Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Semi-detached

The Democratic Unionist Party Nigel Dodds with an intervention during the House of Commons debate on the June election motion

... Secondly, on Brexit, Northern Ireland’s position is different from that of the rest of the United Kingdom. That has been made clear in the Government’s paper, which recognises our special circumstances. 

A few sentences later in the same intervention --

Finally, this election will provide clarity on the big issue of how this country is to go forward. It will provide clarity on the Union that really matters: the Union of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Again, the people of Northern Ireland will have a clear choice on that issue. They will have a clear choice on whether to rally round and state firmly that they want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom or to go down the route presented by Sinn Féin, whose Marxist-Leninist concept of a republic has been rejected even by most of those who accept its nationalism. They reject the party’s economic outlook. The only way to support the Union is to rally behind the Democratic Unionist party on 8 June.

Notice his irony-free claim that Northern Ireland needs a special treatment in the Brexit negotiations, but that it absolutely is in a single Union with Britain! Dodds also showed no awareness that Theresa May had called an election partly because she concluded that even the slavish loyalty of the DUP to the Tories in parliamentary votes was just not enough of a boost to her 17 seat majority to actually matter. 

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