- Opinion
- 09 Sep 19
Made by Enda Whyte, the video to accompany Paddy Goodwin’s brand new single ‘Break For The Border’ pulls no punches in its depiction of the US President Donald Trump as flouncing around in the tradition of the Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan. And it links to similar tactics being used in the push for a ’no deal’ Brexit.
A new single by the Irish musician Paddy Goodwin – also a well known solicitor – surely represents one of the most blistering statements yet made, in any form, about the madness of Brexit, and the underlying fascist-derived ideology that has driven it.
The song is a powerful polemic indeed, delivered in a Nick Cave-style baritone, over a churning rock backdrop. "What’s it about?”, writer and singer Paddy Goodwin asks rhetorically. “Trump, Foster, Johnson. The unholy triumvirate. Building walls instead of bridges.”
Goodwin is a fine multi-instrumentalist, who has played with everyone from Wayne Kramer to Paul Brady. Sometimes known as the sixth Horslip – he regularly sits in with the Celtic Rock legends live – he is currently playing guitar with Dublin new wave pioneers The Atrix, who are doing a comeback gig on September 19, in The Sugar Club.
"We’ll take the spark of your resentment,” Goodwin sings, over images of Donald Trump, “and we’ll fan it to a flame/ We’ll fill your cup with paranoia/ So you’ll seek someone to blame.”
The fun shifts then to this side of the Atlantic. Over an image of Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds, we hear the singer denounce the DUP leaders in no uncertain terms. “There’s a red hand crawling,” he sings, "From a broken window on the past/ On a coffin ship that’s sailed by fools/ They’ve tied me to the mast.”
Then it's back to America, for more powerfully expressed lacerations.
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“There’s a jester in the White House/ With his clown car on the lawn/ And it’s break for the border/ On a counterfeit new dawn.”
But – on the day that saw Boris Johnson finally come to Dublin to meet the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar – the video shows the image of the floundering UK Prime Minister, during his successful bid for the Tory leadership, infamously holding up a plastic-packaged kipper and claiming that the plastic was required by EU rules, when the regulation is in fact a British one. Over that image the words appear: “I can tell the toffs are lying/ ‘cause I can see their lips are moving/ Try to save the party/ Let the country go to hell.”
It is doubtful that a more politically pointed song will be written. And when historians seek to understand what was going on – and the sinister extent of the lies, manipulation and fear-mongering in which the new far right demagogues have engaged – well, this will indeed be an excellent reference point.