Copyright newsletter
What a surprise: Ireland has elected a president who was endorsed by Sinn Fein and who is rabidly anti Israel. Meanwhile, Ireland flatters itself about an all Ireland, talks to itself about it, and manages to get a few naive unionists to engage in a ‘conversation’ about something that if anything gets more remote. Catherine Connolly is in a sense the perfect successor to Michael D Higgins. She supports radical leftist causes around the world. She wants to interfere in Northern Ireland. She supports an all Ireland state. And she is so outspokenly pro Palestinian that she seems in effect to have sympathy with the Islamic extremist barbarians of Hamas (she scolded the UK for suggesting that Hamas could not form part of future governance in Gaza). One of the tragedies of this election is that it cements the Irish presidency as a partisan political position. That was something that President Higgins pioneered, a man who scolded us over Brexit and who had the nerve to call for integrated education in NI while presiding over a nation that still has Catholic-run schooling. He snubbed a centenary service on Northern Ireland that spineless UK officials had been careful to make neutral on NI, rather than a celebration of it. But such neutrality was not enough for the high minded nationalist Mr Higgins. At least unionists, even moderate unionists, now see clearly what the Republic has become. We hoped that it was becoming less tribal. Instead, the decline of Catholicism has led to an upsurge in republicanism, including retrospective support for an IRA that Ireland repudiated at the ballot box during the latter Troubles. Now polls show they won’t even alter their anthem for a ‘new Ireland’ or join the Commonwealth. It could not be more clear that unionists should not even engage in talks about the ‘new’ uber republican Ireland, let alone endorse it.
