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It is hard to know what it is about Ireland that confounds the Conservative Party so much. But by now it is the best rehearsed routine in Westminster: an MP trips up over some basic details about Ireland and accidentally reminds the world about the depth of the party’s ignorance. Karen Bradley – then Northern Ireland secretary – admitting in 2018 that she did not understand the influence of sectarianism on the region feels like a salient example. The Northern Ireland secretary!
This week it was Suella Braverman’s moment in the sun. Writing in The Times, the Home Secretary suggested that the London pro-Palestine marches are “an assertion of primacy by certain groups – particularly Islamists – of the kind we are more used to seeing in Northern Ireland”. Reports that the march’s organisers had links to Hamas, she added, made the whole affair “disturbingly reminiscent of Ulster”. And with that she did the impossible: united the most divided community in the United Kingdom around the single cause of not liking Suella Braverman.