The Huskar Social Union wrote:The Archregimancy wrote:Great Britain is an island; it's just that most residents of Great Britain - or at least the English ones - are prone to forgetting that the name of the country is 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Which more or less has the same impact (and may indeed be precisely the point you were making, but with a slightly different emphasis).
But I'd go slightly further. I think there's an unquantifiable but large subset of the UK population that struggles to think of the Republic of Ireland as a fully independent sovereign nation state that's under no obligation to just go along with Westminster. Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn't strike me as historically illiterate - prone to historical misrepresentations, but not illiterate - so perhaps he can remind his followers that
Poynings' Law was repealed in 1878.
Thats because, and no offence, some English people will never fucking change in how they see the Irish, they take Ireland not doing everything Britain wants them to as a personal insult because of how bigoted and fucking hateful they are. They think they can still walk over Ireland whenever they want.
No offence taken; the comment wasn't directed personally at me after all.
And though I might have phrased things differently, we were both broadly making the same point. Undoubtedly there are some people in the UK, most of them English (though not exclusively so) who struggle to see Ireland as a fully independent nation state.
In truth, we do sometimes have a slightly odd legal relationship even outside of the EU context. There are many potential examples, but focusing on just one... There can be few countries whose citizens have the right to vote in another country's general elections when resident in the second country, as
enshrined in the laws of the second country as a reaction to the full independence of the first country, and where the attempt to reciprocally grant the same right to citizens of the second country living in the first country was declared unconstitutional by the first country, requiring
the passage of a constitutional amendment that granted an even broader residential franchise than initially planned.
The short version is that the long historical relationships between the constituent components of the UK and both parts of Ireland (and even before the Ulster Plantations brought so many Scots across the North Channel,
Scotland had already invaded Ireland at least once) has led to some interesting legal and constitutional quirks, and we still enjoy close relationships in some areas - such as sport - to the benefit of both countries. But that doesn't change the basic fact that the Republic of Ireland is a fully independent sovereign nation state, and the United Kingdom would do well to acknowledge and respect that status. That doesn't mean we always have to agree with each other; but we should
respect each other. Cavalier Brexiteer statements about how issues arising from the land border between the Republic and Northern Ireland should be easy to resolve are often lacking in the necessary basic level of respect. or any understanding that Dublin is under no obligation to agree with them.
Posted: Sat Mar 02, 2019 4:36 am