Adonis’s hatred of Brexit only matched by his contempt for Northern Ireland

If one man epitomises the sneering contempt that some remainers feel for Brexit voters, it is the Blairite peer, Lord Adonis.

The Baron of Camden Town was a fixture of Labour governments in the late noughties, despite never having won an election above council level. Now he specialises on social media in an elitist shtick that is remarkably free of alleged elite attributes, like expertise or insight.

His Twitter account often feels like a heavy-handed parody invented by a leaver, and it gets no stranger than his lordship’s reinvention as a self-appointed expert on Northern Ireland – the man who will single-handedly save it from Brexit. This development has resulted in some truly bizarre reflections on the province’s history, politics and culture.

On Monday, Adonis used a Guardian article to attack the government’s plan to hold a Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 2022, on the grounds that it is actually intended to mark the centenary of Irish partition. Theresa May’s proposal to applaud “the creativity and innovation of the United Kingdom” after Brexit may not generate universal enthusiasm, but Ireland was partitioned in 1921 and Northern Ireland’s creation will be celebrated in 2021, with a series of events that have already been agreed, on a cross-community basis.

This sensitive work was carried out precisely to avoid raising tensions during a “decade of centenaries” that are taking place between 2012-2022, commemorating a particularly contested period in the island’s history. It has resulted in significant and constructive events like the Queen’s visit to Dublin to remember the 1916 Easter Rising, which nationalists see as a foundational moment in the history of their state, but unionists view as a terrorist act against the British government, timed to derail the war effort.

Another successful centenary celebration marked ‘Ulster Day’, when unionists signed a ‘solemn league and covenant’ to express their opposition to Irish Home Rule, on the 28th of September 1912. In Northern Ireland, the one hundred year anniversary passed respectfully, thanks in part, perhaps, to the indifference at the time of Lord Adonis and his like.

This year there were no high-profile celebrations but, with his new found passion for Irish history, the peer nevertheless fumed at DUP leader Arlene Foster for posting a discrete tweet wishing her followers ‘happy Ulster Day’. Unionists believe that the covenant’s signing played an important role in the eventual formation of Northern Ireland. Lord Adonis thinks its celebration is “akin to the English celebrating Enoch Powell as their saviour.”

Even historians who dislike Brexit have a distaste for comparisons that crass and anachronistic, so Thomas Hennessey, a Professor of British and Irish History at Canterbury Christ Church University ventured to suggest, “I think this is a poor understanding of the historical context (of the signing)… (the) Powell analogy is poor.” For his efforts, the bemused prof was described as “an apologist for Carson” and forced to point out that “as a historian of that period I don’t champion anyone but recognise that Ireland was divided over nationality and religion: ethnic schisms not unique to the island.”

On Monday evening, Adonis was back in the Ulster fray again, after Belfast City Council – where the rabidly anti-Brexit Alliance Party holds the balance of power between unionists and nationalists – passed a motion calling for a second referendum on Brexit. He claimed that this chamber of local government, one of eleven across the province, “speaks for Northern Ireland at large”, in the absence of an Assembly. The liberal unionist MLA, Doug Beattie, who campaigned for remain and engages patiently and civilly with all-comers on Twitter, felt moved to call Adonis an “imbecile”.

The peer likes to pretend he’s protecting Tony Blair’s legacy in Ireland and, by extension, the Belfast Agreement. Yet, at the heart of the Good Friday accord was the principle of consent, which enshrined Northern Ireland’s right to exist and confirmed the democratic basis of partition. It lifted the Republic’s territorial claim on the province, by amending articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution.

It’s a long way from Adonis’s view that Northern Ireland’s very existence caused a “century of devastation” for its people. This condescending nitwit seems baffled and appalled that some of us are proud to be from Northern Ireland and proud of our place in the UK.

It’s difficult to understand quite what he hopes to achieve by trolling unionists so blatantly and endorsing an explicitly nationalist version of Irish history.

He attacks Theresa May, the Conservatives and the DUP habitually because of Brexit, but it’s rather more serious to deny that unionists have a right to celebrate Northern Ireland’s existence at all.  This strategy is hardly going to help persuade the many pro-Union voters who are anxious about leaving the EU that a second referendum is necessary.

In fact, it is likely only to entrench a perception, common among Northern Irish unionists, that remainers are taking nationalists’ side over the border issue, in a desperate attempt to thwart Brexit.