Re: Time for Ireland to Grow Up?
Originally Posted by
Silver Tabby
->
That link requires permission to use my 'personal data'!! No way.
Here's an extract for you.
Copyright Spiked.
"Ireland has become the plaything of two empires. On one side there’s the EU, which for the past four years has cynically used Ireland as a weapon against Brexit. And on the other side there’s the Democratic wing of the American establishment which is now insisting there can be no US-UK trade deal unless the British government accepts a version of Brexit that keeps Northern Ireland beholden to certain EU rules and regulations. It’s time for Ireland to grow up and to refuse to be used as a patsy by two huge powers hell-bent on making sure Brexit never properly comes to fruition.
The Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, has issued what is effectively an imperial decree in relation to Ireland and Britain. He took to Twitter to announce that should he become president, should he become the most powerful man in the world, he will punish Britain if it even thinks of opting for a ‘Hard Brexit’ (or what the rest of us refer to simply as Brexit, as Britain’s complete exit from the European Union).
‘Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the [Good Friday Agreement] and preventing the return of a hard border. Period’, he said. Let’s be real about what is being said here. The aspiring leader of the most powerful nation in history is essentially instructing the United Kingdom to accept the Withdrawal Agreement, the highly problematic document signed between the EU and the UK which allows for continued EU oversight of economic matters in Northern Ireland even after the end of the transition period.
If the UK refuses to accept this arrangement, if it does anything to push back against the EU’s virtual annexation of a part of UK territory, then a future President Biden would punish us economically. He would hold up a trade deal, or maybe give the UK a bad trade deal. Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats have made similar comments. These people are making it clear that they will wield America’s economic and political power to the end of ensuring that the UK obediently agrees to allow the EU and its courts to continue ruling on customs, trade and state-aid issues in a part of the supposedly independent United Kingdom.
For a powerful politician in a foreign country to issue such a decree at any time – to insist that future trade-dealing will be contingent upon political obedience – is bad enough. But for Biden to make such an intervention in the week in which Boris Johnson’s government is actively seeking to temper and potentially change the Withdrawal Agreement is intolerable. It is a direct threat of future American meddling in internal British affairs."