14 April 2023 , 15:25
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JOE Biden looked to be having a grand old time on his visit to Ireland this week.
The American President seemed genuinely happy to be touring the island his family hail from and which he calls his spiritual home.
He played a straight bat in Belfast, praising the Ulster Scots who helped build America, talking up his distant English roots and told both sides of the sectarian divide that if they can restore government, weighty US investment could follow.
Which was a blow to hardline Unionists and Tories who were willing him to spit on an orange sash or burst into Fenian rebel songs, thus confirming their view that he thinks all Brits are scumbags.
They were orgasmic when the gaffe-prone octogenarian mixed up the All Blacks and the Black and Tans, with the DUP’s Sammy Wilson calling him “a bumbling bigot”.
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That gaffe apparently backed up Arlene Foster’s claim that “Joe Biden hates the UK” and gave right-wing media a free pass to label him a Brit-loathing fanatic. They dragged out old footage of him joshing with the BBC about being Irish and joking that no-one wearing orange was welcome in his home.
Joe Biden in Ireland this week (Getty Images)This from people who crucify “the wokerati” for lacking a sense of humour.
They showed a photo of him with Gerry Adams, labelling him an IRA sympathiser, despite there being plenty of photos of a smiling Queen shaking Martin McGuinness’s hand.
They cited his snubbing of an invite to King Charles’s crowning as proof of his hatred for the royal family and his contempt for the special relationship, even though no US President has ever attended a British monarch’s Coronation.
And they asked why, if his mission was to bring lasting peace to Ireland, did he address politicians in the South but not the North?
Well, he would have happily addressed Stormont had it been sitting, but now that Sinn Fein is the biggest party the DUP has no intention of working under a Nationalist majority.
Biden may well be an 80-year-old, dewy-eyed romantic who inherited an antipathy towards past British rulers, whom he believed exploited his ancestors. But the idea that he is an ideological dinosaur whose pro-Irish sentiments threaten progress in Northern Ireland, as the likes of Kate Hoey have been spouting, is baloney.
He has twice backed post-Brexit deals between the UK and the EU over Northern Ireland (the Protocol and the Windsor Agreement) and he is urging the politicians to get back into Stormont.
The fanatics clinging to a fanciful past are the Ulster Unionists and their Tory supporters who won’t be happy with a Brexit they demanded until there is a hard border separating those ruled from London with those ruled from Dublin.
Biden’s pro-Irish sentiments are a convenient smokescreen, helping the Right deflect from the fact that the DUP is the biggest block to peace, unity and investment in Northern Ireland.
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As we have seen, time and again, the party who, even former Ulster Unionist Leader David Trimble’s son Nicholas referred to this week as “myopic”, will only ever allow democracy to work in their province on their terms.
Sadly for the British, there were dinosaurs dangerously clinging to a mythical past in Belfast this week, but one of them wasn’t Joe Biden.