Britannist

Exactly. Good points. As for that person on 'Any Questions'. People like that can try and invent whatever excuse they like to take over a part of the UK. The republicans are not having Northern Ireland and that's that.

Britannist

Europhile Hain tipped to be next British Deputy P.M.

News of europhile political opportunist Peter Hain MP (amusingly dubbed “Sinn Hain” by Ulster’s Democratic Unionist Party). Hain - like most europhiles - wants Northern Ireland given, against its will, to the Irish Republic. Hain’s pro-republican views (from before his time as a British Government Minister of The Crown) are well known.

His anti-euro and anti-EU views (which he detailed in his 1995 book ‘Ayes to the Left’) were well known too – until, that is, he quietly ditched them once his europhile boss Blair got in at the 1997 General Election and offered him a job in the pro-EU Labour regime. Unfortunately for pro-EU hypocrite Hain, details of his anti-EU book of 1995 which he may have hoped people ieither did not know about or had forgotten about emerged in the press :twisted: .

Source Guardian:

Europhile Peter Hain MP (Secretary of State for Northern Ireland/Wales) has emerged as a leading candidate to replace discredited John Prescott as Deputy Prime Minister in the shambolic Blair Labour Government, Patrick Wintour reported in the pro-EU Guardian newspaper edition of 8.8.2006. The Guardian said that Hain “has been assiduously courting the unions in the run-up to the conference season and is understand to have won promises of support from general secretaries of four of the five big Labour-affiliated unions who hold a third of the vote in the electoral college for the leadership and deputy leadership.”

Mr. Wintour also wrote “With the election of Gordon Brown as leader regarded as a foregone conclusion, many party members see the contest for the deputy leadership as the fight most likely to provoke an internal debate about the party's direction.”

Hain has put in a big effort to gain the support of the leaders of the GMB, Amicus and Transport and General Workers Unions. Labour MPs, the 198, 000 Labour Party members and trade unions (those affiliated to the party and who pay a political levy) get a third of the vote each in contests (decided by electoral college) for the leadership and deputy leadership of the Labour Party. Unions are likely to ballot their members and then split their vote in the electoral college in line with how with how many votes each candiate gets (in the trade union ballot).

Source DUP:

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) dismissed a call by Sinn Fein, the republican party, on 10.8.2006 for “all-Ireland negotiations with the EU”. It pointed out “Northern Ireland legally and in accordance with the principle of consent – which, clearly Sinn Fein has not accepted, despite its supposed acceptance in the Belfast Agreement – is represented in the EU by the UK Government."

* Hain (Secretary of State for Northern Ireland), on a visit to New York in early August 2006, told the Irish Echo newspaper that the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland/UK should be one single economic area. In 2005, he called for one single Irish economy in an interview with the same newspaper.

Robin Newton, the DUP member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast, East, explained "The Secretary of State's argument naively misses the fundamental facts that Northern Ireland and the (Irish) Republic are diametrically different economies. We have different tax regimes, different currencies, different interest rates and are in different economic cycles. The Republic of Ireland is Northern Ireland's economic rival and it is not in our best interests to be besotted with working hand in glove with the south in the ways Mr. Hain has outlined. The job of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hain) should be to highlight the Northern Ireland economy's many distinct benefits. He should be travelling to the United States of America and elsewhere and take every opportunity to stress the benefits of investing in Northern Ireland like a young and well educated workforce, and a lower cost of living and more reliable energy supply than the Republic. In recent years, the Irish Republic has developed a bad reputation for business corruption with countless tribunals investigating dodgy dealings between businessmen and public representatives."