Irish politicians don’t just exist for Britain’s benefit

One’s eye is turned, tearfully, to a “report” on “alternative media” blog Skwawkbox.

“Breaking” announces the headline, vigorously. “Ireland will block Brexit deal if #MayDUP deal goes ahead”.

First, that “Breaking”. The Skwawkbox story, written on 22 June, refers to comments made by Ireland’s new minister for foreign affairs, Simon Coveney, on 19 June. You can watch the film of Coveney’s comments on the RTE website.

To suggest a three-day old report of a long-held position is somehow “Breaking” is a little cheeky, but well, welcome to the new independent media.

More irritating is what comes after that Breaking: the implication that Coveney has said the Irish government will block any Brexit deal if Theresa May enters into a confidence and supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party.

Let’s be very clear: Coveney has said no such thing. He has said the Good Friday Agreement must be protected in Brexit, the consistent position of the Irish government since the issue of Brexit was first raised.

Skwawkbox’s writer makes an enormous leap, asserting that any arrangement between the DUP and the Conservatives will breach the GFA.

This is far from clear: but dear old Skwawkbox asserts that Coveney’s comments are a “huge – and possibly mortal – blow for Tory hopes of delaying the collapse of their ‘weak and wobbly’ minority government”, with “by far the most likely result” that Theresa May will “drive to Buckingham Palace with her own and her government’s resignation and trigger a new General Election.”

This is nonsense, involving several huge assumptions and leaps of faith.

And that’s annoying enough, along with the also very annoying “BBC isn’t reporting this” sidecar that now accompanies all “independent media” posts.

But there is an even more annoying element: The Skwawkbox writer gushes: “Thank you Ireland, thank you Mr Simon Coveney. You are very likely saving the peace process – and helping to bring down a toxic and incompetent Tory government that has been breaking all kinds of constitutional precedents in its desperate attempt to cling to power.”

Here we find a bizarre assumption among British people that Irish politics exists to provide some kind of Deus ex machina that will result in their preferred political outcomes. This isn’t unique to Skwawkbox, or to this story. As the DUP deal was developing, several papers put out the story that Sinn Féin’s newly elected MPs were going to Westminster in order to take up their office and Westminster inductions. More people than is healthy – and, I’ll be clear – not the kind of people who normally share stories from the Sun or the Daily Express, posted the stories, with an apparent hope that it mean Sinn Féin were about to take their seats in Westminster and skewer the numbers towards the, er, progressive side.

This was not only ignorant of the reasons behind Sinn Féin’s continued abstention from taking Westminster seats, it also implied that Sinn Féin would somehow step in to “stop the Tories”.

For 32-county, republican, Sinn Féin, and Ireland’s ruling party Fine Gael too, there is an entity they have to deal with. The British Government. Now they will have private and even public views on who they would prefer to be the main party in the British government (and the view of Fine Gael and Sinn Féin will be very, very different), but in the end, both are dealing with the government of a foreign power.

Because Britain is a foreign country.