Boris Johnson, Brexit and the End of the United Kingdom

Previous posts have looked at the parallels between Trump supporters and pro-Breixt voters in the United Kingdom: both groups are motivated by racism and a longing for a past that will never return. Now, in the person of Boris Johnson, the United Kingdom has a prime minister who is the equivalent of Donald Trump who is antagonizing allies and causing division with in the country.  Some believe it could end in the dissolution of the United Kingdom, with Scotland leaving the union and Northern Ireland ultimately joining the Irish Republic.  If this happens, Brexit supporters will find themselves in a much smaller and far weaker country that will only make the past they so long for even more impossible to recreate. With both groups - Trump supporters and Breixt supporters - racism and delusions have set them on a course for long term national disaster.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the potential collapse of the UK as a untied country.  Here are highlights:

In his first speech last week as Britain’s new leader, Prime Minister Boris Johnson exhibited his customary bravado: “The people who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts because we are going to restore trust in our democracy,” he said, reiterating his promise to lead the country out of the European Union, “and we are going to fulfill the repeated promises of Parliament to the people and come out of the E.U. on October 31st. No ifs or buts.”

But already, it’s Johnson who is starting to look like the prime minister with no clothes.

On Tuesday, the British pound dropped to its lowest level in two years, a reaction to growing alarm over the likelihood of Johnson’s government crashing Britain out of Europe in a “no-deal” Brexit. His cabinet is packed with hard-line Brexiteers who, like Johnson, want to see Brexit achieved at almost any cost. One minister has already indicated that the government is operating under the “assumption” that it must prepare for a “no-deal” departure: a scenario that would see tariffs immediately slapped on British exports to the continent, financial chaos, lines and delays at border checks, and an endless assortment of other (in some cases, still unforeseen) problems.

Johnson, undaunted, has engaged in a game of brinkmanship with Brussels and Dublin. Over the weekend, he talked tough on his Brexit intentions, voicing his opposition to the “Irish backstop” — the current understanding forged between Britain and the European Union that would preserve a soft border between Ireland and Northern Ireland and therefore theoretically keep all of Britain in the E.U.’s customs union.

Officials in Brussels, meanwhile, may be hoping that Johnson is compelled to blink first and that Britain’s Parliament acts to block a no-deal Brexit. That also may be a scenario Johnson actually wants. Another impasse at Westminster could prompt a snap general election that may yield a Parliament more inclined to back Johnson’s agenda.

[T]he domestic picture for Johnson is hardly rosy, either. For two days in a row, the prime minister was greeted by jeering crowds of protesters as he embarked on a tour of the United Kingdom’s home nations. On Monday, he received an icy welcome from Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, and was compelled to leave her residence in Edinburgh through a back door to avoid the angry demonstrations.

"The people of Scotland did not vote for this Tory government, they didn’t vote for this new prime minister, they didn’t vote for Brexit, and they certainly didn’t vote for a catastrophic no-deal Brexit, which Boris Johnson is now planning for,” Sturgeon said before his arrival. As my colleagues reported, the chaos and damage of a “no-deal” Brexit may speed calls for a new independence referendum in Scotland — a cause backed by Sturgeon’s Scottish Nationalist Party.

The next day in Wales, Johnson met a similarly dubious Welsh first minister. Mark Drakeford, a member of the opposition Labour party, warned in an interview with the Guardian that a no-deal Brexit would endanger Wales’s agricultural and manufacturing sectors and “a whole way of life that has existed for centuries.” He stressed that Johnson’s characteristic “bluff and bluster” was testing the unity of the United Kingdom itself.

“The prime minister’s twin ambitions are on a dangerous collision course,” noted an editorial in the Financial Times, referring to Johnson’s stated desire to both strengthen ties among Britain’s four home nations and lead the country swiftly out of the European Union. “Brexit in any shape promises to weaken the bonds between the nations of the British Isles. In the extreme form that seems to be the working assumption by Johnson’s new administration, it will impose intolerable strains. This could set in train a process that ends with the break-up of the union.”

On Tuesday, almost a full week after taking office, Johnson placed his first phone call to Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. Their exchange was reportedly “testy” and not particularly productive. According to an Irish readout, Varadkar reminded Johnson that the backstop was “a consequence” of Britain’s political decision to embark on Brexit and that Ireland had the full strength of the E.U. behind it.

On Friday, Varadkar hinted at the possibility of Northern Ireland severing its ties with the United Kingdom in the event of a no-deal Brexit. “I think increasingly you see liberal Protestants and Unionists who will start to ask where they feel more at home,” he said. “One of the things that ironically could really undermine the union of the U.K. is a hard Brexit, both for Northern Ireland and for Scotland, and that is a problem they are going to have to face.”

Not for nothing did former British prime minister Gordon Brown remark at a London event last week that Johnson could be remembered “not as the 55th prime minister of the U.K. but as the first prime minister of England.”

Vladimir Putin must be truly smiling.

Evangelical Christians and Brexit

In my view, evangelical Christians are a toxic and dangerous element in America's civil society and political realm.  Almost by definition, evangelical Christians in America are at war against modernity and a diverse, knowledge based society.  Anything or anyone that threatens their childish, myth based belief system must be destroyed.  And if they resemble anyone in the New Testament, it is the Pharisees - those that Christ purportedly roundly condemned.  In short, they are a nasty group and a threat to decent and knowledge based society.  Indeed, they celebrate ignorance and idiocy.   In the wake of the disastrous Brexit vote in Britain, it should come as no surprise that evangelical Christians strongly supported leaving the European Union.  A piece in The Economist looks at  and this foul element and it support for a revolt against diversity and modernity.  Here are excerpts:

IN NORTHERN IRELAND, where a majority of citizens voted to remain in the European Union, there is a small but still significant share of the electorate who will be rejoicing over the result on religious grounds. Among some devoutly evangelical Protestants, the referendum has been viewed as a playing out of religious prophecy. The most widely quoted chapter is Revelations 18, in which an angel cries triumphantly that the evil empire of Babylon has fallen after "all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." The verse on which preachers have focused is Revelations 18:4.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying: "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues."

In April, as campaigning for the referendum got underway, a conspicuous slogan urging people to vote for Brexit in the name of that verse appeared on a gable in Tigers Bay, a loyalist area on the north side of Belfast. In a small market town in the west of Northern Ireland, an evangelical group took over a premises on the main street and covered the front in posters urging people to vote "leave" or risk their souls by opting for a political institution which plainly stood for the Antichrist, an impostor whose appearance is a harbinger of the final battle before all earthly things come to end.

Using the eschatological parts of the Bible to denounce pan-European institutions is a long-standing trope in Ulster Protestant rhetoric. It was a recurring theme in the sermons of Ian Paisley, the preacher-politician who dominated Ulster Protestant politics for decades before striking a peace deal with his declared adversaries. He often alluded to Revelations chapter 17, which describes a depraved woman, the whore of Babylon, sitting upon a horrific, multi-headed, multi-horned scarlet-coloured beast. In Paisley's imagery, the Catholic church was the whore, and the European Union was the beast.

Such language is heard in ultra-Protestant circles elsewhere in the world, but Northern Ireland is probably the only place where it has come anywhere close to the political mainstream. 

Homophobie (and Hypocrite) Iris Robinson Continues to Reap Whirlwind

UPDATED: According to the New York Post yet another shocking detail has emerged in the Iris Robinson sex scandal: Her 19 year old boy toy was a Catholic!

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Former Northern Ireland MP Iris Robinson, both a homophobe and hypocrite of immense proportions, continues to reek havoc in the fragile political landscape of Ulster. Her husband, First Lord of the Government, has stepped down temporarily as he tries to conduct damage control over his wife's adultrous affair and financial improprieties, In the Irish Times, Iris Robinson gets ripped to shreds yet again in a column. What strikes me, however, is how much Ms. Robinson is like anti-gay members of the Republican Party in this country. She demands one standard from others and preaches morality while displaying none of those attributes herself. She's the Irish equivalent of Louisiana U.S. Senator David Vitter who preaches family values notwithstanding his frequent trysts with prostitutes. The hypocrisy is simply astounding. Here are some column highlights:
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THERE IS abomination at the house of Robinson, and it is fortunate for Ulster’s first couple that most of us are less inclined to reach for the Old Testament than they are. Iris Robinson called on her harsh God when she vilified homosexuals last year after a gay man had been beaten up by homophobes. The same Lord’s wrath was undoubtedly kindled when she lay down with young Kirk, and she knows only too well what Deuteronomy and Leviticus would have with her ilk. Left to their mercy, she would, in short, perish, and perish horribly.
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Iris the adultress has duly torn her hair and rent her garments; she has put on the sackcloth and ashes; and wept. Her repentance has been lavish, if selective. . . There have been reports that she is to retreat to the luxury ski resort to which Elin Nordregren went recently also after laying into renegade husband Tiger Woods with a golf club. Other reports suggest she is in hospital. Her husband says she is incoherent and too ill to face the questions he agrees she must answer.
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Iris Robinson the politician had all the DUP’s most unattractive traits, including prefacing all her sneery putdowns with the phrase, “I’m not going to take any lectures . . .” She was no feminist. However, it still came as a shock when Darragh MacIntyre’s excellent Spotlight programme presented the portrait of a powerful woman behaving like the worst sort of man.
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Spotlight revealed that Mrs Robinson had known Kirk McCambley since he was a nine- year-old child working in his father’s butchers shop. She had been very close to his father. Before he died, he asked her to look after his boy. She did so with a vengeance. She must have cut a glamourous figure, with her big hair and designer clothes, sweeping into Ballyhackamore in her convertible. . . She described Kirk as being like another son. Her sexual behaviour towards him can only be described as predatory. If she was lavish when he was her lover, when the sexual relationship ended, Iris Robinson wanted her money back.
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The fallen woman says that Jesus has forgiven her. Her husband seems less sure now that he will stand by his woman. She has been cast out, but the party of preference for the “holier than thou” is in deep trouble. Meanwhile Kirk, now 21, is still selling cappuccinos on the banks of the Lagan, while gay magazines want to turn him into a pin-up. Coocooachoo, Mrs Robinson.
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Iris Robinson brought disaster upon herself both by her conduct, her hubris, and her willingness to condemn others all too freely. Pay backs can truly be a bitch.

More Hypocrisy: Anti-gay MP Iris Robinson's Lover Said to Have Been under 21

I written before about Irish gay-hater, Iris Robinson (pictured at left), a Member of Parliament who condemned gays as sinners, advocated for reparative therapy, and pushed an anti-equality agenda. Recently, Ms. Robinson announced that she would be retiring from politics for health and family reasons. Turns out, Robinson must have been studying GOP politicians in the USA. It seems that the real story behind her resignation is that she was having an adulterous affair with Kirk McCambley (at far left), a man believed to be one third her age. Oh dear, another homophobic sinner caught by her own disregard of the "family values" standards she would impose on others. Of course, when it comes to hypocrisy, Ms. Robinson is in the good company of the child abusing Catholic Church. But maybe she just thought she really WAS Anne Bancroft in the movie, The Graduate. Both Pink News and the Daily Mail have more details. First some highlights from Pink News:

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Homophobic Northern Ireland MP Iris Robinson's affair was thought to have been with a young man aged under 21 at the time. News channel UTV, which broke the story of her affair and suicide attempt yesterday, reported the claim this evening. Robinson, who is 60, said the affair and suicide attempt took place in March 2008. She said the "brief" liaison began "completely innocently" when she offered support to someone who had suffered a family death.
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Earlier today, The Times reported that a BBC investigation into the finances of Robinson and her husband Peter, who is Northern Ireland's first minister, was what prompted her to reveal details of her affair and attempted suicide. The "embarrassing" television documentary was to be broadcast with allegations over the first family's financial affairs.
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Robinson, a fundamentalist Christian, was labelled a bigot for a series of outbursts last year in which she made offensive comments about homosexuality. In 2008, she told the Belfast Telegraph that homosexuality was comparable to paedophilia. She also told a radio show that homosexuality was a mental illness and could be "cured".
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Not surprisingly, the Dail Mail has some juicier tid bits on the affair and refers to McCambley as obinson's toyboy. Here are some highlights:
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Last night sources close to Mrs Robinson revealed her lover's name to be Kirk McCambley - and they said he was 19 when the pair became involved 18 months ago. . . . They apparently met in March 2008 at the funeral of Mr McCambley's father, a friend of Mrs Robinson. The young man, now 21, owns the Lock Keeper's Inn in south Belfast. Details of the affair were revealed by the BBC in an interview with her husband. Last night it was claimed that Mrs Robinson organised a £50,000 loan to help her toyboy lover set up the restaurant business.
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Mrs Robinson and Mr McCambley's affair lasted for around five months, ending after they allegedly rowed over the repayment of the money. . . In her statement she said: 'Everyone is paying a heavy price for my actions... I am so, so sorry. It had no emotional or lasting meaning, but my actions have devastated my life, and the lives of those around me.'
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Her name will bring to mind the fictional Mrs Robinson, played by Anne Bancroft who had an affair with a man half her age, played by Dustin Hoffman, in the 1967 film The Graduate.

Anti-gay Bigotry Alive and Well in Northern Ireland

The Christianists in America have been working hard to export their anti-gay bigotry to other countries, the UK and Australia among them. Apparently, there is fertile ground for their noxious posion and bogus "ex-gay" programs among some in Northern Ireland as evidenced by the outburst of the wife of Northern Ireland's new First Minister, DUP leader Peter Robinson. One would think that Ms. Robinson and Sally Kern have been having get togethers to refine their anti-gay tirades. As always, these "Godly Christians" are anything but Christian in their treatment of others. Fortuantely, the Independent also quotes medical expert who debunks the "cure" myth. Here are some highlights from the Independent:

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THE wife of Northern Ireland's new First Minister, DUP leader Peter Robinson, sparked outrage yesterday by offering to put gay people in touch with a psychiatrist who would help make them heterosexual. Just one day into his new job, Mr Robinson saw his wife Iris, who is also the DUP's health spokeswoman in the Stormont Assembly, dragged into a massive political row. The Strangford MP launched a stinging attack on homosexuality on a live radio phone-in show after a 27-year-old gay man was beaten up in a homophobic attack near his home and left with horrific injuries.

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Mrs Robinson described homosexuality as "disgusting, nauseous, loathsome, shamefully wicked and vile" and said her strong Christian upbringing meant she would never change her views and nothing would stop her from speaking out on the issue.

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She then offered to put gay and lesbian people in touch with a psychiatrist who she described as a born-again-Christian who would help them change their sexuality. Mrs Robinson told BBC's Nolan Show: "I have a lovely psychiatrist who works with me and who tries to help homosexuals turn away from what they are engaged in. "Homosexuality is not natural. My Christian beliefs tell me that it is an abomination and that is very clear. "It is an offence to God, an offensive act and something that God abhors.

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But Michael King from the Royal Society of Psychiatrists said there was no evidence people could obtain psychiatric help to stop them being gay. He said such treatment was potentially harmful. Professor King added: "There is a lot of evidence going back 50 years to suggest that attempts to change people's sexuality in either direction are not possible.