Richard Neal furore: UK has long lamented ‘green tinged’ views of US politicians seen as overly sympathetic to Republic of Ireland... and even the IRA
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Mr Neal is a long-serving politician from the north-eastern state of Massachusetts, now in his 70s, who has been a serial commentator on Irish affairs.
He serves in the US House of Representatives, and is chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee which examines taxation, welfare policy, and health insurance, among other things.
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Hide AdHis most recent intervention earned the ire of Northern Irish unionists by playing down the seriousness of the NI Protocol (referring to it as a “manufactured” issue) and by using the term “planter” to describe unionists and/or Protestants.
But as the links below show, unionism has long had cause to lament the pronouncements of Irish-American political movers-and-shakers:
Mr Neal’s remarks come several weeks after president Joe Biden extolled his own Irishness at VIP events on St Patrick’s Day.
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Hide AdBut in the course of doing so he mispronounced ‘cead mile failte’, got confused about who his wife is, and implied that Irish people in general are idiots.
On a darker note, San Francisco mayor London Breed has apologised for an honour which was given posthumously to former IRA commander Martin McGuinness:
Meanwhile Pennsylvania Democrat Kevin J Boyle has made repeated references to the Troubles on his own Twitter account, claiming variously that the UDA and UVF were run by the UK government, and suggesting that the IRA did not target civilians:
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