Prerogative

It is not news that Jeremy Corbyn agrees with the changes to the Royal Prerogative that were proposed by David Davis in the latter's Parliamentary Control of the Executive Bill 1999.

Speaking of Executives, it certainly would be news if the one in Northern Ireland were to collapse. But that is extremely unlikely to happen. Quite simply, far too much money depends on its continuation.

It is also possible that Unionists in Northern Ireland have begun to realise how little sympathy they could expect in Great Britain.

Consider the abuse that is heaped on Scotland and the North of England, while Wales is simply ignored, for the expense that we apparently incur by, at least in the North's case, being denied the infrastructure that the South East assumes as a matter of course.

Well, Northern Ireland is in a different league, with a colossal public sector alongside numerous other features a great distance removed from the views of The Times or of The Sun, or from those of most readers of the Daily Mail or of the Daily Telegraph.

As well as the spending, the Britishness that Unionism in Northern Ireland exists to defend includes a very high level of political participation by fundamentalist clergymen, acting as such. Does that sound remotely like Britain?

The name of Margaret Thatcher is abominated by Unionists from Northern Ireland in terms that I have never even heard from ex-miners. The latter just swear a lot, and compare her to Hitler. But the former very literally damn her to Hell, with the full rhetorical force of the King James Bible.

Everyone has always known that the IRA was still in existence. But the Good Friday Agreement had put a lid on most of its activities in Northern Ireland, as well as on all of them in Great Britain. People in Great Britain prefer it that way, and are now very well used to it that way.

So, if there were any hint of a return to IRA activity on the Mainland due to the withdrawal of both Unionist parties from the Executive, then the message from the Mainland would be unmistakable: "We are not, under any circumstances, going through that again. You are on your own."

A thoroughly aristocratic Conservative Government simply withdrew from the Kenya of Happy Valley and all that, and the most petty bourgeois of Conservative Prime Ministers finalised the independence of Zimbabwe.

She also sent Nicholas Ridley to negotiate a transfer of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands to the Argentina of General Galtieri, with nothing more than a temporary leaseback arrangement under which the British Government would continue to administer the place for, and on behalf of, the junta in Buenos Aires. It took Peter Shore to see that one off.

Indeed, Thatcher was so close to that junta, that when she did finally have to send a taskforce because the Argentinians had taken her at her word and moved in, then the ships in question had been about to be sold at a knocked down rate. Sold, of course, to Argentina.

It is 33 years since the Falklands War. 33 years after VJ Day, the only remaining British possessions in Asia and the Pacific were Kiribati, which became independent a year later; the Pitcairn Islands, the current population of which is 56; the much-abused Chagos Islands; and Hong Kong, which Thatcher was negotiating to transfer back to China, without the slightest reference to that great city's numerous inhabitants, only three months after the end of the Falklands War. So much for any argument from blood and treasure.

I come originally from one of the British Overseas Territories, but I have lived most of my life in one of the parts of England that suffered most as a result of Thatcherism. Those Territories are astonishingly indulged by comparison with those areas.

Following the purely political decision, which has turned out to have been staggeringly short-sighted in economic and strategic terms, to destroy the industries of entire villages, towns and cities, those villagers, townspeople and citizens have endured 30 years and more of "Why don't you bloody well move, then?", as if they had anywhere else to go.

But the population of a small pit village, at the other end of the earth and of very distant British descent indeed, is not only lavished with largesse, but imagines that it reserves the right to take the United Kingdom to war for a second time if that situation should ever arise. No one tells them to get on their bikes. Or, at any rate, not yet.

They had better hope that no serious threat to their current situation ever did present itself. The larger Unionist party in Northern Ireland already seems to have got that message.

For, if Argentina did ever again flex its muscles in the face of Falkland Islander intransigence, or if Unionist withdrawal from power-sharing ever did threaten a return to IRA violence on the Mainland, then the voice of Middle England would turn out to be, not even Jeremy Corbyn as he really existed, but Jeremy Corbyn as reported by his enemies.