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Matthew O'Toole
@MatthewOToole2
, 3 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
Update: there has now been a speech which touches on this briefly. It was made in Spain for some reason.

It repeats the remarkable argument that the backstop is flawed because it does not 'win the consent of both communities in NI'.

Does Brexit? Do Alternative Arrangements?
I don't know many people who think the backstop is optimal (investment potential notwithstanding). But if 'both communities' have parallel consent then Brexit cannot happen at all. Or HMG should be explicit that it is preferencing one 'community' over the wishes of the majority.
NB - there are more than two communities in NI
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Matthew O'Toole
@MatthewOToole2
Re hospital fiasco. As a civil servant who worked on countless media operations & visits for controversial senior politicians, there is something unique about the willingness of people (not just activists) to confront this PM in public (thread)...
It must be at least partly related to his own insistence on flouting convention and the sense of permission that some people take from that. George Osborne or David Cameron were hardly loved - and were frequently loathed - but they rarely got the treatment Boris constantly gets..
Osborne in particular was the face of the most aggressive cuts in generations. But prevailing norms and restraint generally prevented people from berating him at will. People dont seem to apply the same norms to Boris Johnson. Perhaps because he doesn't apply them to himself
Read 3 tweets
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Matthew O'Toole
@MatthewOToole2
To understand why the UK failed to see the Brexit NI problem, it is worth asking why no one in London ever talks about John Hume.

Below is one of Ireland's most senior diplomats. Hume's legacy is central to how the Irish state has perceived itself since 1998 (GFA thread)..
When RTE had a public vote less than a decade ago on Ireland's Greatest person, Hume beat Michael Collins, the man who won independence and founded the state. Hume is the moral and intellectual architect of the GFA, not David Trimble - who was courageous enough to do the deal...
But cannot claim to have worked out the three strands - internal power sharing, North-South, East-West - or built up US and EU goodwill over years. Or, more than anything, an interpretation of tragic ethno-national conflict on one island that required more than binary victory...
Read 6 tweets
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Matthew O'Toole
@MatthewOToole2
One constant thing about British-Irish affairs is how prominent things appear in historic terms while barely registering in electoral terms. Every documentary and book about Blair features Good Friday and his role. But it won't have won or lost him a single British vote...
Perhaps more so with Thatcher: hunger strikes, Brighton bomb, AIA. You can't study her era without understanding but they had practically zero electoral import in 80s. Same with Wilson/Heath and the start of the troubles...
Irish issues end up shaping British history all the time but there's a pathological electoral indifference that prevents people from seeing it.
Read 3 tweets

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