Flannelled Fool IRA Scare Fail

As if to demonstrate that the Murdoch goons at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun are still faithfully doing their master’s bidding and demonising anyone and everyone exposing the Brexit shambles as just that, the paper has today engaged in a highly creative reinterpretation of recent events in the Dáil Éireann after the resignation of Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald over a smear campaign against a Garda Síochána whistleblower.

Leo Varadkar

The Guardian has reported this, telling “Ireland’s deputy prime minister is to resign to avert a parliamentary vote that would have collapsed the minority government and triggered a snap election at a crunch time for Brexit negotiations … Irish lawmakers had been due to vote on Tuesday on a no-confidence motion targeting the deputy premier, Frances Fitzgerald, filed by the opposition party Fianna Fáil”. There was more.

“Her position - and that of the prime minister, Leo Varadkar - has come under pressure over her handling of information about the treatment of a police whistleblower … Fianna Fáil sources told the Guardian that once Fitzgerald has gone from office the opposition will not proceed with a vote of no-confidence it had tabled for 8pm, which had the potential to bring down Varadkar’s minority government”. But the Sun knew otherwise.

Such were the superior insights available to the inmates of the Baby Shard bunker that they proclaimed “IRELAND’S outspoken premier was left humiliated today by the resignation of his deputy - but fresh Brexit chaos was diverted by the departure to the delight of Downing Street”. Strangely, the Murdoch mafiosi are alone in alleging the Taoiseach was “humiliated” and Downing Street “delighted” . Who made this claim?

The rictus grin of Master Cole

Ah well. The author of this steaming pile of bullpucky is none other than the odious flannelled fool Master Harry Cole, formerly tame gofer to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog, who has in addition claimed “The resignation comes just hours after Brussels signalled a climb down from Mr Varadkar’s hardline demands that Theresa May gives him a written solution to how the Irish border would work after Brexit or he would veto moving onto trade talks at the crunch summit”.

Let’s take this nice and slowly. Brussels does not tell Varadkar what to do, so it cannot signal a climbdown. Also, his concern about the Irish border remains, as does the potential veto. And for Master Cole, it gets a lot worse in very short order.

“The British Government were deeply worried the threat of an insurgent Sinn Fein at the ballot box was forcing Mr Varadkar's government to take the hardest possible line against Britain … Ministers believed this fear of the political wing of the IRA prompted the newbie Irish PM's outspoken war of words on Theresa May”. What’s he been imbibing?

Any minister of the Crown coming out with that drivel is, as they are wont to say on Merseyside, not dealing from a full deck. Sinn Féin, as they are at present, would be a political force in Dáil Éireann, as at present, were an election to be called. But they are not being factored into Varadkar’s thinking to that extent - the Taoiseach’s border concerns are more or less universally shared in Ireland. There’s nothing “hardline” about that.

Master Cole knows little enough about his own country, so it’s not surprising he can’t get his head around the politics of the Irish Republic. Don’t buy the Sun.