired up long-held claims for independence in Scotland and for the reunification of Ireland. Scottish nationalists, who want to remain in the EU, have stepped up demands for a referendum on independence from Britain since the general election in December when their party won by a landslide in Scotland.

Now the Irish question has gained powerful impetus from the historic victory of Sinn Fein in the general election this week held in the Republic of Ireland. The party came first in the popular vote, beating the two main establishment parties which have dominated government in Dublin for nearly a century. The two-party status quo has been smashed by Sinn Fein’s electoral breakthrough.

Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of Sinn Fein, announced that the British government must now prepare for holding a referendum in Ireland on the issue of reunification of the Republic of Ireland with Northern Ireland. The latter has been British-held territory since 1921 when a separatist movement in Ireland failed to gain full territorial independence from Britain’s empire.

Sinn Fein, formerly the political wing of the guerrilla movement, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), is the only party to have an all-Ireland structure. In the British election held in December, Sinn Fein became the leading party in Northern Ireland. Demographic changes over the past century have resulted in nationalists outnumbering unionists who want to remain part of the United Kingdom.

In the Republic of Ireland, Sinn Fein has now gained the biggest popular vote. It is capitalizing on the electoral results in both jurisdictions of Ireland to push for its long-coveted goal of full independence from Britain to create a united Ireland.

Due to the different electoral system in the Republic of Ireland – a system of proportional representation – there is as yet no party to emerge this week with a clear majority to form a government in Dublin. Sinn Fein won 37 seats out of a total of 160 in the Dublin parliament. The two traditional ruling parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, won 38 and 35 seats respectively. Fianna Fail picked up one more seat than Sinn Fein despite losing the popular vote because of transferred votes from other parties.

Sinn Fein’s success was due to the party tapping widespread popular disgust with the two centrist parties which are wedded to neoliberal economics and austerity. Aching social problems of economic inequality, chronic housing shortages and failing public services propelled voters to back Sinn Fein’s leftwing manifesto for “workers and change”.

The election was a popular rebuke for the two traditional main parties. Both lost significant seats compared with the last election in 2016. Sinn Fein’s gain was also matched by similar gains for a host of other small leftwing parties and independents.

McDonald, the Sinn Fein leader, says her party is now aiming to forge a coalition administration with the other small parties to form a “people’s government for change”. If that can be negotiated successfully, that would see McDonald becoming the next prime minister of the Republic of Ireland.

Combined with a Sinn Fein majority in Northern Ireland the political configuration across Ireland now represents a formidable mandate for Irish reunification and independence from Britain.

There would seem to be an unstoppable dynamic of natural justice. Sinn Fein is the oldest political party in Ireland. Formed in 1905, it historically spearheaded the movement for independence when the whole of Ireland was formerly under British colonial rule. In a British general election in 1918, Sinn Fein won over 70 per cent of the vote across the entire island on a platform for independence. London rejected the mandate back then, which resulted in a bloody war of independence and the partitioning of Ireland to produce partial freedom for what became the Republic of Ireland and a British entity known as Northern Ireland.

Neither of the erstwhile two main parties in the Republic of Ireland, Fianna Fail or Fine Gael, ever gave much advocacy to Irish reunification as an aspiration. Their shared political establishment devolved over the decades into parochial politics of cronyism and complacency.

For decades Sinn Fein was damaged politically because of the armed conflict in the North of Ireland between the IRA and British state forces. Many Irish voters were alienated by the association of politics and guns. The British and Irish news media, as well as political establishments, ran intensive campaigns to demonize Sinn Fein as “terrorist sympathizers”. There is still a residual antipathy among the Irish establishment. Even today, the two traditional parties have sniffily said they would not form a coalition government with Sinn Fein, owing its past connection with the IRA.

The conflict in Northern Ireland ended more than two decades ago in 1998 with the signing of a peace agreement, the Good Friday Accord. In that internationally binding accord, the British government committed itself to Irish unity if a majority of the population on the island agreed to it.

Many voters have evidently moved on from the past conflict. The old demonization trick against Sinn Fein has lost its allure. Social and economic issues have come to dominate voter concerns, and the two previous ruling parties are seen to be part of the problem, not the solution.

If Sinn Fein can head up the next government in Dublin, the question of Irish unity will be high on its to-do list. Negotiations to form a new coalition government in Dublin may take several weeks to pan out.

An eventual referendum which takes Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom in addition to the Scottish nationalists clamoring for independence spells the break-up of Britain’s constitutional amalgam of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

A major part of the dissolution dynamic has been British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s desire for Brexit which has unleashed separatist forces within the UK with a vengeance. In which case, it might be said: ought to have been careful what you wished for Boris!

Nationalism in different shapes and forms is powerfully transforming the politics of the British Isles, a development that gathered pace over the last five years and culminated in the general election this month.

National identities and the relationship between England, Scotland and Ireland are changing more radically than at any time over the last century. It is worth looking at the British archipelago as a whole on this issue because of the closely-meshed political relationship of its constituent nations.

Some of these developments are highly visible such as the rise of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) to permanent political dominance in Scotland in the three general elections since the independence referendum in 2014.

Other changes are important but little commented on, such as the enhanced national independence and political influence of the Republic of Ireland over the British Isles as a continuing member of the EU as the UK leaves. Dublin’s greater leverage when backed by the other 26 EU states was repeatedly demonstrated, often to the surprise and dismay of London, in the course of the negotiations in Brussels over the terms of the British withdrawal.

Northern Ireland saw more nationalist than unionist MPs elected in the general election for the first time since 1921. This is important because it is a further sign of the political impact of demographic change whereby Catholics/nationalists become the new majority and the Protestants/unionists the minority. The contemptuous ease with which Boris Johnson abandoned his ultra-unionist pledges to the DUP and accepted a customs border in the Irish Sea separating Northern Ireland from the rest of Britain shows how little loyalty the Conservatives feel towards the northern unionists and their distinct and abrasive brand of British nationalism.

These developments affecting four of the main national communities inhabiting the British Isles – Irish, nationalists and unionists in Northern Ireland, Scots – are easy to track. Welsh nationalism is a lesser force. Much more difficult to trace and explain is the rise of English nationalism because it is much more inchoate than these other types of nationalism, has no programme, and is directly represented by no political party – though the Conservative Party has moved in that direction.

The driving force behind Brexit was always a certain type of English nationalism which did not lose its power to persuade despite being incoherent and little understood by its critics and supporters alike. In some respects, it deployed the rhetoric of any national community seeking self-determination. The famous Brexiteer slogan “take back control” is not that different in its implications from Sinn Fein  – “Ourselves Alone” – though neither movement would relish the analogy.

The great power of the pro-Brexit movement, never really taken on board by its opponents, was to blame the very real sense of disempowerment and social grievances felt by a large part of the English population on Brussels and the EU. This may have been scapegoating on a grandiose scale, but nationalist movements the world over have targeted some foreign body abroad or national minority at home as the source of their ills. I asked one former Leave councillor – one of the few people I met who changed their mind on the issue after the referendum in 2016 – why people living in her deprived ward held the EU responsible for their poverty. Her reply cut through many more sophisticated explanations: “I suppose that it is always easier to blame Johnny Foreigner.”

This crude summary of the motives of many Leave voters has truth in it, but it is a mistake to caricature English nationalism as simply a toxic blend of xenophobia, racism, imperial nostalgia and overheated war memories. In the three years since the referendum the very act of voting for Brexit became part of many people’s national identity, a desire to break free, kicking back against an overmighty bureaucracy and repelling attempts by the beneficiaries of globalisation to reverse a democratic vote.

The political left in most countries is bad at dealing with nationalism and the pursuit of self-determination. It sees these as a diversion from identifying and attacking the real perpetrators of social and economic injustice. It views nationalists as mistakenly or malignly aiming at the wrong target – usually foreigners – and letting the domestic ones off the hook.

The desire by people to see themselves as a national community – even if many of the bonds binding them together are fictional – is one of the most powerful forces in the world. It can only be ignored at great political cost, as the Labour Party has just found out to its cost for the fifth time (two referendums and three elections). What Labour should have done was early on take over the slogan “take back control” and seek to show that they were better able to deliver this than the Conservatives or the Brexit Party. There is no compelling reason why achieving such national demands should be a monopoly of the right. But in 2016, 2017 and 2019 Labour made the same mistake of trying to wriggle around Brexit as the prime issue facing the English nation without taking a firm position, an evasion that discredited it with both Remainers and Leavers.

Curiously, the political establishment made much the same mistake as Labour in underestimating and misunderstanding the nature of English nationalism. Up to the financial crisis of 2008 globalisation had been sold as a beneficial and inevitable historic process. Nationalism was old hat and national loyalties were supposedly on the wane. To the British political class, the EU obviously enhanced the political and economic strength of its national members. As beneficiaries of the status quo, they were blind to the fact that much of the country had failed to gain from these good things and felt marginalised and forgotten.

The advocates of supra-national organisations since the mediaeval papacy have been making such arguments and have usually been perplexed why they fail to stick. They fail to understand the strength of nationalism or religion in providing a sense of communal solidarity, even if it is based on dreams and illusions, that provides a vehicle for deeply felt needs and grievances. Arguments based on simple profit and loss usually lose out against such rivals.

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Observing the build up of Irish and Irish American energies in Washington DC in preparation for St Patrick’s Day in March, the Economist’s Lexington column marvelled that the Irish Taoiseach is the only world leader guaranteed an annual meeting with the US president. As Ed Luce wrote in the FT: “No one who sampled Washington’s manic schedule of St Patrick’s day events … could miss the formidable display of Ireland’s influence.”

And yet that influence has often been missed, or simply dismissed as “shamrock diplomacy”, particularly by British observers. It’s ironic, then, that this influence may play a significant part in the diplomatic shenanigans around Brexit, and in post-Brexit relations between Britain, Ireland and the US, after strong political groups in Congress warn they are ready to block any US-UK trade deal in the event of a threat to an open Irish border as the UK seeks to leave the EU.

Ireland’s soft power in the US has long been hidden in plain sight, drawing on the appeal of an ethnic identity that around 35m Americans claimed in the last national census. It has close ties to the Irish American leadership at the heart of American politics and to the Irish American lobby in Washington. The power of this lobby, as with any ethnic lobby, is contingent on both US domestic affairs and international interests. Today, it is showing signs of flexing diplomatic muscles long thought dormant.

Nationalism and independence

The main issues that have historically concerned the Irish American lobby are support for Irish independence, the conflict in Northern Ireland, and increasing quotas for Irish immigrant entry to the US.

These issues reflect the scale and nature of Irish emigration to, and patterns of settlement in, the US. Of the more than 6m people who journeyed from Ireland to the US between 1840 and 1900, most settled in northern and eastern urban centres. From immiserated and often traumatic beginnings in the US, the Irish aggregated power and identity in these urban centres over time, via the catholic church, machine politics and union leadership.

Nationalism was a core feature of American life for many Irish emigrants and their offspring. From the Untied Irish Exiles in the early 1800s to Clan na Gael in the early 1900s, Irish American political culture maintained a strong investment in the imagined freedom of the old country. With reciprocal interest from organisations in Ireland, a transnational culture of political activism developed that eventually fed into the successful struggle for Ireland’s independence in the early 20th century.

Much of this activism worked through civil society organisations. But in 1917, following President Woodrow Wilson’s declaration of war against Germany and the need to defend the rights of small nations, several political resolutions pressed US support for Irish independence. These pressures to address “the Irish question” reached a head with a full floor discussion in Congress in March 1919, which passed a resolution calling on the US delegation at the Versailles peace conference in Paris to make Irish self-determination an urgent matter.

The temperature of Irish nationalism in the US cooled in the later 1920s. Ireland still promoted itself in the US after this but its neutrality meant it had difficulties getting its voice heard. Successive US presidents and administrations deferred to British perspectives, most notably on Northern Ireland.

The Troubles

The eruption of violent conflict in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s fuelled a resurgence of ethnic consciousness in Irish America and politicised portions of it in favour of a militant nationalism. Through the 1970s, there was a small but significant swell in support for the claims and activities of the IRA.

This militancy galvanised moderate Irish American political leaders to promote support for constitutional nationalism and to lobby in Washington for US intervention in Northern Ireland. The Four Horsemen – Senator Edward Kennedy, Speaker Tip O’Neill, Senator Daniel Moynihan and Governor Hugh Carey – had some success in pressing President Jimmy Carter to make a symbolic statement on Northern Ireland in 1977, which broke the silence of American administrations.

In 1981, they helped form Friends of Ireland, a bipartisan group of senators and representatives, which played a significant role in the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 and advanced the idea that a political solution was possible.

Carter’s symbolic line would later be bulldozed by Bill Clinton as he led a major shift in US policy towards Northern Ireland as president. This shift was facilitated by a lobby group of influential Irish Americans, which pressed Clinton to intervene in Northern Ireland and contributed to back-channel diplomacy involving covert discussions with the IRA and efforts to connect Sinn Féin with US policy makers.

There can be no doubt that the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 has the fingerprints of Irish America on it. It was a high-water mark for its Washington lobbyists. But for the next 20 years Northern Ireland would slip off the agenda and focus shifted principally to economic relations between Ireland and the US. After the passing of the Four Horsemen’s generation of leadership and the post-9/11 deterrence to new Irish emigrants, Irish America no longer functioned as a recognisable political block and had drifted from its once strong association with the Democratic Party.

Brexit

But Brexit and Donald Trump – in different but complexly related ways – have galvanised Irish America and re-energised Washington lobbying. On Brexit, there is now consistent messaging around the need to defend the Good Friday Agreement in relation to any trade deal between the UK and the US. Former members of Congress and US ambassadors to Ireland, and the leaders of major Irish American organisations now belong to the Ad Hoc Committee to Protect the Good Friday Agreement, created in January 2019.

There is powerful support from the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who took it directly to the UK and Irish governments when she said in April that if the Brexit deal undermined the Good Friday Accord there would be “no chance” of a trade agreement between the US and the UK.

Another powerful voice is Congressman Richard Neal, a long time spokesman for Irish interests, stretching back to his involvement in the Northern Irish peace process. His voice carries some authority in Washington as chair of the influential Ways and Means Committee in Congress, which will oversee any post-Brexit trade deal between the US and the UK.

Competing interests

Underlying this coordinated messaging is a complex of political drives and interests. While there can be no doubting Pelosi’s and Neal’s commitment to protecting the Good Friday Agreement, their forthright comments on the makings of a trade deal between the UK and the US are also a form of opposition to President Donald Trump.

This opposition is about more than Brexit but neither is it simply domestic political partisanship. It also reflects a deeper ideological struggle over American identity and the US’s role in the world. Trump supports Brexit, viewing it as a weakening of the European Union’s regulatory power, aligning it with his worldview of “America First” in which all international relations are transactional. Pelosi and Neal view Brexit as a threat to the liberal internationalism that has guided US foreign policy since the end of World War II and now seems imperilled by Trump.

In this regard, Ireland finds itself in the midst of a transatlantic struggle between advocates of nationalism and globalisation. With its government having pinned its colours to the forces of globalisation and the merits of continued EU membership it too has to politick carefully with its powerful neighbours as it designs its future post-Brexit.

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One of his recent “jobs” was to write an op-ed for the Irish Times in which he castigated the European Union for appeasing Russian President Vladimir Putin. Linkevicius used a hoary old historical analogy comparing the EU with British leader Neville Chamberlain and his appeasement in 1938 of Nazi Germany’s Hitler.

Apart from the ignorant historical waffling, the other curious thing about Linkevicius’ op-ed piece in Ireland’s so-called “paper of record” was the timing. It was published on December 17, three days before EU foreign policy officials were to meet in Brussels on the issue of extending sanctions against Russia.

As it turned out, the EU agreed to extend sanctions on Moscow by another six months until July 31, 2019, when the matter will come up for review again.

For the past four years, the EU has imposed sanctions on Russia in line with Washington over pejorative claims that Moscow “annexed” Crimea. This claim is made in spite of the fact that the Crimean people voted in a referendum to secede from Ukraine, which had been taken over by a NATO/EU-backed Neo-Nazi coup, and to join the Russian Federation.

EU sanctions have been rolled over every six months for the past four years, each time given impetus by some new dubious issue, such as the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine in July 2014 or the alleged poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in England in March 2018.

Typical of the Baltic states and their rightwing governments, Linkevicius’ world view is dominated by an abiding Russophobia.

Before becoming Lithuania’s foreign minister in 2012, he was the country’s permanent representative to the NATO military alliance. The 58-year-old politician’s top concern is to ensure that European states never normalize relations with Russia. He is frequently quoted in Western media or writes op-ed pieces in which he lambasts European calls or inclinations for re-engagement with Moscow.

His recent diatribe in the Irish Times was thus his usual run-of-the-mill Russophobia. Given Lithuania’s appalling history of collaborating with Nazi Germany, it surely is twisted irony for Linkevicius to level duff analogies about Russia.

However, the poison pen of Linkevicius is not just a simple matter of one politician airing his warped view of the world. Linkevicius and his rightwing anti-Russian ilk are appointing themselves as the arbiters of relations between the entire 28-member EU bloc and Russia. In other words, a minority of ideologues who view everything through a prism of Russophobia are trying to dictate to the rest of Europe on how to conduct relations with its biggest and, arguably, most strategically important neighbor, Russia. And that dictated conduct is to be unrelentingly hostile. How democratic of Linkevicius.

The Republic of Ireland, like several other EU members, has counted the cost of sanctions on Russia dearly. Between 2014 and 2016, Irish exports to Russia were slashed by half, from €722 to €364 million. The loss was due to Moscow enacting counter-sanctions on EU countries which badly hit Irish agricultural exports of beef, pork and dairy.

As with other EU economies, the Irish have been rueing the whole sanctions war with Moscow. Last year, a senior Irish government delegation travelled to Russia in a bid to “reset relations”. As the Irish Times reported: “Trade the target as Ireland seeks a reset in relations with Russia.”

More recent data shows that trade relations between the Irish republic and Russia have recovered hugely from the low-point in 2016. Total bilateral trade had risen by 40 per cent to €800 million for the year ending 2017, which is almost back to the level it was before the Ukraine conflict started. (Ireland’s bilateral trade with Lithuania is estimated to be about half that with Russia.)

There are plenty of indicators that the Irish economy is still struggling from the 2008 global financial crash. Ireland’s rural economy is particularly hurting with harrowing cases of farmers going bust and having their dwellings repossessed due to debt arrears.

As with many other EU countries, the Irish economy and society can’t afford the continuing futile new Cold War with Russia. The premises for the conflict are entirely bogus but the damage is entirely palpable for many ordinary people from loss of jobs and business.

The crucial thing about the EU sanctions policy on Russia is that it requires unanimity among the 28 member states for the measures to be extended.

If, say Ireland, were to have voted against the renewal of sanctions at the last December 21 European Council meeting, then the EU would be have to revoke its policy against Russia.

Given the background trends in the Irish economy and the behind-the-scenes moves by Irish officials to restore trade relations with Moscow, it can be fairly speculated that the Lithuanian foreign minister spotted a possible “weak link” in the EU chain of sanctions.

Linkevicius’ article in the Irish Times on December 17 was a diplomatic hit job, knowing that the paper is widely read by Irish representatives in the Brussels administration.

There was no news value in Linkevicius’ op-ed piece. It was a pointed sabotage against any notion of normalizing trade ties between the EU and Russia. Historical appeals about appeasing Nazi Germany were grotesque falsification of current events, and a blatant bid at moral blackmailing. The article was headlined: “How many wake up calls about Putin do we need?” More to the point, the Irish Times should publish an article with headline: “How many wake up calls about Russophobia do we need?’

Here’s a prediction. Next time the EU meets to decide on extending sanctions against Russia on July 31, you can bet Linkevicius will dust off another poison pen piece to some paper in a European capital considered to be going soft (that is, coming to its senses) on ending sanctions.

Photo: Flickr

Irish sentiments on both sides of the border within that small island country are clamoring for special status which would de facto create an island-of-Ireland unity. A country which would in effect be independent from British rule and moving closer towards the long-held aspiration of Irish nationalists and republicans for a united Ireland, distinct from the rest of Britain.

As Britain stumbles towards its eventual departure from the EU scheduled for March 2019, the historic break raises special problems for Ireland. Northern Ireland, which is under British jurisdiction, will be obliged to follow the Brexit path of quitting the EU, while the Republic of Ireland will of course remain an EU member. That potentially creates the unique scenario of an EU border being imposed on the island, separating the Northern and Southern territories.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of indicators showing that most people on the island of Ireland, North and South, want the continuation of a “soft border” arrangement which has existed since the signing of a landmark peace deal in 1998 to end decades of conflict. This makes sense from an economic and cultural point of view since the ease of transport and travel is a vital daily convenience. This has become ever-more the case in recent years to the point where there are no visible signs of two different jurisdictions. For example, a motorway now links the northern city of Belfast to Dublin and Cork, in the far south, in a seamless corridor. Elsewhere in rural areas, people criss-cross easily like birds on the wing as if there is no border. In effect, Ireland has become closer to being one country, as would seem to be the natural order of things on an island with centuries of a distinct and common Celtic culture.

However, if the British government’s negotiations with the EU continue on their present rocky path, there are real fears that a so-called “hard Brexit” will bring about a return of the hard border in Ireland which existed before and during the recent conflict up until 1998, when the Good Friday Peace Accord was signed.

Hardline Brexiteers within Theresa May’s Conservative government cabinet are pushing for an abrupt break with the European Union. Ministers like Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, and the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, want to quit the EU altogether and pursue a vision of Britain as a global trading buccaneer nation.

Other British ministers, and many British citizens, as well the opposition Labour party led by Jeremy Corbyn, and business leaders, would prefer a “soft Brexit” where Britain still remains part of the European single market and customs union. It would have to pay a fee for such membership and accept Brussels’ rules on EU citizens’ rights in an arrangement similar to that existing for Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

A “soft Brexit” would leave the situation in Ireland much as it is today, where movement of goods and people is seamless without regulatory controls.

The trouble is that achieving a soft Brexit is far from certain. There are numerous signs that the EU and its chief negotiator on the matter Michel Barnier are becoming increasingly exasperated with London over its bumbling and incoherent stance.

British premier Theresa May faces a tough summit next month at the European Council in Brussels, at which the other 27 member states are to decide whether negotiations can proceed to substantive talks on the final trade deal with the EU.

May’s government is expected to show progress in commitment on three issues: a divorce bill with the EU; the guarantee of EU citizens’ rights in a post-Brexit Britain; and guarantees to uphold the soft border situation in Ireland.

The London government has so far dithered on all three issues. On the divorce bill, Theresa May last week, after months of wrangling, finally doubled the British offer of paying Brussels £40 billion (€45 billion). This is still way short of what the EU is demanding at around €60 billion. But the financial outlay has infuriated the hardline Brexiteers in her cabinet like Johnson who at one time arrogantly said the EU can “go whistle” – meaning, accept no payment at all.

On the Irish question, the British government has also shown an arrogant complacency. Last weekend, international trade minister Liam Fox asserted that London would give no commitment to the nature of the border in Ireland until a final deal with the EU was signed.

“We cannot come to a final answer on the Irish question until we get an idea of the end state [with the EU],” Fox told British media.

The London government is being supported by a small hardline pro-British Unionist party within Northern Ireland, the rather misnamed Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). It says that Northern Ireland must go the same way as the rest of the United Kingdom in its Brexit arrangement. That is, if the Brexit is a hard one resulting in strict external borders, then Northern Ireland should erect a hard border with the Republic of Ireland, according to the pro-British DUP.

But such an outcome is infuriating majority public opinion in both North and South Ireland. It should be noted that when Britain held its Brexit referendum in June 2016, the electorate in Northern Ireland voted clearly in favor of remaining with the European Union. Given the rupture to social and economic relations that the return of a hard border would create in Ireland, it is a safe assumption that a strong majority of people across the entire island would be firmly opposed to such an arrangement.

There is a deep resonance here with how the British political establishment in London has always ignored and indeed violated democratic mandates on the island of Ireland.

In a general election back in 1918, when the entire country was at that time under British colonial rule, the vast majority of the electorate – over 70 per cent – voted for the pro-independence Sinn Fein party. The response to that democratic Irish mandate by London was to artificially partition the country in order to create a British-run Northern state where formerly minority Unionist parties would thereby become the majority, thus providing London with a “mandate” to retain its jurisdictional presence in Ireland.

Likewise today, the British government is ignoring the majority wish across the whole of Ireland for the de facto non-existing border to be maintained. London seems though to be using the eventual border status within Ireland like a bargaining chip in its negotiations with the EU.

However, such British attitude is likely to rile the rest of Europe. The EU has so far shown solidarity with Ireland and the maintenance of the invisible border that has existed for the past two decades. No doubt the EU is mindful that the resurrection of a hard border could reignite conflict in Ireland. Irish republicans agreed to the peace deal in 1998 largely because it held out the promise of a gradual, eventual reunification of Ireland. The British government is now threatening to undermine that peace deal.

Brussels also backs a soft border in Ireland because it does not want to cause harmful economic repercussions for the Republic of Ireland, a member of the EU. For London to harm a EU member in this way is seen as unacceptable by Brussels.

Here’s where the history of British meddling in Ireland and the denial of natural democratic rights of the Irish nation comes back to haunt.

The government of the Irish Republic, in Dublin, is stepping up a tougher line on the Brexit negotiations. The Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar says that his country will veto any moves towards a final trade deal between the EU and Britain at next month’s summit in Brussels – unless London gives a written guarantee that it will make a special case for Ireland by maintaining a soft border regardless of the Brexit outcome.

If London refuses to comply with the Irish demand, then it faces a even more tortuous process in negotiating Brexit and on less favorable terms. That will, in turn, pile on even more problems for Britain’s ailing economy which is already floundering over Brexit anxieties.

In many ways therefore, the fate of post-Brexit Britain is now in the hands of the Irish. After centuries of being collateral damage for British political rulers, that makes for a certain poetic justice.

But, more importantly, what the whole debacle demonstrates more than ever is that Irish independence and territorial unity is an ineluctable case of natural justice. It is only British intransigence and intrigue that has impeded the natural democratic rights of Ireland and the Irish people. That kind of baleful British interference in Irish national interests is no longer acceptable, no longer tolerable.

No longer an imperial power, in fact a shambolic decrepit Little England, the case for a united independent Ireland is again clearer than ever.