Letter to the Editor: Colonial garrison of North reason for Brexit
British prime minister Johnson’s fixation on a no-deal exit from the European Union is without justification. Brexiteers claim a trade relationship with the US will redefine trade for the world in the 21st century.
The reviews of Trump’s erratic trade policies would suggest otherwise. Brexit is certain to cause economic harm that could last for decades for Britain but especially the island of Ireland. Anglophile columnist Maureen O’Dowd makes a clueless claim that “…European leaders who will do anything to stop the jailbreak [exit the EU].”
The facts are these: (a) Britain’s membership in the EU has been granted more exceptions and amendments than any other member; (b) there are five other membership models that the UK could adopt but the approach of Prince Boris was to have his cake and eat it too; and (c) the negotiations have taken three years because the Conservatives never expected the Leave vote and were unprepared for any negotiation and even what Leave actually meant.
A big portion of the delay was the tactics of the ambitious Boris in undermining Theresa May.
The most likely explanation of the Prime Minister’s No-Deal stand is this. No other EU member has a colonial garrison like Northern Ireland with a nonsensical border imposed by force to nullify the 1918 democratic election result in Ireland.
Brexit was never about “freedom” , “taking back control” or “Brussels bureaucracy”.
It is all about a day of judgement coming from the 21-year-old Good Friday Agreement to end the armed conflict in Ireland. The Conservatives want NI back under their exclusive control and not subject to legacy investigations or the EU Convention of Human Rights.
With Ireland’s partition came military and police excesses, large-scale religious discrimination, legal sorcery, media manipulation and, most importantly deceit, smear and half-truths on an industrial scale.
The British froze out the Irish at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, at the United Nations, lied before the US Department of State and Congress and, of course, parliament.
The necessity for deception may be found in this quote by former Massachusetts Lt Governor Thomas O’Neill in Derry, NI in September 2015.
He referred to the text of a 1949 British cabinet document unearthed by Irish scholar Professor Ronan Fanning. Ireland had just repealed the External Relations Act and left the Commonwealth of Nations. It said:
So far as can be seen it will never be to Great Britain’s advantage that Northern Ireland should form a part of a territory outside His Majesty’s jurisdiction. Indeed, it seems likely that Great Britain would never be able to agree to this even if the people of Northern Ireland desired it.
This was the policy template for all the murder and mayhem inflicted upon innocent people including the largest slaughter (in truth an act of war), the no-warning bombings of Dublin and Monaghan ... It was just a taste of what was to come for decades.
President Trump seized upon Boris’s ambition, Nigel Farage’s clowning, and the Brexiteers’ fears for the GFA and cultivated him to exit the EU. What followed is documented in the Guardian but the narrative is worthy of a James Bond movie.
It involves Arron Banks, a bored billionaire Robert Mercer, his companies and techies, and the ubiquitous Prince of Darkness, Steve Bannon with Boris adviser Dominic Cummings (no relation thank God) weaving campaign lies, themes and propaganda about the big bad EU.
Brexit was not about democracy or freedom but a meeting of the minds between Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic.
Of course Boris has to pretend the EU is the enemy. If he were to succeed in his No-Deal exit from the EU, President Trump will try to reward him for doing his bidding and bail him out with a US-UK trade deal.
While Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are used to rewarding butchers like Saudi Arabian Prince ‘MBS’, others who are more familiar with the killing fields in NI, such as House Speaker Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Schumer and Ways & Means Chairman Rich Neal, may have other ideas.
They have confidence in the 1998 Belfast Treaty and its importance to peace. It will one day also yield precisely what Boris and the Brexiteers fear most... .the truth.
