Northern Irish officials across the political divide have hit out at Suella Braverman for her apparent comparisons between the pro-Palestine demos and the Orange Order marches.
The home secretary wrote an op-ed for The Times, published on Wednesday evening, that suggested the pro-Palestine marches were “disturbingly reminiscent of Ulster”.
She added: “I do not believe that these [London] marches are merely a cry for help for Gaza. They are an assertion of primacy by certain groups — particularly Islamists — of the kind we are more used to seeing in Northern Ireland.”
Her reference to Ulster and the Orange Order appeared to attack the Protestants Loyal Orders, who are responsible for the majority of the marches that take place across the Irish Sea every year between Easter Monday and the end of September.
But the protestant movement is a unionist one, and those parties, including the Democratic Unionist Party, are natural allies of the Conservative Party.
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood MP accused Ms Braverman of recklessly using Northern Ireland for her own political gain
A former senior Tory minister told The Independent that her comments had “caused huge offence among the loyalist sides” of the Northern Irish political divide.
Former Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain, who said he had presumed the remarks were an attack on Orange Order marches, suggested this was an “ignorant attack”.
He said: “Why on earth is this gratuitously offensive Home Secretary meddling in Northern Ireland affairs with her ignorant attack on Orange Order marches by traditional unionists?”
A source close to the home secretary later clarified that she was actually referring to the activities of “dissident republicans”, a reference that is presumed to be directed towards Catholic breakaway groups of the IRA that reject the peace negotiations that ended The Troubles.
Colum Eastwood, leader of the SDLP, the Irish nationalist, anti-sectarian party whose founding member, John Hume, won a Nobel prize for his championing of the peace process in Northern Ireland, suggested Ms Braverman was stoking tensions across the Irish Sea merely to launch her own leadership campaign.
“Any leader worth their salt should be calling for peace instead of burnishing their own image with the right-wing electorate of the Tory Party,” he said. “It is very low behaviour. She is just totally and clearly focused on herself.”
He added that Tory politician swipes at the nationalists in Northern Ireland were not a novel phenomenon and Ms Braverman “didn’t even do it with very much skill”.
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, concurred with Mr Eastwood, suggesting Ms Braverman was “seeking to exploit the sensitivities of this moment, and an ignorance of Northern Ireland’s history, to inflame community tensions for her own leadership campaign”.
