Welcome to Episode #763192 of ‘The English Still Don’t Get It’.
English conservative political magazine The Spectator is coming in for criticism on social media for its latest incendiary and evocative front cover, which reads “Divide and rule —How the EU used Ireland to take control of Brexit”.
The illustration also shows EU negotiators like Donald Tusk and Michel Barnier caricatured and drawing lines across territories as if in a war room.
Even aside from the imagery — the substance also seems to misunderstand some very important details.
For example, the reality that Ireland is not being used by the EU, but rather is a member of the EU, fighting for its own interests (no hard border, anyone?)
This week’s cover: Divide and rule. How the EU used Ireland to take control of Brexit, by @JGForsyth pic.twitter.com/UiBbnuG9LH
— The Spectator (@spectator) October 17, 2018
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the profoundly ignorant cover has been savaged on social media, including by members of the Oireachtas.
Excuse me @spectator do you not get that Ireland is the EU? We’re not being used, maybe if the #Brexiteers had taken a moment to think of the #GFA in their odious campaign we’d be in a very different place? https://t.co/kGEoc0szj1
— Sen. Neale Richmond (@nealerichmond) October 17, 2018
If there was an image designed to provoke utter despair among people (of all backgrounds) on the island of Ireland, it is this one @spectator. https://t.co/qbSZfMrP0s
— Katy Hayward (@hayward_katy) October 17, 2018
Residents of Donegal, the Spectator has some surprising news for you. pic.twitter.com/OliZfL0AYF
— Mic Wright (@brokenbottleboy) October 17, 2018
The Brexit establishment’s unquenchable contempt for Ireland, stunned disbelief the Irish government dares to defy it, and spiralling rage Britain can’t get its own way: Brexit’s historical erasure and post-colonial delusion distilled into one abjectly pathetic front cover https://t.co/nj4bx4Dqv4
— Jonathan Lis (@jonlis1) October 17, 2018
I’m pretty sure Barnier knows that Donegal is in the Republic, unlike this cartoonist https://t.co/mstJxqSxYz
— Elodie Fabre (@EloFabre) October 18, 2018