Fun thought experiment: Imagine for a second what would happen if a columnist with the Times of London declared that Ireland was a country “awash with ignorance and squalor”, and, as Fergus Finlay goes on to say, “riven with racism, and led by irresponsible charlatans”. How would we react, if that was written about Ireland?
The Ambassador in London would be protesting, you suspect. There would certainly be a tweet from a Government account dismayed at such “divisive, backwards, offensive rhetoric”. The matter would dominate Irish radio shows. We would have calls to boycott the newspaper in question.
But of course, an Irish columnist writes that about the UK, and there is no reaction at all. Grand stuff. Sure, it is the Brits. Here is what Finlay had to say, in all its despicable bigotry:
Britain is awash with ignorance and squalor now. A deeply divided society, riven by racism, and led by irresponsible charlatans. If ever there was a need for the Labour Party to be passionate about its values, to be furious in the face of recklessness, it is now.
Anglophobia is, of course, one of the two acceptable bigotries in Ireland. There are two groups of people who you can say just about anything about, and keep your place as a respectable gentleman of the establishment: Catholic Priests, and the English. We call ourselves a tolerant society, but on those two accounts, we are very far from it.
And what is Finlay’s problem, anyway? Well, it is that he does not approve of British Government policy. That is, of course, his right. He is joined in not approving of UK Government policy by millions of Britons, after all. The difference is in how he expresses it: with barely contained anti-British nastiness.
One suspects, of course, that Finlay’s real objection to the UK might not actually be based in historically ingrained loathing at all. He is, at the end of the day, not famed for nationalist sentiment. No, it is eminently possible that his real problem with the UK is how politically different it is from Ireland. After all, it is possible in the UK to express in the media ideas that are not progressive. They have GB news, and Tories, and they left the European Union. All of those things, to Fergus’s eyes, might be considered racist. Not that they are racist in and of themselves, of course, but that they are the kind of thing that racists might support. That is how many people of his kind judge the world, and it would be a stretch to imagine that he is immune.
And it is how the Irish establishment judge the world. The merits of an issue are never based on the issue itself, are they? Anti lockdown protests are bad, not because lockdown is good, but because the wrong kind of people might support them. The European Union is great because the right kind of people support it. We like Joe Biden because the right kind of Americans like Joe Biden. We do not write enough in Ireland about exactly how much of our politics, and our views, is about adopting positions that we believe are respectable, rather than thinking the issues through for themselves.
And of course, Finlay is a man of the modern left. Which means he would fit in very well with the UK Labour Party, and many of its metropolitan supporters, who are disgusted that “their” voters – the working classes – have fallen in with a despicable toff like Boris Johnson.
What they – Finlay and his UK counterparts – fail to see is that the old aristocracy is gone. The new aristocracy is people like Fergus Finlay. Fattened after a career in Government and the NGO sector, comfortably ensconced in Newspapers and other media platforms, preaching at the ordinary people about how they can better themselves. They are, in fact, the modern toffs. Finlay might as well be a grand old duke, wondering why the peasants refuse to learn how to read.
All of this, at the end of the day, is more class based than nation based. Yes, Finlay indulges in horrible anti British bigotry in his column, of the sort that would have Irish people fainting in outrage if it was written by a Briton about us. But if Finlay was really honest with himself and his readers, that bigotry is directed not against the English, but against a certain class of people who refuse to see the world as he does. The anger is heightened, of course, because traditionally that class of people was also the class that elected the Labour Party in the UK, and in Ireland. The peasants are off the reservation.
But whatever his reasons are, his comments are disgraceful, and an embarrassment to a newspaper – the Examiner – whose present editorial team seem intent on turning into a rag.