The European parliament’s Brexit negotiator has launched a scathing attack on Boris Johnson, saying his recent criticism of young voters who feel allegiance to Europe was “old-fashioned” and “nonsense”. Guy Verhofstadt told a special meeting of three committees in the Irish parliament that it was perfectly possible to feel European while at the same time feeling allegiance to your country of birth.  “Some British politicians – not to name Boris Johnson – criticise their countrymen and women for wanting to keep their European identity. He accuses them of ‘split allegiance’. I think this is a binary, old-fashioned and reductionist understanding of identity. I think we need to be smarter, more open and more inventive then that,” he said.

“It’s nonsense to talk about split allegiance. It’s perfectly possible to feel English, British and European at the same time. As it is perfectly normal to be a Dubliner, Irish and European at the same time,” he said. “It is this position that needs to be defended by our European Union just as the European Union needs to [make sure] there is no return to the past, to hard borders on our continent, and certainly not to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.” Verhofstadt’s attack comes after the foreign secretary’s Daily Telegraph article in which he said lack of allegiance to the country by some voters drove the leave result in the EU referendum last year.(theguardian)…[+]