Dear Ruthie, 

I hadn’t heard from you for some time, to the point where I wondered if you were perhaps unwell.But thanks be to God, you’re back in The News Letter now, as full of piss and vinegar as ever. In yesterday’s column, titled ‘Relationship between O’Neill and McDonald will come under great strain’,  you provide several  nuggets of wisdom. One such: Mary Lou is the bad cop, Michelle the good cop.  You prepare the ground for this by telling us how much you admire one M Thatcher:

“I am intensely grateful to Margaret Thatcher, the first woman to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Like her or loathe her, she was such a towering presence that no one again could credibly say women weren’t strong enough for the job.”

Since you tell us all about how you’ve been a feminist for so, so long, I’m wondering if that feminist stance was encouraged by your late husband Patrick Cosgrave. He was as you know  an even more devout fan of Thatcher and wrote what most considered a hagiography of her (and later one on that other fine British political figure, Enoch Powell). In fact, rumour had it that your husband was  on the path to a place in Thatcher’s cabinet before, it is alleged, an unfortunate incident involving alcohol occurred and he fell. – some say literally –   out of favour with the Iron Lady. But the poor man is gone now and he did have a hard life, as I’m sure you know.

But back to your stirring article in The News Letter. Your crystal ball tells you that things at the top of Sinn Féin will come under strain:

‘The relationship between the two women will come under great strain. Already, O’Neill is looking and sounding much more confident and McDonald seems stressed.’

That’s interesting. I’ve watched a couple of video interviews with Mary Lou since Michelle took up her position as First Minister and I would have said Mary Lou was very much at ease in both interviews – in fact, firing on all cylinders. You, interestingly, see Mary Lou and Michelle as headed in different directions:

‘At a time when it might suit MacDonald [sic]  to step up the Anglophobia, could O’Neill think of unionists and resist?’

I hesitate to suggest that a person of your outstanding intelligence might have got the wrong end of the stick, Ruthie,  but this idea that talking about a. reunited Ireland is ‘Anglophobia’, or that Michelle O’Neill is incapable of attending to her governmental duties in the north while pursuing Irish reunification  sounds just a little daft to me.  It’s the norm, not the exception, for leaders to have and promote both a domestic policy and a national/international policy.  Sending British troops to the Malvinas and killing several hundred  Argentinians on board a cruiser that was sailing away from, not towards the area of conflict  did wonders for Thatcher’s popularity. As another admiring organ, The Sun, said in its headline: “GOTCHA!’ 

I hope my letter doesn’t distress you too much, Ruthie. I know I speak for many when I say  your opinions on Ireland (which I believe you occasionally visit) are a source of great merriment and do much  to convince waverers that a reunited Ireland can’t possibly be a bad idea, given that you lift your metaphorical club and hammer the idea so frequently.

Anyway, it’s truly invigorating to read you again and it brings to mind those days fado fado when I used watch you  walk the corridors of UCD, invariably with your arm in Paddy Cosgrave’s and your eyes lit up in admiration of this clever man. Those were the days,eh,Ruthie? No daft talk of a reunited Ireland back then. Hey ho. How times have changed.

Yours in admiration

Jude