Brexit discussion thread IX (Please read OP before posting)

They've a tendency to forget that from 1801 until 1922 they were the Irish Government. It was nominally a nation but in reality a part of a unitary British state known as the UK. There was no devolution beyond what power was held by county and city councils (or their equivalents at the time).

They (the British Government) made the decisions and they refuse to accept any responsibility for them. Instead you've commentators imagining that Ireland had some serious say in its affairs because it had the notional title of a nation, just without any powers of self determination or control over any of its affairs. It wasn't even comparable to modern Scotland or a US state in terms of autonomy. It had none.

It was very much a case of force integration of another country into the English political system, which in effect disenfranchised it.

Before that you'd Ireland as a British colony and all sorts of insanity with disenfranchisment based on religion and so on.

If someone wants to go read a few books and then revise history, I'm not quite sure where to even begin to argue.

Irish history until 1922 and Northern Irish history, including the troubles is UK / British history. I find it bizzare that they claim to be unionists, yet disown that.

The reality is the famine occured in the UK, at the time the richest and most powerful country in the world, yet millions of its citizens had to flee to the US and elsewhere as refugees of poverty and hunger. That's British 19th century history. Don't try to disown it! It's yours. Those people who boarded famine ships and arrived starving in the US were at that time British citizens leaving UK ports because of failed British government policies that led to mass starvation. That's the rather unpalatable reality of it.

Even in modern times the average UK commentator seems to think Northern Ireland is some foreign place. The troubles happened in the UK, not in the Republic of Ireland (other than a couple of isolated incidents of spill over) It's absolutely mindbogglingly levels of cognitive dissonance and sheer hypocrisy that allows people to rant and rave about the union and then in the same breath disown the deeply troubled history of that place.

And now they're going to leave the EU and blame the EU for the consequences of their decision to leave!

By the end of this the rest of Europe will know precisely why Irish - British (at least the jingoistic nationalist types) relations are so bad for so long. They punch you in the face and then claim you hurt their hand with your unreasonably hard cheekbones!

VinLieger wrote: »

The government should be ignoring it but Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail should be reiterating continuously their support for FG's stance as well as explaining to the electorate what the brit's are attempting to do with their new massive wave of propaganda

I've a feeling the parties here will all be stupid enough to take the bait. The British and American parties have been and I doubt we will be much better. Someone's just hunting around for the cracks and the trigger topics.

robinph wrote: »

Whilst I completely understand the need to just get on with it and tell the UK to go stuff themselves, please remember that the UK population are people too and most don't want any of this.

Which is a problem because the people do want it as shown by the vote. Hopefully Boris can get it over the line so we can all move on.