The most famous scene from Mad Men – a 2010s TV series about an advertising agency – involves two men in an elevator. Michael Ginsberg, the young, plucky and aggrieved employee, tries to rattle Don Draper, the old, established, alpha boss of the agency. “I feel bad for you,” Michael says. “I don’t think about you at all,” Don replies – self-assured, haughty, devastating.

It has become a favourite meme on the British right when it comes to the Anglo-Irish relationship. Michael is Ireland – insecure, striving, arriviste – and Don is Britain. Ireland, so goes the implication, spends all of its time chattering about the UK or England or Westminster. The press was obsessed with Brexit, and a disproportionate amount of national energy was devoted to spitting resentments about the Tories. And all of this, just for Britain not to care a jot. Britain is above this immature sniping, it doesn’t care what Ireland thinks, it doesn’t even notice what it says. Ireland – and this is their ultimate insult – thinks it is a gadfly when it is hardly even a gnat.

I do wonder, however, why the British right – who apparently don’t think about Ireland at all – spend so much time thinking about Ireland. Last week, Sonja Hyland was appointed as Ireland’s new Ambassador in London, following the departure of Martin Fraser to New York. A statement........

© The Irish Times