Boris is pushing on with his deal. This deal is the best thing that happened to Irish republicism in years, he has my vote.
The DUP have no option now but to support a second Brexit referendum and pray the Brits vote remain.
If Boris gets it through it will signal the breakup of the UK with the Scots bolting and the occupied 6 returning to the republic over the couse of the next 2 or 3 generations.
Remaining in the EU is the only thing that will keep the UK together as it is currently constructed.
A no deal brexit might scupper all this and thats still not beyond the realms of possibility
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Boris messed up today by cancelling the main vote. He would have won and even though Letwins amendment made it somewhat irrelevent in a legal sense the very fact that parlaiment had finally voted to pass a Brexit bill would have been absolutely huge and practically guaranteed a Conservative majority in the next election
Borris/Cummings, (bummings) went all in. Figured if they threatened the hoc with cancelling the main vote if letwin went through that they had a chance of letwin getting voted down to facilitate the next vote. Whatll happen now is politics for simpletons. Boris will try and get anything at all voted through and claim it as a game changer. Decent chance he will. He has a plan to try to hard brexit, which he will use as an excuse, and will try to do so. Whether he can is in the ether.
Boris Johnson conformed that they will “send a letter” requesting an extension of the Brexit deadline.
My mother, on hearing the news, said “you’d think they’d send an email in this day and age”
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Fuck knows what happens next now Flatty. My best guess is that the EUROPEAN UNION will not make a decision on an extension until the end of the month, maybe giving him time to try and get the deal through.
They’ve sent a photocopy, and an email. Boris has refused to sign that letter and has sent another letter of his own making out that he’s not bound by the result of today’s vote.
There’s some nutjob roaring up from the street at Laura Keunssberg on BBC now
Poor Boris is agonising whether to hit “send” right now
He’s like a young lad who has drafted a text message to a girl he met at Wesley who he thinks he liked but can’t remember what she looked like, or her name
The thumb hovers, hovers, hovers, quivers, and hovers again
Will it ever go down
This is like a big bowl of vegetable soup & spuds on a cold winter day.
Ruth Dudley Edwards: DUP must see sense or it risks spectre of Corbyn in No.10
Having begun as a slightly reluctant Leaver, I have become very hardline over the last three years in reaction to the undermining by Establishment Remainers of attempts to implement the will of the people of the United Kingdom by getting out of the EU.
In fact, when the Supreme Court, in what I regard as a power grab, made its unanimous judgment delegitimising the Prime Minister’s proroguing of Parliament, I was angrier than I have been in a very long time.
Now, being almost as contemptuous of the Reverend Ian Paisley as I have been of the IRA and Sinn Fein, and having been a supporter of David Trimble since he began his courageous struggle to get a decent deal for his people in the negotiations that led to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, I am not cut out to be a cheerleader for the DUP - though there are thoroughly decent people in the party whom I like.
Yet when the party became an overnight sensation in Westminster after the 2017 general election, I was utterly appalled by their grotesque misrepresentation in the media, let alone social media.
The bigotry of cartoons showing Arlene Foster as a Neanderthal in Orange regalia made me furious, as did the contempt for social conservatives whose only sin was to believe what most people, including the Sinn Fein leadership, believed about single-sex marriage and abortion until five years ago.
Additionally, over the last few years I have been relieved the DUP were so influential in Parliament that they played an important role in resisting the enormous pressure to bring in a Brexit so soft and pointless it was nicknamed Brino (Brexit in name only).
But now it looks as if they intend to vote against the deal Boris Johnson secured in Brussels. I think they are on the wrong side.
I have no difficulty in understanding why unionists - although in many respects the most patriotic people in the British Isles - are deeply suspicious of the British Establishment.
John Hume used to speak frequently about their siege mentality. I remember Chris McGimpsey pointing out that Ulster Protestants would abandon their siege mentality if nationalists - and particularly violent republicans - would raise the siege.
Northern Ireland nationalists not only became part of a pan-nationalist alliance, for years, they dominated the approach of the Irish Government.
In the 1980s I began to sense there was a ganging-up against unionists by diplomats in London as well as Dublin.
When it came to negotiating the Anglo-Irish Agreement, my Irish diplomatic friends were utterly single-minded in pursuit of nationalist objectives, while their British equivalents seemed to suffer from colonial guilt. None of them seemed to have a bad conscience about having conducted all the negotiations behind the back of unionists who, hardly surprisingly, developed profound distrust of the Foreign Office and, indeed, the Northern Ireland Office.
I know the DUP feel betrayed by Boris Johnson, but I wish they would think pragmatically.
The demographic outlook for unionists is poor; they have few friends. The Prime Minister is genuinely a unionist; he got rid of the backstop though no one believed he could. Meanwhile, if Northern Ireland could remember its fine entrepreneurial traditions it could seize the unique opportunity offered by this Brexit deal, market itself as a gateway between the EU and the UK/world economy and provide exciting opportunities to the young people of both traditions who have been abandoning it.
That is the way to self-reliance, prosperity and respect.
I urge the DUP to think of this deal as did the able republican leader Michael Collins when accepting the compromises in the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921: “In my opinion it gives us freedom, not the ultimate freedom that all nations desire… but the freedom to achieve it.”
I urge them also to remember the law of unintended consequences.
This week the TUV leader Jim Allister tweeted: “Glad that at this point the DUP is doing the right thing. No unionist could accept this pushing of NI onto the window ledge of the Union.”
My fear is that by opposing the Johnson deal, the DUP may unwittingly ease the path to power of Jeremy Corbyn, who would push Ulster Protestants right out of the window.
She’s way off the mark there.
Tom Jones might say “It’s not unusual” 
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I am no fan of Dudley Edwards, but on one thing she is correct. The UK and the English in particular couldn’t give a shit about NI and increasingly would like to get rid of it. The Torys have traditionally been aligned with Unionists as they are somewhat soulmates given that both represent the most affluent in society. Corbyn and his mob hate the affluent and Corbyn himself was a friend of the Provos, hardly a friend of Unionists.
It is so sad that there is no leadership in NI, as the obvious future is to align themselves more with Ireland and the EU and let the English fuck off into the abyss. I suspect this is dawning on many people within NI, but who do they turn to for leadership? NI desperately needs a centrist non sectarian party to at least provide a bit of hope for the future.
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Who would have guessed Ruth would be a hardliner
Totally shocking
That’s what makes this article so comforting. RDE realising that the English have had a dildo up her arse for so long.
But we have one - Alliance! One wee problem - not enough people vote for it.
Have you ever lived in Ireland never mind Northern Ireland? That statement strikes me as the view of someone who has never heard the voice of working class loyalism.
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A centrist non sectarian party? How would that work? They’d still be from a unionist or nationalist background. They be centrist and happy to be part of the UK or centrist and part of the UK but would like to be in a UI. They could attract people of both religions who identify as neither Irish or British or both but do they campaign to continue with the status quo or opt for some federal type of arrangement with the rest of Ireland like in Belgium?
Boris Johnson has written and sent a letter of surrender to the European Union
@the_man_himself Will love this from a while back…
https://twitter.com/hakalakazoom/status/1184957768614236160?s=19
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Lived in Ireland up to the mid 90s and spent a fair bit of time in NI, admittedly among working class Republicans. How many from the south can say that let alone hve had interactio with working class loyalists? Most wouldn’t have had interaction with NI nationalists nor want it. To be honest doubt there’s much difference between working class loyalists and nationalists, most just want a better life for their families especially their kids. If loyalist working class could actually look down south they would see a society where increasing numbers of working class are going to college and getting decent jobs. Where there is increasing opportunities in relatively easy entry level call center jobs that pay ok.
Who would expose them to that reality is the question? Certainly not people who have vested interest in keeping them insulated from reality like the DUP.
TNH
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… and leaving the country.
But that wouldn’t matter. They see the South as a basket case. Listen sometime to them. You’ll hear them say they don’t want to pay 70 or 80 Euro to see a doctor, pay for school books etc etc. Jim Allister pretty much represents their views on the South.