Sir, – Finn McRedmond’s perfunctory take on the current Brexit impasse extends so much sympathy to people who deserve so little of it (“Leo Varadkar has opened a route out of the Brexit quagmire”, Opinion & Analysis, January 5th).
If the DUP feel alienated by the Northern Ireland protocol, they are simply reaping what they have sown.
Neither they nor anyone else in Ireland or Britain would be in this quagmire if not for their enthusiastic flag-waving support of the Leave campaign within the unionist community, then their servile facilitation of Theresa May and Boris Johnson in wrenching Northern Ireland out of the EU against the will of its majority and without nationalist consent.
They created this problem for themselves and for the rest of us; it’s high time they owned their pyrrhic victory and accepted its consequences. – Yours, etc,
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My boyfriend’s parents are generally kind, loving people – but they keep spouting bigoted opinions
STEPHEN SHAW,
Zurich,
Switzerland.
Sir, – Finn McRedmond is quite correct when she describes Brexit reportage on both sides of the water descending into “a childish morality tale of heroes versus villains”.
In a country as wretchedly afflicted with groupthink as Ireland, that means one side – the European Union – being portrayed as a quasi-religious, charitable organisation, whose sole purpose is to foster harmony, peace and ever-greater understanding between humanity’s fractured tribes.
Brexiteers, on the other hand, are painted in the broadest, most insulting terms possible as moustache-twirling caricatures of avarice, greed and xenophobia.
The greatest single exponent of this type of low-grade pastiche has undoubtedly been Fintan O’Toole and the pantomime polemics of his interminable Brexit columns in The Irish Times. – Yours, etc,
SIMON O’NEILL,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.