The 20th century problem of partition took a 21st century turn for the worse this week as Westminster commenced a sabre rattling campaign against Dublin with a semi-overt threat to target the Republic with hybrid migration Lukashenko style.
A week from local elections and circa one year from a thumping Labour majority in the Commons, UK Tories hope to capitalise on the Irish government's institutionally lax asylum outlook with the threat of migrants heading south of Newry to make up for Sunak's Rwanda Plan being locked down by NGO lawfare and the ECHR.
Paddybashing and bus tickets for Connolly Station are the order of the day for Tories hoping to exact leverage over the EU with regards returning migrants via France. Naturally there is a big gap between rhetoric and reality as with anything Tory related.
This is happening as the British government itself slyly prepares to ink a calamitous free trade agreement with India that will accelerate mass migration into Britain even more than the post-Brexit dispensation.
Whatever the truth as to whether the so-called Rwanda effect is already impacting asylum numbers in Dublin the Tory opportunism seeks an outlet for its letdowns on migration and Ireland is now a pawn in a wider geopolitical game with the EU and London.
McEntee and co. have been caught totally on the hop with the prospect of the Common Travel Area being torpedoed, the ghastly prospect of border checks in Dundalk or more shanty towns in Dublin underlining the geopolitical and social open wound left by the state's dated open border outlook, already an outlier among EU member states.
Even taking into account the complexity this was an own goal enabled by placating the open border lobby in Dublin and may substantially change the equation on Irish foreign policy nevermind reunification henceforth.
Events in Newtownmountkennedy bordering on civil insurrection were bad enough without electorally cynical and Brexit-weary Tories throwing a curveball at Leinster House by spiking the migration issue on the international stage.
Some points to note.
- The North Begins Again: Regardless of Dublin's dysfunctional attitude towards the refugee crisis, this week should highlight the continued perniciousness of partition. Only one jurisdiction can exist in Ireland in the era of replacement migration—one hopes it will be run by Irishmen rather than increasingly-Indian Tories.
- The Brussels Angle: This internationalisation means that migration is not just an issue behind the cordon sanitaire anymore but a genuine security risk to the very survival of the state especially as the EU and UK face a decade of post-Brexit transition and regulatory wars and an expansion of war beckons on the continent. An all-Ireland approach to migration is not just republican fantasy but a geopolitical essential.
- The 6 and the Great Replacement: If you thought the emergence of nativist sentiment post-East Wall was wild, wait until the northern statelet, with its lingering paramilitarism and splintering unionism—nevermind the fact it is now an EU frontier after 2020, gets going. A dispute over an African mayor of Derry being parachuted in could just be starters for the decades ahead when Belfast and Derry already pre-existing sectarian machines come into contact with the third world, potentially in transition towards a MI5-run 'Shared Ireland.'
- Tory Tactics: Regardless of how many GBNews slots are offered, the Tory machine has zero interest in solving demographic replacement on either side of the border or in Britain. Just as in Carson's time, Ireland is a chip in a wider internal power game by London elites happy to placate the Brexit-voting peasants with some cheap Daily Mail headlines as the country transforms into a Pakistani slum. Thinking that the Republic's hopelessly anglophile political class is simply Brit bashing a la John McGuirk doesn't cover the real issues at hand. London mandarins seriously considered moving millions of Hong Kongers in the 1980s to the six counties to kill two birds with one stone and won't hesitate to direct tens of thousands of Afghans to Mount Street if it needs a polling boost.
- The National Question: This has and will continue to floor Sinn Féin, already grappling with populist electoral stirrings in the 26, and adds a roadblock to any path to a United Ireland of any description. A sane republican platform needs border control (preferably in the Irish Sea) as a leading issue with the Danish option an easy out for any constitutional nationalist looking to outwit an as of yet immature nationalist right.
The North becoming a space of chaos in the migration wars is something that should keep both you and the Irish government up at night regardless of your hostility to replacement migration. Amoral and jingoistic Tories playing around in Irish affairs is nothing new, but a Pandora's Box kept in check since the 1990s has been opened up as the North becomes a potential asylum dumping ground for UK elites.
If you thought the East Belfast UDA was bad enough, imagine a prospective new Irish state post-reunification navigating Albanian and Afghan narco gangs. Aside from institutionalised open border policies in Dublin and Brussels, let us not forget the one wold that poses arguably the greatest demographic threat in the long term after this week: partition.
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