‘Land grab’ by the Guardian

THE bastion of the British left, the Guardian newspaper, had readers puzzled after Prime Minister Theresa May triggered Article 50 with a ‘ too clever by half ’ front page that, while striking, seemed to show Dundalk and other parts of Ireland leaving the EU along with Britain.

Under the headline of ‘Britain steps into the unknown’, the anti-Brexit Guardian used missing pieces of a jigsaw of Europe to represent Britain leaving the EU.

But thanks to a lack of a ‘Northern Ireland’ shaped jigsaw piece, closer examination of the graphic showed the removal of not only Dundalk but Donegal, Leitrim, Cavan and Monaghan, along with a bit of Wicklow.

Twitter was quick to catch the mistake, with a number of humorous comments posted. Richard Chambers tweeted: ‘Jesus. They really are leaving. And by the looks of things, they’re taking Donegal and Dundalk with them’, while Colin O’Connor said: ‘Britain steps into the unknown’ and they’re taking Donegal and part of Cavan with them it seems’. Even the DUP’s Jeffrey Donaldson also got in on the act: ‘Looks like Donegal is coming with us . .. my cousin Daniel will be pleased’.

And not everyone was sorry to see Dundalk potentially go - Aidan Geraghty tweeted: ‘Losing Wicklow is only a small price to pay for taking Dundalk off our hands’.

The Guardian’s editor, Katharine Viner, who was bombarded with tweets, blamed the offending graphic on ‘ bloody jigsaws’ on her Twitter account.