Northern Ireland secretary Karen Bradley admits she had no idea people in the country voted on...

[Soph0571]

....sectarian lines before she was promoted to crucial Cabinet job

Karen Bradley admitted today she did not understand the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland before being promoted to the Cabinet post overseeing the province.

In an astonishing confession, she admitted to not knowing Unionist and Nationalist parties do not compete with each for votes but instead vie for support within their own communities.
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And she said: 'I freely admit that when I started this job, I didn't understand some of the deep-seated and deep-rooted issues that there are in Northern Ireland.

'I didn't understand things like when elections are fought for example in Northern Ireland - people who are nationalists don't vote for unionist parties and vice-versa.

'So, the parties fight for election within their own community. Actually, the unionist parties fight the elections against each other in unionist communities and nationalists in nationalist communities.'

[link:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6139557/Karen-Bradley-admits-no-idea-people-Northern-Ireland-voted-sectarian-lines.html|

How reassuring - when we have not had an administration in 18 months. The country is going to pot. Sinn Fein and the DUP are more interested in scoring political points than working together, and we have a Secretary of State who does not have a fucking clue. Oh and Brexit and borders. And Peace. And Good Friday agreement. Stop the bus and let me get off the fucking madness.

[LeftishBrit]

1. What an idiot

And she was born in 1970, so she was an adult when the Good Friday Agreement was signed- how can she be so ignorant?

[Denzil_DC]

2. Ignorance of Northern Irish and Irish affairs seems to be a requirement in this government

Back in May, Immigration Minister Caroline Nokes caused a stir during a "car crash" appearance at the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee:

Labour's Kate Hoey said the minister "clearly did not understand" the significance of the [Good Friday] agreement after Ms Nokes repeatedly said that citizens from the Republic of Ireland were treated the same as others seeking British citizenship.

Nokes had somehow missed the key fact that under the Good Friday Agreement, those born in Northern Ireland can take either Irish or UK or dual citizenship, and the Irish Government waives any fees for those seeking its citizenship. But the prospect of Brexit has highlighted an anomaly for those born in the Republic after 1949 - even if they've lived all their lives in Northern Ireland, if they want to take out UK citizenship, they first have to apply for naturalization and attend a citizenship ceremony, all of which currently costs £1,330. In Northern Ireland there are "Passport Express" services for those seeking Irish passports at a large number of post offices, whereas the UK government provides no facilities in the Republic for UK citizens to get a passport. The argument from some committee members was that this contravenes the Good Friday Agreement.

There - now anyone reading this knows more than the Immigration Minister (and quite possibly the Northern Ireland Secretary).

Asked if she had ever read any Irish history, Ms Nokes said: "Not for a very long time."

Under pressure from MPs, the minister then admitted she had never read the landmark agreement in full.

Ms Nokes said: "I haven't. 20 years ago I was probably giving birth and I have only been immigration minister for five months."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/immigration-minister-good-friday-agreement-irish-border-caroline-nokes-a8363766.html

At the same hearing, she also admitted she'd never visited the Irish border.

[T_i_B]

3. We are talking here about the government....

.....where Boris Johnson was made foreign secretary and didn't get dismissed. It has been apparent for some time that Theresa May is very bad at making suitable appointments, much less promoting on the basis of merit.

[Denzil_DC]

4. Marina Hyde gives her usual measured assessment of Bradley:

Pay attention, entrails-pickers: this dead government has yielded up a new sign. She is Karen Bradley, actual secretary of state for actual Northern Ireland, and she has granted an interview to Parliament’s The House magazine. “I freely admit,” Karen freely admitted, “that when I started this job, I didn’t understand some of the deep-seated and deep-rooted issues that there are in Northern Ireland. I didn’t understand things like when elections are fought, for example, in Northern Ireland – people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa.”

For me, I think that quote may be the equivalent of the death blow in Kill Bill. Do you know the one? You get hit just with fingertips, “and then he lets you walk away. But once you’ve taken five steps, your heart explodes in your body, and you fall to the floor, dead.” So with the Northern Ireland secretary’s hot take on Northern Ireland. My mechanism might be shot for good after reading it. I may well be typing my last five steps here.

Clearly, it is not simply the initial imbecility of having no clue about the central facts of Northern Irish politics and history, even though you were 28 (TWENTY EIGHT) when the Good Friday agreement was signed. It is also the second imbecility of thinking you should ever mention that in public, much less as delightedly, as Karen did. “It’s when you realise that,” burbled the secretary of state, “that you can then start to understand some of the things that the politicians say and some of the rhetoric.”

I mean ... ideally, you would start understanding these things some decades before you were the cabinet minister with operational responsibility for arguably the most highly sensitive region of the United Kingdom. Instead, Karen’s breezy “My Learning Curve” speech casts high office as a remedial scheme for the unreachable outliers of Family Fortunes survey respondents. “We asked 100 people what they imagined were the Ladybird-level facts about Northern Ireland …”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/07/karen-bradley-northern-ireland-secretary-tories

After a little more of this, Hyde then turns her attention to Arron Banks, Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Gove, Mervyn King and David Davis. Sample line about Rees-Mogg:

Should have gone to MonocleSavers.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. "Northern Ireland's history provides a Brexit lesson for us all" - Karen Bradley

No, not the Daily Mash - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/09/theresa-may-brexit-deal-best-northern-ireland-uk

Oddly, The Guardian has decided to not put a comments section on that one ...