With Brexit looming, time for a Celtic Union?

David Davis says Northern Ireland can opt to stay in the EU by joining with the Republic. So why can't Scotland?

Today British Prime Minister Theresa May took the historic step of requesting a divorce from the European Union. 

It will be remembered as a defining moment in history. Some are predicting it is the beginning of the European Union's disintegration. But others say, perhaps more convincingly, that it signals the start of the British union's disintegration.

Yesterday the Scottish Parliament voted to back First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's call for a new referendum on Scottish independence. The timing was no accident. Sturgeon timed her announcement of the new referendum push earlier this month to be one day before May planned to submit her divorce letter to the EU, upstaging the British PM and forcing her to delay the delivery until today. Scotland is remaining one step ahead of Westminster.

Ireland faces its doomsday scenario

Both sides of Ireland are in a panic because Brexit could make the peace process unravel. But perhaps the North has come far enough to allow a non-violent reunification of the island.

"Of all the things that could happen to an Irish government short of the outbreak of war, this is pretty much up there with the worst of them," wrote The Irish Times, the republic's main newspaper, as the world woke up to the "Brexit nightmare" on Friday morning.

"Ever since David Cameron announced that he would hold a referendum back in 2012, Irish officials have regarded the prospect of a British exit from the EU as the worst thing that could happen [to Ireland]," the paper wrote. "[Irish PM] Kenny now faces leading Ireland through a period of difficulty and uncertainty unprecedented in the last 50 years, more complex and unpredictable than the recent financial crisis, more destabilising the Northern Troubles."

The UK is Ireland's biggest trading partner. One billion euros worth of goods flow freely across the Irish Sea each week, tariff-free because both countries are in the European Union. If the UK leaves the EU while the Republic of Ireland stays in, customs duties will have to be imposed on that trade. That is, unless the UK joins the EEA, but I've written before on why that is unlikely.

Conservative Party may disband in Scotland

In an attempt to shed its image as an 'English party', members of the Conservative Party in Scotland are considering splintering off from the Tories and forming a new Scottish centre-right party. The move, which would not be the result of any policy disagreement with the Tory leadership but rather for identification issues, reflects just how strong regionalism has become in Europe in recent years.

The change is being proposed by Murdo Frasier, a candidate in the current race for a new leader of the Conservatives in Scotland. The Tories have been pretty much banished from power by Scottish voters for over a decade now, ever since a massive defeat in 1997. They currently hold only 15 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament and only one of Scotland's 59 seats in the British Parliament. Since 2007 the largest party in the Scottish Parliament has been the Scottish National Party, which wants to seceed from the UK.

Frasier has centred his leadership campaign around a promise to break this trend by dissolving the party, which he says has become a "toxic brand" in Scotland because people see it as representing the interests of Westminster over Edinburgh. The new party would likely not even have the words "conservative" or "tory" in its name.

Protests greet Queen's first visit to Ireland

Queen Elizabeth II is making a historic visit to the Republic of Ireland this week, the first time a British monarch has visited Ireland in 100 years. That the visit is even happening is a sign of how much relations between the republic and its former imperial master have healed in recent times. But there are still people on the island, including both Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, who are quite upset about the visit. And those people were out in force yesterday to greet the British monarch with insults and epithets.

The Queen's 'reconciliation visit' to Dublin, where she will be protected by more than 8,500 police officers backed by the army, has virtually shut down the city centre. Her visit, during which she will be dressed in all green, has been meticulously planned out to the last detail, carefully choreographed around every diplomatic sensitivity. She has been making a tour of memorial sights where Irish republican fighters died fighting against British rule. Today she will visit Croke Park stadium, the site of a notorious massacre where 14 Irish civilians were killed by British troops in 1920. She also spent this morning visiting the Guiness Storehouse, where amusingly she was offered a pint of Guiness at 9:30 in the morning. According to the AP she smiled but politely declined.

IRA-supporting US congressman launches terrorism hearings

In order to not be considered a terrorist, Muslims in America don't just have to not participate in terrorist activities – they need to actively renounce terrorism and fight to end it. So says Republican Congressman Peter King, the new head of the Homeland Security Committee in the House of Representatives. King is leading hearings this week investigating the "radicalisation of the American Muslim community," calling Muslim religious and business leaders before congress to test their loyalty to the United States.

The hearings, which to many are reminiscent of the anti-communist hearings conducted in the 1950's by Senator Joseph McCarthy, are proving enormously controversial in the United States. Democratic Congressman Mike Honda, who was interned in Japanese internment camps in California during World War II as a little boy, wrote in an editorial this week that King's intent is, "to cast suspicion upon all Muslim Americans and to stoke the fires of anti-Muslim prejudice and Islamophobia."

Keith Ellison, who is on the homeland security committee and is one of two Muslims in congress, shed tears on the opening day of the hearings as he said the hearings may "increase suspicion of the Muslim American community, ultimately making us all a little less safe." But King has been outspoken in his defence of the hearings, saying they are completely necessary as more and more American Muslims become radicalised. He has asserted that the "vast majority" of mosques in the US are run by radicals.

You’ve come a long way, baby

Over the years, Americans have gotten used to bible-beating politicians eventually being exposed as adulterers, prostitute-visitors or gay toilet sexers. It’s become such a regular occurrence that people hardly bat an eyelash anymore when they see a conservative politician go from blasting gays by day to schtupping prostitutes by night. But in Northern Ireland this week the usual ‘moralising politician exposed for moral failings’ storyline has been given a new twist. This time, the offending politician is a lady!

As far as I know this is the first time a prominent anti-gay female politician has been caught having an extra-marital affair. It's a proud day for feminism when women can stand toe-to-toe with men in the field of hypocritical bigotry.

Iris Robinson, a rabidly homophobic and self-described “born-again Christian” Protestant Unionist MP, has been caught in an extramarital affair with a 19-year-old boy.This has been big news in the UK, but not because of the affair. In fact, the charge of hypocricy is perhaps the least consequential aspect of the scandal unfolding in Northern Ireland right now. The affair has kicked off a series of events that have been turning quite serious, and could lead to a collapse of the uneasy peace that has existed in NI for over a decade. The sexual indiscretions of the UK's Anita Bryant may not have just been hypocritical, they could have set off a chain reaction that could lead to a return of the violence that plagued the 1990’s.