The Good Friday Agreement is not enough reason to constrain the UK

So what if the UK repudiates elements of the Good Friday Agreement?
The British and EU flags flap in the wind outside the European Union headquarters. "It is Brussels, not London, that is the colonialist bully in this matter.  Boris Johnson is not Dublin’s biggest enemy," writes Matt O'DowdThe British and EU flags flap in the wind outside the European Union headquarters. "It is Brussels, not London, that is the colonialist bully in this matter.  Boris Johnson is not Dublin’s biggest enemy," writes Matt O'Dowd
The British and EU flags flap in the wind outside the European Union headquarters. "It is Brussels, not London, that is the colonialist bully in this matter. Boris Johnson is not Dublin’s biggest enemy," writes Matt O'Dowd

So what if the UK repudiates elements of the Good Friday Agreement?

Remember, London may be justified, and both Dublin and London are eager to differ with continental EU practice if faced with EU obstacles to the smoothness of all-island trade. It is Brussels, not London, that is the colonialist bully in this matter. Boris Johnson is not Dublin’s biggest enemy.

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As a southerner, I now ask myself an unsettling question, is the ‘Good Friday’ agreement really what it’s cracked up to be? I have five comments on this.

1. John Hume in 1998/9 supposedly drew, ‘for the very first time’, consent from both communities-at-once through a joint referendum’ (latter to be repeated every seven years until Northern Ireland’s annihilation finally secured?).

In fact the only good parts of his formula were copied straight from our 78-year-old, perfectly adequate 1922, 32-county constitution.

In that document, reciprocal consent was given to one another’s Tuatha (political territories) by each of the two Irish Parliaments in December of 1922; and thereby all traces of the Treaty of Windsor (Oct 6, 1175) annihilated.

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And since London was now offering ‘Newfoundlad Status’ to Northern Ireland, my claim that an ancient Ulster-type, native sovereignty was restored, seems historically valid.

NI’s personal choice of London instead of Dublin then, was no more ‘colonial’ than Dublin’s choice of Brussels as supreme decider of legal mores today.

Plus, did not Dal Riada once exist? John Major and Dublin’s weakening then, in 1993, of Northern Ireland’s 2,400-year journey toward Newfoundland-type sovereignty, was a perverted act.

2. In addition, IRA armed blackmailing of both our electorates with a threat of return to ‘immediate & terrible war’, made both ‘consents’ invalid under Article 29.2 of Bunreacht (1937).

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3. In addition, Northern Ireland Catholic MPs defied even the southern electorate (from 1922 on) by never recognising NI, rendering a politics of the left, right and centre impossible to attain in NI. A ‘unionist hegemony’ was constructed by nationalists themselved.

Only the NI Labour Party remained sensible (read its sorry history in Wikipedia- how it was destroyed by nationalist infiltration).

4. ‘But a majority, north and south, voted Yes in 1999.’

Yes, with a gun to our heads and John Major bullied by fear of another 30 years of London bombs.

Such ‘consent’ is invalid under Article 29.2.

John Hume’s ‘All-party consent to NI after a referendum’ was no consent at all, since NI’s existence to be put in jeopardy every seven years by a border poll (is there a single other EU state where Annexation by Biological Semtex is tolerated?)

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Additionally, Dublin and Belfast each wants to differ with Brussels on border trade arrangements now.

Angela Merkel actually came to Dublin to publicly bully us some months ago and our cabinet took it lying down!

5. As for Unity and Dublin’s ‘A Shared Ireland’, a national flag is easily agreed: green with a gold harp, our state flags staying as before.

And a national anthem, Hail Glorious St Patrick, may be sung at all future rugby internationals and an agreed national flag flown as well. Result: a social nation once again (not a nation-state!) quickly achieved, whatever about a legal one.

Matt O’Dowd, Dublin 8

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