We Irish are experiencing what I can only describe as some sort of cultural tumescence. There’s an undeniable bulge in our little teddy-bear island’s crotch. I’m not sure when it began exactly. Was it with that monstrosity of a film, The Banshees of Inisherin? Or was it earlier, when the BBC adaptation of Normal People made us all look suspiciously un-pink and un-messy and impossibly unrepressed? Was it with the Guinness challenge on TikTok — or the new musicians leading the charge across the waters like Fontaines D.C. or Kneecap or CMAT? Perhaps this performance of self-adoration began even earlier, when Google and Facebook handed over their first metaphorical brown envelopes into our sweaty, piggy, tax-haven hands. Or maybe it came more recently, when Catherine Connolly, the woman who yesterday became our new President, openly claimed that we couldn’t trust the warmongering Brits.
You’d think the fact that all this is happening at the same time as anti-immigration protesters are threatening to burn down hotels housing migrants really ought to give the cultural nationalists pause for thought. But then again, such an engorgement of self-regard never goes well for us. Just as we think it’s all going to work out, that we’re going to finally become the Big Men we’ve always known we are, there’s a storm off the coast that means the Spanish fleet don’t reach us, the arms can’t be landed. Or there’s a miscommunication amongst the rebels, or we start killing our own, or there’s a devastating financial crash. No doubt the next time the money dries up our new heroes, the Americans, will leap off the island as promptly as the French once did. We as a nation have always looked elsewhere for saviours destined to disappoint us in the end. And where will we be then? On the boat to England, probably.
Because I can’t help but suspect that, as usual, this puffing out of the national chest relates, somehow, to dem over dere, on dat udder, longer island. One way or another, it’s always to do with the English. They are the race we see ourselves in relation to, the ones we want to impress or defy. England is the omniscient Big Daddy, whose approval we Irish crave, all while telling him how much we fucking hate him and don’t care what he thinks. We are defined oppositionally: we are Irish against the English.
The issue at hand, then, isn’t Irish people loving ourselves. That’s nothing new. It’s the smugness with which we’re doing it, as well as the ongoing issue of whom we’re really loving ourselves for. Ireland is a whole nation of in-jokes and knowing nods, which only works if there’s someone there who hasn’t heard the joke or doesn’t know what the nodding’s about — and that someone for us is, invariably, the English.
Recently, Kneecap, Sally Rooney and Graham Linehan have all, for various reasons, acted the part of the uppity Irish rebel in the UK headlines, positing themselves as courageous truth-speakers from that more honest, more decent place across the water. Meanwhile, on every British red carpet, Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott seem to be falling over each other while laughing handsomely, suggesting with every white-toothed grin that they’re off to a party to which their English colleagues aren’t invited (probably somewhere in Stoke Newington). Musicians such as Kojaque or the aforementioned Fontaines are sending home exquisite, poignant and rageful albums from London about how much they miss Ireland, albums that contain bona fide love songs to their home nation. These are accompanied by interviews given to Irish news outlets in which they bemoan the casual racism of the English, who mock their accents and call them Paddy. But surely, with all their success, if they wanted to, they could just move back to Ireland?
The problem is, it’s so deliciously satisfying to be stupidly offended, to feel oneself victimised. That’s one of the reasons Irish people love going over to England. We relish the romantic, stormy misery of sitting in damp flats , missing the green hills and soft, dulcet tones of our native land. We wet ourselves with glee when we find opportunities to insist that the Guinness isn’t the same over there because sea air sours it and all that painfully clichéd bollocks. We know we’re doing it, being “the Paddy”. We despise ourselves for it. Yet we can’t seem to help ourselves. We love to feel hard done by, or at least to pretend to.
Recently, in Dublin, I attended the launch of a book about rediscovering the Irish language. I sat beside a squirming English friend as the author announced that Irish people have never been able to “authentically” express themselves in English. She talked about undoing the trauma of colonisation through the rediscovery of the Irish language — specifically, through the purchasing of her book. An Irishman in short shorts, much like those sported by Paul Mescal, told us how his amazingly “authentic” girlfriend’s success grew exponentially the moment she started teaching her yoga practice in Irish instead of English. Now, at her live events, he said, she often gets over three-hundred people, all desperate to perform downward dog (madra síos, I’m guessing?) while fulfilling their primordial need to hear it said in Irish. I’m not sure I understand the appeal but then, inauthentic Mick that I am, I don’t speak fluent Irish.
To discuss the blind stupidity of these claims — to mount a defence of the “authenticity” of the English of James Joyce or Sally Rooney or Roddy Doyle or Samuel Beckett or Edna O’Brien, or Fontaines D.C. for that matter — feels vaguely self-defeating. Once you’re engaged in such a conversation, you’ve already lost. When, though, I wondered at this book launch, will we be able to talk about the particular beauty of the Irish language, without feeling the need to dismiss our use of English as inherently inauthentic?
The stench of post-traumatic self-congratulation that is now permeating the island is, to me, sad evidence that our psyches haven’t developed beyond those of the old, wily peasant, still looking to the master we claim to despise for validation. We persist, even in our grandiose self-love, to experience it only in bitter relation to the English. And the worst part is that this belief in a perpetual and defining relationality is only true of the Irish side. It’s embarrassing to admit, but they’re not even thinking about us.
Sure, when the Irish take the piss out of the English, constantly dismissing them as bastards or pretentious or uptight or not good craic, it’s all “in jest”. Sort of. But even if it is only good-natured joshing, it’s uncomfortably regular, an ongoing undertone, and never repeated quite so freely when they’re actually in the room.
In truth, hating the English is one of our great, unifying national pastimes. Even now, we continue to associate authority with the English, and are brought up to distrust most politicians and the police. (The only politicians we’ve ever truly loved have been our two most authoritarian Taoiseachs: Éamon DeValera and Charles Haughey, the sole potential equals to defend us against our big English Daddy). Our national identity has been formed as one of rebelliousness, of shneaky defiance. We’re delighted to be a nation of cute hoors (Hiberno-English for crafty son of a bitch). Growing up in Nineties Ireland, I can honestly say, hand on heart, that until I came across English people as an adult, I had never met anyone — anyone — who didn’t believe that getting around the law (be it by speeding or drink driving, a little bit of stealing or even just getting away with not paying a fine), was a satisfying victory against The Man. The Man being, not the Irish state, as, in fact, it was, but the lingering presence of those bastard fucking English.
This could all be said to be fairly benign. Yet is it really a coincidence that Ireland’s moment of swelling national pride is happening at the same time as our first significant anti-immigration protests? The recent violence in Citywest only further proves that time has not stemmed the festering tide of Irish nationalism. Also, can it really be said that Ireland’s immediate alignment with Palestine — and the persistent parallels drawn with our own historical relationship with England — isn’t fomenting bad feeling, not only towards Israelis (and, if we’re being honest, Jews more generally), but also towards our old foes, the English? Our close alignment with Palestine is, after all, based on the idea that they, like ourselves, are the victims of brutal neighbours, attempting to subsume their country and eradicate their race. Again, Catherine Connolly, a woman who may soon become the Irish president, has drawn this comparison directly, and has even gone so far as to state that Hamas should have a part in the future of Palestine’s governance rather than suffering the indignity of international intervention. In other words, fuck off away from our Republic, England. Just leave us, and them, to it, whatever the consequences.
Perhaps it is the ultimate indifference of the English towards Ireland, the Irish, and our shared history, that makes our current sport of flouncing about, utterly delighted with ourselves, appear so worryingly pathetic. I know that the surge of rageful pleasure I feel when we beat the English in rugby (or at anything else for that matter) has to be, at this point in our shared history, suspect. Similarly, to sit in the audience of the book launch of an Irish language textbook on a September night in 2025, and hear the two people on stage discussing the lasting effects of a famine that happened in the 1840s, is indicative of a nation whose pride is still dependent on a sense of having been wronged. This love of Ireland, as we are currently expressing it, is too closely tied in with our ongoing hatred of England, the English, and everything we can’t bear to forget they’ve done to us. All while they’re over there, not thinking about us at all.
“This love of Ireland, as we are currently expressing it, is too closely tied in with our ongoing hatred of England, the English, and everything we can’t bear to forget they’ve done to us.”
When, I wonder, will we start loving Ireland, not as a hurt, ever-limping post-colonial nation, but as the rich, capable and, for many, almost indecently comfortable country that it now is? One with an enormous capacity for innovative literature, art, film, music, philosophy and political development, uncoloured by our history with England, or what the English might be thinking. When, too, will our progress, internally and internationally, no longer be measured against this perpetual overcoming of our past, but rather by our present and future? Even our politicians, those pink-nosed white men in ill-fitting suits, seem to only be playing at running the country. When are the Irish people within the Republic, those of us with no justifiable cause for complaint beyond their laddish ineptitude, going to start looking inwards, at our own very real national problems and our own, very real, responsibilities? We need to learn to take pride in, and accountability for, our island, without first making sure the English are watching, then spitting in their bastard watching eyes, just to make it feel sufficiently “authentic”.