Boris Johnson has purged Theresa May’s cabinet and surrounded himself with Ministers who are pledged to take Britain into a no deal Brexit by October 31st.
Reflecting the deep split in the British upper class, the Financial Times describes him as
“At heart, a reactionary. With a worldview drawn from Rudyard Kipling’s paeans to English exceptionalism, he mourns the loss of empire, rails against the “nanny state”, and thinks the French should be eternally grateful for being rescued in two world wars.”
Yesterday 5,000 young people locked down Downing Street to protest his Trump style racism – but this went unreported in the mainstream media.
Johnson’s policies are an immediate and direct threat to the peace of this island. His image of himself as a modern-day Churchill means he will disregard the wishes of the Irish people. Instead he will align himself closely with the DUP and push through a hard border.
The key question is what will be the response of the Irish government.
They have congratulated Johnson on becoming British Prime Minister and then suggested that his bluster will not make up for a lack of detail.
But then in an extraordinary interview on RTE, Heather Humphries, a government Minister from a border county, stated quite categorically that the Dublin government will impose border controls to protect the EU single market.
When asked three times, if she would remain a cabinet Minister if this occurred, she simply repeated her claim that border controls were necessary to protect the EU single market.
This is totally wrong. Once the Irish government imposes border controls, the British government will impose its own. We are entering a game of chicken where each side say they don’t want a hard border but both are getting ready to impose one.
Instead of talking about border controls, a Dublin government should be supporting a border poll to remove partition. It would put Johnson under pressure by calling for mobilisations in both parts of Ireland to demand the only viable democratic solution.
If we had a genuine left government, it would denounce Johnson, state openly that it would not countenance any border controls on any part of island and call for active mobilisations to remove them.
