THE music hall farce that was the fleeting visit of US President Joe Biden to the North is a museum quality illustration of the rapid descent of the United Kingdom in the past seven years from second-tier world power to global laughing stock.
How on Earth British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who holds the reins at No.10 without a mandate to lead and is almost certainly looking at political meltdown in the next general election, thinks a bad-tempered spat with the world’s most powerful country is going to end is open to conjecture. Presumably he doesn’t think the consequences will be significant, otherwise he wouldn’t have instituted the almost comical series of events that led to President Biden getting in and out of Belfast with such stunning rapidity.
It’s reported that it was preposterous toing and froing about diplomatic protocol, photo opportunities and a coronation ‘snub’ that led to there being a Sunak-shaped hole in the front row of the audience the President addressed during his keynote speech at the Ulster University. If Mr Sunak thinks that will soon forgotten by a man who perhaps more than any President before him cherishes his Irish roots, he is more incompetent even than his performance as Prime Minister so far suggests.
The President has been unwavering in his support for peace and the Good Friday Agreement and ahead of travelling to Belfast on Tuesday he expressed his support for Mr Sunak’s Windsor Framework – a deal which if accepted by the DUP would see a return to devolved government here and a massive political win for the Sunak Government. Against that background this extraordinary series of events – which has left even the most seasoned political observers scratching their heads in bewilderment – seems even harder to understand.
What is easy to understand is that this occurs at a time when the UK is hailing an Indo-Pacific trade deal that will offset the projected 4 per cent drop in gross national product caused by Brexit by a risible 0.08 per cent (and that only after ten years of membership).
The government is hailing the Indo-Pacific development as “the biggest trade deal since Brexit”, even though the figures tell a different story. In this first real foray of the new ‘Global Britain’ into the big, bad world, the UK is playing on a pitch where, unlike in Europe, the United states has the whistle and the ball. Good luck with that.
Scappaticci death
THE death of Freddie Scappaticci was, like the deaths of so many who have traded principle for whatever it was that the British state could give them (or just as frequently take from them), a lonely, ignominious and bitterly poignant one.
While we remain sensitive to the fact that his family are grieving, it is nevertheless important to acknowledge at this time the suffering that his actions brought to other families and other homes in his role as an agent of the British state inside the IRA. History will judge him harshly, as it will his various masters.
