Douglas Carswell's Blog

Ireland welcomes the Queen

I’m really pleased to see the Queen given such a warm welcome in Ireland. This is a great opportunity to completely normalise relations between our two governments – even if the people on both islands, through ties of kith and kin and friendship, never stopped getting along just fine. 

There is a certain symmetry in the fact that the very week of Her Majesty’s visit, we should be progressing with plans to make the House of Lords democratically elected. How differently might things have turned out if only the House of Lords – at that time packed full of reactionary, landed interests – had not blocked the Irish Home Rule Bill all those years ago.

The failure to grant Ireland self-government back in 1893 – and earlier measures intended to reform land ownership - was a catastrophe. 

Now that we have normalised relations with our closest neighbour, perhaps we should finally get around to having an elected upper house, too?

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