A pro-EU Tory politician has secured an Irish passport over his disgust about Brexit, saying he is “ashamed to be British in many ways”.



Conservative MEP Charles Tannock has confirmed he obtained the Irish passport because his grandmother was born in Dublin.

The representative for London in the European parliament is one of thousands of British people who have been applying for Irish passports since the UK voted to leave the EU last year.

He said his interest in his Irish heritage “has been awakened by Brexit because, to be honest, I am quite ashamed to be British in many ways”.

Tannock told the Irish Times on Monday he was a “pretty angry pro-European Tory” who was strongly opposed to Brexit and had sought out a European passport – in his case an Irish one.

The Tory MEP also criticised his party for being mired in “arrogance and hubris … the petty nationalism, the triumphalism”.

In April the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFA) in Dublin revealed there had been a 68% rise in Irish passport applications from the UK in the first quarter of 2017.

Between January and March 2017, 51,000 applications were received from the UK, compared with 30,000 for whole of last year.

If the surge continues, the DFA expects that applications will pass the 1m mark by the end of this year.

Dan Mulhall, a former Irish ambassador to London, described the increase as “an extraordinary number”.

Mulhall said the spike was due to people trying to “safeguard their position for the future” in the light of Brexit.