This was an entirely fake controversy, and Burnham’s reputation has been unjustly tarred.
U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham was asked (I think) about what his agenda was while visiting Northern Ireland. He was asked about a “border poll” — that is, a referendum in which Northern Ireland’s people would vote on whether to join the Republic of Ireland, severing their political association with Great Britain in the United Kingdom.
The possibility of a border poll is envisioned by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 that largely ended The Troubles and inaugurated an era of sometimes testy power-sharing in the six counties.
Burnham said it was “off the table.” He very clearly meant that it was not part of the current agenda, but that didn’t stop the press or political actors and commentators from rushing to denounce him for “violating” a treaty, etc. Many reports on Burnham’s comments deliberately declined to describe the context of his remarks, the question asked of him, or really convey any useful information for contextualizing his remarks.
And now that the media has started a controversy around these remarks, it gets to do Day 2–style stories, like this one from the Irish Times, headline: “Downing Street Scrambles to calm row over Burnham’s ‘off the table’ Irish unity poll remarks.”
Yes, when someone’s remarks are given a false, inflammatory context by deliberate omissions from other actors, their staff will try to correct the record.
This is what I call “the standard of misconstrual” — a position adopted by commentators, newspapers, and readers themselves in which they willfully project onto a statement or phrase the worst possible suspicions, ones that could be easily cast away with just the slightest addition of readily available context. Worse still, is the expectation that, even if a speaker clearly did not intend to convey what bad-faith actors allege they did, they are somehow responsible for not speaking more clearly, or in a way that entirely rules out bad-faith readings, misleading editing, etc.
This is an impossible standard for anyone. I have no particular love for Andy Burnham or his party. I’m also of the deep conviction, rekindled by recent reading and listening in history, that governments in the U.K. routinely make obvious screwups when they cross over the Irish Sea, whether they are trying to assure Unionists or Irish Nationalists. This wasn’t one of them. This was an entirely fake controversy. Burnham’s reputation has been unjustly tarred. And, yes, I think it’s doubly shameful because the whole thing works to enflame public passions, while the bad actors themselves are affecting an entirely cynical posture of piety toward the peace process and toward the sensitivities of the public. Absolutely sickening.