There is nothing that could conceivably be of interest to Sinn Féin and which it does not already know.
In any case, believe one word of the anti-Corbyn ranting about Northern Ireland when it comes from any of the 11 Unionist MPs, whose abomination of the present Government's austerity programme (no abstentionists, they) is surpassed only by that of the name of Margaret Thatcher.
For Lord Tebbit was a Minister in a Government that was in continuous contact with the IRA while lying directly that no such communication existed.
That is now a matter of record, having always been common knowledge on an entirely cross-community basis in Northern Ireland. The dogs in the street, and all that.
That is now a matter of record, having always been common knowledge on an entirely cross-community basis in Northern Ireland. The dogs in the street, and all that.
Tebbit is no longer even the voice of his own party's right wing. Read to the bottom and you will find this:
Right-wing Tory MPs say they are looking forward to the prospect of a Labour Party headed by Jeremy Corbyn – because they agree with him on many issues.
The rebels are plotting to vote with Mr Corbyn on his opposition to the High Speed 2 rail line, support for the decriminalisation of non-payment of the BBC licence fee, his antipathy to the European Union and his opposition to military interventionism.
‘He offers us the perfect chance to give the PM a bloody nose,’ said one.
And turn a few pages, remembering that this is the Mail, in order to read Colonel Tim Collins, of the Iraq invasion and of the Henry Jackson Society, calling for negotiation with IS.
Mark Almond is a fairly regular contributor to the Mail on Sunday, and John Laughland is an occasional one.
When is it, or any other right-wing paper, going to publish an article by either of them, setting out the view that withdrawal from NATO, as advocated by Corbyn, is a thoroughly conservative and Tory position?
Plus, of course, something on the very real security risk that is posed by our existing Political Class's enmeshment with Saudi Arabia, as well as with Turkey and Qatar.
Qatar hosts and funds the Hamas that Corbyn is castigated for having met, but which Tony Blair has met far more often.
Blair recently invited the Qatar-based leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashal, for talks in London with the approval of David Cameron.
Turkey, meanwhile, is a member of NATO. Doesn't that make you feel secure?
When it comes to Northern Ireland, the fact is that most people in Great Britain view its inhabitants as, well, Irish. They do not look at television reports of Orange marches and see their own culture expressed.
Being Irish does not make anyone foreign in Britain. But being Irish like that does make one more so than at least the Neighbours type of Australians, or than New Zealanders, or, frankly, than the people of the Greater Dublin Area.
In similar fashion, people from the Irish Republic see Nationalists from the Six Counties as far less "Irish like us" than they do members of the Irish Catholic Diaspora "on many a shore", and not least in many an English, Scottish or Welsh town or city, where the inhabitants of the 26 Counties are far more likely to have relatives.
Just as people from England, Scotland or Wales are far more likely to have relatives in Australia, New Zealand or the Irish Republic, or for that matter in the Caribbean or in the Indian Subcontinent, than to have them in Northern Ireland.
As far as almost everyone in Britain is concerned, the question of Northern Ireland is settled. There would be no public sympathy worth measuring for any attempt to upset that balance from an ostensibly Unionist position.
Unionists would be best advised, as there are mounting signs that they are aware, to make their case in terms of their undeniable, and of course their utterly British, attachment to the National Health Service.
Likewise, there would be no public support whatever for another Falklands War.
If the alternative were that this country would have to go to war for a second time, then the public mood would be that a population that neither lived, nor worked, nor paid taxes, in the United Kingdom, and which was so small that it could be resettled in any number of places in Britain without anyone's even noticing, ought simply to be told to move.
As it were, to get on their bikes.
The Conservative Party, its press, its voters, UKIP, and all the rest of them, would say exactly that if the Falklands War had been fought under any Prime Minister other than Thatcher.
Numerous territories that were successfully defended by force of arms under Churchill have gone; indeed, almost all of them have done so.
It is particularly worth mentioning that no African country has ever become independent of Britain under anything other than a Conservative Government.
That party, as such, did not defend the Empire, any more than Labour was as uniformly committed to "Colonial Freedom" as it now prefers to pretend that it was.
The 1945 Labour manifesto mentioned self-government for India only, and Attlee's Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, actively opposed decolonisation everywhere else, on the grounds that the living standards of British working people would decline as a result.
But then, along came the Conservative Party. Until, that is, 1982.
Thatcher, however, is now dead. At last, there is an uncontroversial thing that can be said about her.
Since the Falklands, Britain has fought several very controversial wars indeed. This side of a Corbyn Premiership, there might be more again before there were any renewed attempt to press the Argentine claim to the Falkland Islands.
Fewer than three thousand people of distant British extraction, far more distant than that of numerous much larger population groups around the world, and located at the other end of the earth? They need assume absolutely nothing.
Mercifully, this is most unlikely ever to be put to the test. But holding such a view is certainly no bar to any office in the United Kingdom.
If it were, then there would be no Foreign and Commonwealth Office. And probably no Ministry of Defence, either.
Right-wing Tory MPs say they are looking forward to the prospect of a Labour Party headed by Jeremy Corbyn – because they agree with him on many issues.
The rebels are plotting to vote with Mr Corbyn on his opposition to the High Speed 2 rail line, support for the decriminalisation of non-payment of the BBC licence fee, his antipathy to the European Union and his opposition to military interventionism.
‘He offers us the perfect chance to give the PM a bloody nose,’ said one.
And turn a few pages, remembering that this is the Mail, in order to read Colonel Tim Collins, of the Iraq invasion and of the Henry Jackson Society, calling for negotiation with IS.
Mark Almond is a fairly regular contributor to the Mail on Sunday, and John Laughland is an occasional one.
When is it, or any other right-wing paper, going to publish an article by either of them, setting out the view that withdrawal from NATO, as advocated by Corbyn, is a thoroughly conservative and Tory position?
Plus, of course, something on the very real security risk that is posed by our existing Political Class's enmeshment with Saudi Arabia, as well as with Turkey and Qatar.
Qatar hosts and funds the Hamas that Corbyn is castigated for having met, but which Tony Blair has met far more often.
Blair recently invited the Qatar-based leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashal, for talks in London with the approval of David Cameron.
Turkey, meanwhile, is a member of NATO. Doesn't that make you feel secure?
When it comes to Northern Ireland, the fact is that most people in Great Britain view its inhabitants as, well, Irish. They do not look at television reports of Orange marches and see their own culture expressed.
Being Irish does not make anyone foreign in Britain. But being Irish like that does make one more so than at least the Neighbours type of Australians, or than New Zealanders, or, frankly, than the people of the Greater Dublin Area.
In similar fashion, people from the Irish Republic see Nationalists from the Six Counties as far less "Irish like us" than they do members of the Irish Catholic Diaspora "on many a shore", and not least in many an English, Scottish or Welsh town or city, where the inhabitants of the 26 Counties are far more likely to have relatives.
Just as people from England, Scotland or Wales are far more likely to have relatives in Australia, New Zealand or the Irish Republic, or for that matter in the Caribbean or in the Indian Subcontinent, than to have them in Northern Ireland.
As far as almost everyone in Britain is concerned, the question of Northern Ireland is settled. There would be no public sympathy worth measuring for any attempt to upset that balance from an ostensibly Unionist position.
Unionists would be best advised, as there are mounting signs that they are aware, to make their case in terms of their undeniable, and of course their utterly British, attachment to the National Health Service.
Likewise, there would be no public support whatever for another Falklands War.
If the alternative were that this country would have to go to war for a second time, then the public mood would be that a population that neither lived, nor worked, nor paid taxes, in the United Kingdom, and which was so small that it could be resettled in any number of places in Britain without anyone's even noticing, ought simply to be told to move.
As it were, to get on their bikes.
The Conservative Party, its press, its voters, UKIP, and all the rest of them, would say exactly that if the Falklands War had been fought under any Prime Minister other than Thatcher.
Numerous territories that were successfully defended by force of arms under Churchill have gone; indeed, almost all of them have done so.
It is particularly worth mentioning that no African country has ever become independent of Britain under anything other than a Conservative Government.
That party, as such, did not defend the Empire, any more than Labour was as uniformly committed to "Colonial Freedom" as it now prefers to pretend that it was.
The 1945 Labour manifesto mentioned self-government for India only, and Attlee's Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, actively opposed decolonisation everywhere else, on the grounds that the living standards of British working people would decline as a result.
But then, along came the Conservative Party. Until, that is, 1982.
Thatcher, however, is now dead. At last, there is an uncontroversial thing that can be said about her.
Since the Falklands, Britain has fought several very controversial wars indeed. This side of a Corbyn Premiership, there might be more again before there were any renewed attempt to press the Argentine claim to the Falkland Islands.
Fewer than three thousand people of distant British extraction, far more distant than that of numerous much larger population groups around the world, and located at the other end of the earth? They need assume absolutely nothing.
Mercifully, this is most unlikely ever to be put to the test. But holding such a view is certainly no bar to any office in the United Kingdom.
If it were, then there would be no Foreign and Commonwealth Office. And probably no Ministry of Defence, either.
Do you suggest African decolonization was avoidable? Surely, it was inevitable in context and achieved with aplomb by the Empire Party, avoiding the bloodshed associated with French and Portugese efforts.
ReplyDeleteNow, that really is a new one.
DeleteYes, it was inevitable. No, the Tories did not achieve it with "aplomb", or by "avoiding bloodshed".
But it did achieve it with the support of most of its own supporters most of the time.
The Thatcher interlude, when they were like Labour people in being interested in politics, was then in the future, as it is now in the past.