It’s time for Ireland to stand up to the EU

Ireland’s political class is facing a moment of truth. Following yesterday’s extraordinary events — with the EU temporarily triggering Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol as part of its desperate effort to manage its self-made vaccines crisis — the Dublin elites have some serious soul-searching to do.

They must now ask themselves if they are willing to be members of this institution that has just treated them with such contempt; which has just signalled in front of the entire world that it does not take Irish sovereignty or Irish democracy very seriously at all.

Contempt is not too strong a word for what the EU has just done to Ireland. Let’s leave to one side what the EU’s overriding of the Brexit deal and temporary triggering of Article 16 tells us about its view of the UK. We already knew that the commissioners and bureaucrats of the Brussels establishment were not well disposed to us Brits, given we voted for Brexit and then had the temerity to get our vaccination programme up and running more swiftly and efficiently than the EU did.