In the News Letter, Alex Kane calls the new TD for Louth, and still Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead, Gerard Adams, on his party’s, self-declared, “ongoing reconquest of Ireland“. From the News Letter article.
Sinn Fein’s greatest skill remains its ability to bluff with a poor hand. It always talks and acts as though Irish unity were an inevitability and that everything that happens – the ballot box/armalite tactic; the IRA ceasefire and decommissioning; becoming part of the government in Northern Ireland; and a handful of backbench seats in the Dail – is all part of an elaborate, joined-up strategy. It isn’t. Sinn Fein has been sucked in, screwed over and spat back out by the Brits. Sinn Fein has simply been shifted from ‘safe houses’ and prison cells to swanky offices and institutions funded by the UK Exchequer: with no united Ireland and no prospect of a united Ireland. But hey, none of these inconvenient facts will prevent An Phoblacht from continuing to print the legend instead!
Anyway, and in spite of the nonsense spouted by some panicked unionists last week, it’s about time that we stopped believing Sinn Fein’s own hype. Think, instead, of the Boggart in Harry Potter: the shape-shifting creature which takes on the form of the viewer’s worst fear. The Boggart-Banishing Spell (Riddikulus) causes the creature to assume a form that is funny to the spell caster, thereby counteracting the Boggart’s ability to terrorise. Boggarts are defeated by laughter, so forcing them to assume an amusing form is the first step to defeating them.
For all of their effort to present themselves as bogeymen, Sinn Fein is just arrogant, absurd, deluded and trapped. The balaclavas have been swapped for suits, P O’Neill replaced by a senior civil servant and anti-British rhetoric drowned out by talk of budgets and the need to implement Tory cuts. So yep, Gerry, your day has come: and Northern Ireland remains firmly anchored in the United Kingdom. Have fun with that tax axe on both sides of the border!
Heh. Read the whole thing.
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