Paddy's are thick? You are Bernard Manning and I claim my £5!
There is a difference between a hard border forced on Ireland by a truculent Westminster, and one chosen by Ireland. This has major implications on the Irish, effectively re-partitioning, and that was once sufficient to cause an Irish civil war between 26 and 32 county factions.
This hard border (if it happens) will have been partially chosen by Ireland. If they had been constructive rather than dogmatic, the deal might well have gone through and the EU might now be doing what it should have done two years ago: negotiating a sensible long-term relationship.
As you are so fond of asking wrt those no deal "preparations", Richard - what would you have them have done?
Fudge the backstop, and focus instead on the future trading relationship (which is what actually matters).
So, Churchill was a villain, but Attlee - directly responsible for something like a million avoidable deaths, in peacetime, of people he was supposed to be looking after - wasn't?
The conversation was wholly about Churchill - it wasn't about Attlee. If you want to start a discussion about Attlee being a criminal and responsible for more than a million deaths, please present your argument and we'll consider it.
When did I say he was a criminal Where the balance of blame lies between the two of them I could not say.
Attlee was PM of the Imperial power and ultimately responsible for how India obtained its independence. The buck stopped with him.
If you're the leader at the top, you take responsibility, even if you personally didn't write a note saying "I don't care if lots of Indians get killed".
That's what leadership means.
Attlee was in charge. His government oversaw a bloody partition of India which led to a large number of deaths. If Churchill can be blamed for a death which occurred in Wales when he was Home Secretary, then - using the same logic - Attlee can be blamed for the deaths caused by the way his government implemented partition.
If we want to be even more controversial his government can also be blamed for the deaths and rioting and general mess that occurred in Palestine while Britain still had the mandate over that unhappy country.
Or we can try and understand history a bit more intelligently. But that is not how McDonnell and Owen Jones and the other Twitteratis approached this. So they are being hoist by their own petard.
I agree.
I cannot for the life of me think why they want to waste time on this? Where is the political benefit?
I can only think it is a distraction tactic to avoid talking about brexit splits in Labour circles.
Well, considering that Brexit is about national self image and mythology, to both sides interpretation of past events is quite critical. Brexiteers often invoke the spirit of the blitz as personified in Churchill, it is perhaps worth crititiqing that narrow and hagiographic interpretation.
Was Churchill hero or villian? it all depends on the time period in question. Don't forget that the people and armed forces of Britain who knew the real Churchill much better than us, slung him out in the 1945 Labour landslide even before the war had finished.
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