Lobby Terms

The thing about the "No Surrender" slogan is that it has always been used by and about the wrong people in Ireland. The ones who really will never surrender are the ones who will never settle for anything less than the 32 County Republic.

Their claim to all-Ireland sovereignty, to be the voice of Ireland without complication, has always been taken as a given by the United States, no matter who was running America any given time. That was also the Soviet position at least once the Official IRA had ceased to be a serious force, and Russia will have inherited that view. Much the same would be presupposed by China. And so on.

As Americans often do not understand quite what it is with the British, of all classes and parties, and the National Health Service, so Britons often do not understand quite what it is with the Americans, of all backgrounds, and Ireland. But it is. In both cases, it just is.

Britain does not need a trade agreement with the United States, with which we already do a roaring trade, and the only reason to want one is in order to flog off the NHS to the American healthcare companies. But if we did want one, then it would have to give, not even the Irish Government, but the Irish Lobby as defined above, absolutely everything that it wanted. It just would. 

There would be no conceivable Congressional majority for the ratification of anything else. In fact, it is is fair to assume that this is why there has never been a free trade agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States. It could never have been ratified by Congress unless it had created a 32 County Republic of Ireland. It still never could be. It never will be able to be.