EU Brexit negotiator attacks Boris Johnson's 'old-fashioned' views on identityThe European parliament’s Brexit negotiator has launched a scathing attack on Boris Johnson, saying his recent criticism of young voters who feel allegiance to Europe was “old-fashioned” and “nonsense”.
Guy Verhofstadt told a special meeting of three committees in the Irish parliament that it was perfectly possible to feel European while at the same time feeling allegiance to your country of birth.
“Some British politicians – not to name Boris Johnson – criticise their countrymen and women for wanting to keep their European identity. He accuses them of ‘split allegiance’. I think this is a binary, old-fashioned and reductionist understanding of identity. I think we need to be smarter, more open and more inventive then that,” he said.
“It’s nonsense to talk about split allegiance. It’s perfectly possible to feel English, British and European at the same time. As it is perfectly normal to be a Dubliner, Irish and European at the same time,” he said.
“It is this position that needs to be defended by our European Union just as the European Union needs to [make sure] there is no return to the past, to hard borders on our continent, and certainly not to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.”
... Boris is a massive cunt. To think I used to enjoy his theatrical OTT jolly fat man on a bike schtick. Fuck Boris. His worst bullshit was repeating the other day that the UK will have their 350m a week back for the NHS! lol.
Johnson:
“I look at so many young people with the 12 stars lipsticked to their faces, and I am troubled with the thought that people are beginning to have genuinely split allegiances.
“And when people say that they feel they have more in common with others in Europethan with people who voted leave I want to say, but that is part of the reason why people voted leave,” he said.
I'd give the girl on the right my allegiance. ;)
