We don’t get enough laughs in life, particularly if we follow events in Northern Ireland, but I have enormously enjoyed at a distance the Saint Patrick’s Day events in Washington.
Published: 20 March 2025
It takes me back to 2011, when the Felons Club strategists got it absolutely wrong about the Queen’s visit.
If you remember, Gerry Adams had pronounced that he did not “think this is the right time for the English Queen” to visit.
Unfortunately for him, about 95% of the Irish fell in love with her.
He ended up looking like the leader of a gang of kids whose noses were pressed to the window of the sweetie shop tearfully watching a huge party from which they had barred themselves.
The damage done to Sinn Fein’s support caused Martin McGuinness three years later to take the extreme step of dressing himself up in a white tie and tails for a Windsor banquet in honour of president Higgins where he toasted the queen.
Henceforward Sinn Fein accepted pretty well every invitation they got.
Photographs of Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill with luminaries like Joe Biden were plastered all over the place.
But in this year of Gaza hysteria, despite the evidence that babies have been strangled, women raped to death and other hostages are still being murdered, tortured and starved in the Hamas tunnels, there was hot competition from the Irish left on the Jew-hating front. And president Trump is deeply unpopular with nationalists.
So the SDLP decided to deny Trump their company.
Naomi Long, whose sanctimony knows no bounds, explained he’d have to do without her too.
While she respected the office of the president, “I do not and will make no pretence of respecting the current office-holder.”
So though the Shinners love throwing their weight around in the corridors of power, the Felons strategists decided the Sinn Fein top ladies had no option but to boycott the St Patrick’s Day festivities in the White House.
Michelle O’Neill announced her “principled stance” over Trump’s throwaway suggestion about turning Gaza — which Hamas have turned into a hell-hole — into the “the Riviera of the Middle East”.
“So in the future whenever our children and grandchildren ask us what did we do when the Palestinian people endured unimaginable suffering, I can say firmly that I stood on the side of humanity”.
Well, there’s a turn-around for someone still eulogising terrorist murderers.
So Emma Little-Pengelly, good-looking, intelligent, educated and — unlike her first minister — capable of making civilised conversation without a script, was centre stage, chatting happily to the president.
Like Micheál Martin, she skilfully avoided elephant traps.
When asked about the dangers of tariffs, she said: “Northern Ireland is a wee small place in the world… that’s why it is important for us to be here.” Which any fool can see.
Apart from the comic interludes with Conor McGregor, my favourite bit was when Trump replied to a query of how he felt about the boycotts.
He was surprised: “I haven’t heard that, I really haven’t heard that.”
The champagne won’t have been flowing in the Felons.
