THE British foreign secretary, James Cleverly, chose his words deliberately when speaking with that typically British air of superiority last week following the calculated decision to exclude the Sinn Féin president, Mary Lou McDonald, from talks on the protocol in Belfast.
It was somehow apt that a Londoner, on a doubtlessly rare visit to Ireland, would have the temerity to imply that he had the authority to dictate who the Irish people determined would be their political leaders in 2023.
Most of us on this island are well aware that, at the point in which ignorance and hubris collide, an ambitious British Tory will most assuredly be found.
“It was an opportunity to meet elected representatives of the people of Northern Ireland. I’ll be meeting Irish politicians in the near future when I go to Ireland,” declared Cleverly.
For the avoidance of any doubt, this wasn’t a cock-up, as some initially attempted to dismiss it following briefings suggesting the move related to diplomatic protocol stating that a foreign secretary meet his Irish government counterpart prior to engaging with opposition politicians.
Indeed, within 24 hours, the latest in a never-ending list of haplessly incompetent pro-consuls, Chris Heaton-Harris, was providing a very different reason, claiming that the exclusion was because the Sinn Féin leader was elected to a legislature in a European Union country.
In truth, Cleverly and Heaton-Harris had a number of reasons for taking this deeply provocative step.
The British government knows that consciously kicking northern nationalists goes down well with hardline unionism, as the immediate response from some unionist commentators and politicians confirmed in the aftermath of the incident.
Demeaning the Irish can be a useful means of distracting unionists from the fact that any new deal with the European Union is almost certain to fall well short of the steps being demanded by the DUP and the ragtag assortment of extreme loyalists whose voices continue to be amplified due to unionism’s leadership failings.
Respect for the all-Ireland identity of nationalists remains limited and certainly a long way short of the parity of esteem vision outlined in the Good Friday Agreement.
For some in the British Conservative Party and within unionism, the right to be Irish in this part of Ireland, as recognised in that Agreement, means little more than attending a concert for a British Army regimental band on St Patrick’s Day each year.
For perspective, let us imagine for a second what would be the response in the event of unionist politicians being required to pledge an oath of loyalty to the Irish Republic as a condition for being able to sit in the Dáil following a successful referendum campaign on Irish unity.
It wouldn’t happen because nationalist Ireland would be conscious of the need and desirability of respecting the British identity of unionists. Don’t hold your breath on reciprocation at Westminster any time soon.
It is the same mindset which saw unionists fiercely objecting to young footballers from a nationalist background in the north take the wholly legitimate and logical decision to opt to represent the Republic of Ireland at international football level.
Ironically, the Irish government has been complicit in this. The refusal to initiate a referendum which, on successful passing, would permit Irish citizens residing in the north to participate in Irish presidential elections feeds this prejudicial mindset by failing to provide an entirely reasonable means for Irish people to exercise the right to be involved in the affairs of the nation.
Sinn Féin has done the people of Ireland a considerable service by successfully developing and building a popular island-wide political party that is poised to lead administrations in Dublin and Belfast in the years to come.
Our politics remain in a quagmire for one over-riding reason, and that is unionism’s abject failure to come to terms with equality.
It cannot cope with its inability to frustrate the articulation of differing narratives of the past; has walked away from power-sharing due to an inability to accept the changing realities of our society in the present; and has taken no steps to prepare for a future in which it is destined to be an ever-decreasing minority voice alongside an all-Ireland people confident of their own identity and place.
There is every indication that last week’s talks ‘exclusion’ manoeuvre was the first step in a campaign by the British government and unionists to dictate how nationalist political parties can organise and function in Ireland, an illustration of how much they are struggling to come to terms with the advance of all-Ireland politics.
James Cleverly, a man whose lack of interest in any part of Ireland is matched only by the dearth of knowledge he has for the place, may have fired the initial salvo in a battle the British government-unionist axis is not only destined to lose but which is guaranteed to further galvanise support for Sinn Féin and therefore inevitably accelerate the development of competing all-island parties and politics in the future.
That’s not very clever.
