The aftershocks of Brexit’s failure could be gaining strength – a fearful prospect for Ireland | Fintan O’Toole

On our side of the Irish Sea we have made the best of a bad job. But we saw the damage a reckless and reactionary British government could do

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For Brexit’s true believers, Ireland will always be the spoke in the wheel that set everything off course, the green tarnish that took the shine off the golden age. Without the vengeful and malicious obstructionism of the Irish, all the promises of freedom and prosperity would have been fulfilled.

To understand how nonsensical this is, it is necessary to go back five years before the referendum of 2016. Back, that is, to the sense of an ending. In May 2011, Queen Elizabeth made a four-day state visit to Ireland. This should not have been remarkable – the heads of state of neighbouring countries visit each other all the time. But no reigning British monarch had set foot in what is now the Republic for almost exactly a century.

Fintan O’Toole is a columnist with the Irish Times and the author of Heroic Failure: Brexit and the politics of pain