@kelvmackenzie has rage tweeted today about the #IrishandtheGermans. As the end of the transition period draws near ardent Brexiteers seem even more apoplectic than usual. The rock upon which they have foundered, of course, is #Ireland or #TheIrishQuestion unanswered still

Kelvin made some vicious remarks, and one of his handmaidens, even claimed that the #Irish sided with the Germans in WWII (by leaving the lights on.) Childish slurs.

The problem for Brexiteers is that for the third time in 200 years, the consequences of England's invasion in the 1170's have reverberated yet again, destroying those govern.

In the 1840s it was Peel and the Tory Party, split asunder over the repeal of the Corn Laws - and Britain's grotesquely incompetent, free market approach to the Irish famine, which halved the population through starvation, disease, and human exodus.

The consequences of this shameful inhumanity did not attenuate over the years. It led directly to an Irish political ascendancy in Boston, Chicago, and New York, which eventually brought diplomatic pressure to bear 150 years later with the Belfast Accords/GFA.

The more short term effect was Fenianism, which became moribund, but led to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Nothing gained much traction, however, and Ireland might have still been in the Commonwealth today, but for the next miscalculation.

After decades of attrition, eventually the case for Irish Home Rule was unquestionable. But the Liberals under Asquith at Westminster caved in to Unionist opt outs - originally only 4 counties. Then, Home Rule was shelved owing to WW1

Redmond's deal of Irish recruitment and support in return for its own Parliament in due course, had a romantic notion. Irishmen fighting for little Belgium - how could they later be denied their own autonomy?

But it was a powder keg - the injustice of the Ulster volunteers flouting the law, and the gun running they had been permitted to enjoy, drew an equivalent response via The Irish Volunteers and (on Socialist principles) The Irish Citizens' Army.

The splinter faction that ignored O'Neill, to lead a revolution (symbolic as it was) in 1916, caused more than their own annihilation, but the British Empire's eventual destruction.

Whilst the crass response of British Military Rule (in the aftermath) irrevocably transformed failure to triumph, via blood sacrifice (Pearse and all the signatories knew how to die heroically) for Ireland, the world had been watching.

Visionaries like Nkruma in Africa had discerned something in that Declaration (Provisional as it was) that could be used in their own struggle - and the eventual partition was (unless you were Anti-Treaty) a significant achievement.

But that's where short-termism (a classic Westminster filter for viewing all the events in Ireland) came in, with Lloyd-George's unforgivable threat to levy the most horrifying war in Ireland if Griffiths, Collins, and the Irish plenipotentiaries did not sign.

It has brought us to where we are today - the #IrishQuestion was merely postponed on 6th December 1921, partially answered by the GFA in April 1998, but the events of the last 4 years will break the Union, and the Conservative party. Like it broke the Tory Party, and the Liberals