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TOM UTLEY: Until EU stop persecuting British tourists for Brexit, I won't bother with a new passport

Two of my dearest friends, unrelated to each other but both as English as I am, are inordinately pleased with themselves because they've just taken delivery of Irish passports. I wonder if I'm alone in regarding their behaviour as a mild form of treason?

There are no prizes for guessing how they managed to swing it. They've taken advantage of Dublin's eccentric rule under which anyone with at least one Irish-born grandparent may qualify for citizenship of the republic.

By this means, they've been able to join the army of 'Plastic Paddys' — already tens of thousands strong — who were born British but have adopted Irish citizenship https://realpassportgenerator.com since Brexit.

There's no mystery, either, about their main reason for doing it. The answer is that under their new flag of convenience, they can now travel freely around Europe, without suffering the pettifogging bureaucratic hassle inflicted on the rest of us Brits to punish us for leaving the EU.

As for why their decision to adopt dual nationality has annoyed me so much, a big part of it is my suspicion that they had an ulterior motive.

Quite apart from their wish to avoid our former partners' vindictive red tape, I reckon they did it to parade their Remainer credentials and stick two fingers up at those of us who voted Leave.

The number of Irish passports issued in Great Britain rocketed in the years following the Brexit

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The number of Irish passports issued in Great Britain rocketed in the years following the Brexit

'You may want us all out,' they seemed to be saying, 'but we're staying put. So yah boo sucks to you!'

What also rankles, I suppose I should confess, is my feeling that I'm quite as Irish as either of these friends — and a great deal more so than one of them, who as far as I'm aware has barely set foot in the Emerald Isle, if at all, since her birth.

My mother's maiden name was Brigid Morrah (begorra!) and her father was called Dermot (which, I'm proud to say, is my own middle name). My great-uncle was a Patrick, and my aunt was christened Deirdre. Names don't get much more Irish than that.

What's more, I spent most of my childhood holidays in Ireland, North and South — and after a pint of two, as many a London pub-goer will testify with a groan, I can sing all the verses of all the old songs, from both sides of the sectarian divide.

Oh, and when I let my eyebrows run wild, they're as bushy as a Fermanagh fox's brush (if you're wondering, I'd just had them trimmed by the barber when the photograph on this page was taken).

Second only to England, indeed, Ireland is the country closest to my heart — with a special place reserved for the banks of Strangford Lough in County Down.

Brits with an Irish passport can travel freely around Europe and avoid post-Brexit red tape

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Brits with an Irish passport can travel freely around Europe and avoid post-Brexit red tape

In short, I have quite as much Irish blood as either of my two friends. The only difference between us is that my Irish ancestors settled in England as long ago as the middle of the 19th century, while theirs are of more recent extraction.

I, therefore, don't qualify for citizenship under the one-grandparent rule, while they do.

But even if I had been eligible for dual nationality, I know that I wouldn't have applied for it.

Since my birth, my undivided loyalty has been to the British Crown — and as an undividedly loyal subject of the British monarch, whosoever that may be at the time, I propose to die.

As for the petty, mean-spirited obstacles put in the way of British travellers by our former EU partners, they are undeniably as infuriating as they are nonsensical.

Take President Macron's exasperating rule that Britons entering France must take a PCR or antigen test within 24 hours pre-departure, while travellers with EU passports are exempt.

President Macron implemented an exasperating rule that Britons entering France must take a PCR test within 24 hours pre-departure, while travellers with EU passports are exempt

President Macron implemented an exasperating rule that Britons entering France must take a PCR test within 24 hours pre-departure, while travellers with EU passports are exempt

Does this bargain-basement Napoleon seriously think that I am more likely to infect his fellow countrymen than my fellow Londoner — one of my two newly-Irish friends — with whom I had lunch at a pub in Notting Hill Gate last week?

No, of course he doesn't. He is well aware that thanks to our world-beating vaccination programme, British travellers pose a lower risk of spreading coronavirus than the citizens of almost any other country you care to mention.

Or take the idiotic rule in Spain, under which all Britons must be vaccinated, including children aged over 12 — but not if they are travelling with an EU citizen.

Let's get this straight. According to Madrid's logic, an unvaccinated British 12-year-old poses a serious threat to Spanish health — so serious, indeed, that she can't be allowed into the country — but it's perfectly safe to let her in if she happens to be accompanied by her Polish nanny!

But then, this spiteful discrimination against UK citizens, replicated to a greater or lesser extent in other EU countries such as Italy, Denmark and Sweden, has precious little to do with the wretched Covid bug, let alone with logic.

It's all about making an example of us, to discourage others from following Britain's example in leaving their ghastly club.

In Spain, Britons must be vaccinated, including children but not if they are with an EU citizen

In Spain, Britons must be vaccinated, including children but not if they are with an EU citizen

Let's put to one side the question of why, if the EU is really as attractive as its admirers claim, it should feel any need to punish those who choose to walk away. That's for Brussels to explain, not me.

All I can say is that, in the circumstances, I can well understand my friends' decision to take dual nationality.

But my purpose this week is to recommend an equally effective — and, in my view, more honourable — way of avoiding all the palaver inflicted on Britons at Europe's borders.

Never mind applying for an extra passport, issued by a foreign power. How about taking a leaf from my own book, and holding no valid passport at all?

By chance, my old one expired in May two years ago, a couple of months after the first lockdown https://en.search.wordpress.com/?src=organic&q=Real Passport Generator came into force. Since I wasn't allowed to travel anywhere at the time — not even the few miles from my South London home to Richmond Park — I saw no earthly reason why I should splash out £75.50 on renewing it.

Nor do I see any reason to do so today, while our former partners continue to play silly beggars with British travellers who want to spend their hard-earned holiday money in the EU's undeserving resorts. Let them cut off their noses to spite their faces, if that's what they want. It's no skin off mine.

Close up of UK Passport Office logo or letterhead against new British passport in 2020

Close up of UK Passport Office logo or letterhead against new British passport in 2020

Until they grow up a bit — and realise that they need our tourists rather more than our tourists need them — I for one will be perfectly content to spend my summers in the beautiful UK.

Indeed, fingers crossed, I'll be driving Mrs U to Scotland this summer, on a holiday we booked three long years ago, but which has been postponed by the Covid regulations ever since.

By then, with a bit of luck, even that tartan tyrant Nicola Sturgeon will have given up any idea of imposing yet more Covid regulations, much as she has seemed to enjoy throwing her weight about since the pandemic began.

Not for us, then, the exhausting slog to the airport at the crack of dawn, the misery of delayed flights or the tiresome rigmarole of queuing for hours at the security gates and being made to remove our belts and shoes.

Not for us the battle to make ourselves understood by officious foreign border-guards, intent on putting Brexit Britain in its place.

The joy of it is that, in spite of Ms Sturgeon's best efforts, we won't even need any travel documents to cross the border between England and Scotland.

All right, I'll be sorry if I never see France or Italy again. So I dare say I'll get a new, true blue British passport one day. But not until our former partners learn that by punishing Britons, they harm only themselves.