Never mind Jeremy Corbyn. The Queen could have tweeted a photograph of herself with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.
Showing them eating at her table. Or McGuinness staying overnight at her house.
There is nothing more Establishment than Sinn Féin.
It is such Unionist critics as that party still has, and one does wonder for whom such people might any longer vote (if they still do), who are now the leprous beggars at the gates.
Including at the gates of Windsor Castle.
This year, they have been festooning their roofs and their lampposts with the flags of the Confederacy, of apartheid South Africa, and of Nazi Germany.
Yes, there is a Scots-Irish thing in the first case.
And yes, there is an Orange and Calvinist thing in the second, although by no means all of them have anything to do with Calvinism, and no body on earth was more critical of apartheid than the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands.
But the third one had to be taken down by order of Peter Robinson. Whose Deputy is Martin McGuinness.
Hardcore Unionism, of the kind that objects to taking tea with Sinn Féin, is now just another Lost Cause among a wide range of Lost Causes.
It publicly identifies itself as such.
This year, they have been festooning their roofs and their lampposts with the flags of the Confederacy, of apartheid South Africa, and of Nazi Germany.
Yes, there is a Scots-Irish thing in the first case.
And yes, there is an Orange and Calvinist thing in the second, although by no means all of them have anything to do with Calvinism, and no body on earth was more critical of apartheid than the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands.
But the third one had to be taken down by order of Peter Robinson. Whose Deputy is Martin McGuinness.
Hardcore Unionism, of the kind that objects to taking tea with Sinn Féin, is now just another Lost Cause among a wide range of Lost Causes.
It publicly identifies itself as such.
So you won't mind when it's said that "Labour" is the most Lost Cause of all.
ReplyDeleteRevolutionary rhetoric masking counter-revolutionary action, seeking co-option into the Establishment, like MacDonald, or actually belonging to it, like that well known immiserated proletarian Hugh Dalton.
"We are the masters now" he declared, and he should know, as the son of Queen Victoria's domestic chaplain and alumni of Haileybury and Oxbridge.
It must be fascinating to believe that one has only just discovered these previously unknown facts. Or that they mattered.
DeleteGo tell the Israelis that a Lost Cause, like the State of Israel after the defeat of Bar-Kochba, is not worth remembering forever and fighting for when the time is right.
ReplyDeleteYou can call Israel many things, but it is not lost. It is very easy to find. Nor would it appreciate being bracketed with at least one of those three.
DeleteThen again, if people who think of themselves as British Unionists now do. But then, they don't think of themselves as that, do they?
They are not interested in Britain, just as Nationalists in Northern Ireland are not interested in a Republic that they resemble no more closely.
They are about ostensibly competing, but what turn out to be quite easily reconcilable, visions and versions of the Six County state and its society.
If people who would not willingly share a table with unrepentant anti British terrorists are now leopars (and Corbyn has form; he's a traitor who wants to give back the Falklands, as well as a lunatic who divorced his wife for sending her son to a grammar school) then it shows how deep into the moral abyss Britain has sunk.
ReplyDeleteIf those who reject IRA terrorists are now the leopars, we really are finished. To think, as Peter Hitchens says, that we pose as foes of terrorism fighting ISIS, when we entertain unrepentant terrorists in Westminster, is utterly embarrassing.
Still, when Gerry Adams calls someone "comrade" he knows who his allies are.
The comrades of the IRA, friends of Hamas and enemies of Britain running for Labour leader?
Who'd have thought it? Who is surprised, more like.
You were trying to write "leopards", weren't you? Twice.
DeleteWell, what can I say? You shouldn't post on an iphone with predictive text.
ReplyDeleteI have never owned one. I keep promising myself one, but somehow I never get round to it.
DeleteLepers. There we are.
ReplyDeleteLearn my lesson. Don't post from iPhones with predictive text.