Is Colum Eastwood a bit dim or is he pretending? Maybe he’s softening up his party so they’ll agree to Fianna Fail having his party for lunch…Sorry, forming a mutually supportive merger with his party. Or maybe he wants to show that after mature reflection he has decided that, all in all, Theresa May’s proposed agreement with the EU would be better than crashing out. Or maybe it’s just that he’s a wee bit dim.
“Jeremy Corbyn’s continued opposition to the draft Withdrawal Agreement, based on the myth that it would create a border down the Irish Sea, is not only wrong, it is disingenuous.”
Disingenuous. Have you ever heard a normal person using that word in everyday speech? It means, as I’m sure Colm knows (somebody is bound to have told him) someone pretending not to know about something when one is really well-informed on the subject. Colm ‘s attack on Jeremy Corbyn comes out of the fact that he says Theresa May has put a border in the Irish Sea with her withdrawal agreement. So has she?
Well, yes and no. As Colum himself declares, “There will be additional regulatory checks for some goods coming to Northern Ireland from Britain.” Which sounds suspiciously like a border to me, even if Colm would rather dress them up as ‘regulatory checks’. If it walks like a duck, etc. But no, if you figure a border must work both ways. “There will be none [‘regulatory checks’] going from Northern Ireland to Britain. This hardly constitutes a ‘border in the Irish Sea.”
Colum old sausage, you can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig. And you can use big words like ‘regulatory’ but it still means there are customs people checking stuff. Which means that the DUP are right to say Theresa May has gone back on her word and shafted them. If you don’t believe me, Colm, ask them. They’ll tell you, using a simple Anglo-Saxon vocabulary.
Sometimes, looking at Colum trying so hard to sound grown-up, I think of the boy who stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled. All around him, his party is sinking deeper into the briny, with Fianna Fail’s foray into Omagh making a bad situation unspeakably worse.
Let me murmur in your shell-like ear, Colum. If you’re facing annihilation, it’s better to go down maintaining a dignified silence rather than lashing out at a British political party. It won’t make you any friends among those who will probably form the next Westminster government. It will irritate the DUP who are having a hard time with Theresa May’s duplicity (dup-licity – geddit?) and don’t want advice from the leader of a party that has the waters of oblivion lapping at chin-level. And it will confirm in the minds of many nationalists that the only alternative to the Shinners is a slightly forlorn little figure with a two-tone beard, wandering around trying to think of something to say that might make him sound grown-up .
Is binn béal in a thost, Colum – better to keep silent and be thought a bit dim, than to open your mouth and put the matter beyond reasonable doubt.
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