Ireland scuppers the surreal spoof of Brexit
Irene from Manchester thinks that Ireland needs to stop having a border because it’s proving a bit annoying for Britain: “What a mess Brexit is turning out to be, with the DUP making demands at the last minute. Ireland is a small island and should either be part of the UK or independent — it is too small to have borders and causes everyone a headache. It should never have been split. Maybe it’s time they made up their minds — you’re either in or out.”
On Twitter, journalist Damian Mac Con Uladh replied to Irene on behalf of Ireland. “Dear Irene of Manchester, I apologise for being split. I’ll try harder. Best, Ireland.”
Under normal circumstances, we should probably send Irene of Manchester a copy of A Brief History Of Ireland For Dummies, but this is so far from normal circumstances that her letter looks like a spoof. Except it isn’t. (Nor does A Brief History Of Ireland For Dummies actually exist, but perhaps someone should write it, and send a copy to everyone in the British Conservative Party, as a matter of urgency).
The current exchanges happening between Britain, Ireland and Northern Ireland have the quality of a surreally imaginative spoof. Brexit is definitely a spoof. The DUP holding the current British government to ransom is a spoof, and the current British government itself is a spoof. So is the current British prime minister, robotically out of her depth, and the current foreign secretary, mired in his clueless, self-serving bluster.
Perhaps the spoofiest spoof of all is the previous prime minister, who caused Brexit to happen in the first place, with his ill-conceived in-out referendum to appease some jumped up Little Britisher with a loud hailer and a racist, insular agenda. Where is he now, as his careless chaos engulfs the land? Writing a handsomely advanced memoir in his expensive garden shed? Had David Cameron not been so petrified of Nigel Farage and his anti-EU gobbiness, Arlene Foster would not now be effectively in charge of Britain and Ireland’s future, and Irene from Manchester would not be writing crap to a right wing tabloid so facile it appears to be parody. Except it isn’t.
As a long-term Irish resident in Britain, here since Thatcher declared there was no such thing as society, I have to say I am rather enjoying watching the current UK government destroying itself through the incompetence, arrogance and apparently unstoppable fuckwittery of its members, not all of whom are even elected. Under Brexit, the term schadenfreude will most likely be stopped at the border, so let’s enjoy it while we can, amid the spectacle of Ireland being the potential scupperer of the entire spoof that is Brexit, tripping it up when all the bigger stronger entities could not. As Nelson from The Simpsons would say, “HA ha!”
