Politics blog + Ireland

One of the biggest political casualties of the Northern Ireland peace process has been one of the two parties that consistently pursued peaceful politics shorn of any paramilitary taint.

The Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP), along with the Alliance party – unlike the two main unionist parties, let alone Sinn Féin – never flirted with or exploited paramilitarism. Yet, when peace arrived and the prospect of power-sharing became a reality, the SDLP lost thousands of votes to Sinn Féin after the latter shifted towards the former's position of pursuing Irish unity through purely peaceful means. In effect, Sinn Féin engaged in a strategically brilliant form of political cross-dressing and stole the northern democratic clothing of the SDLP.

Sinn Féin is now the dominant party of nationalism in Northern Ireland and it is Sinn Féin that supplanted the SDLP as the voice of nationalists in the European parliament. Sinn Féin's lead over the SDLP appears at present to be unassailable both in the Northern Ireland assembly and the number of MPs each party has.

At present the SDLP is in a precarious hiatus, with the current leader, Mark Durkan, stepping down before the party's conference in February. There are two candidates to succeed him, both of whom face the sisyphean task of rescuing the SDLP's f Continue reading...

I like to think of myself as a bit of a Thatcherite on Europe. Partly because it's true, but chiefly because it annoys her Europhobic proteges who are, most of them, too young to remember what a stout European she often was. On the day Ireland votes on the Lisbon treaty, it's worth remembering. After all, a lot is riding on this for David Cameron's career. Tony Blair's too.

Margaret and I voted yes to Europe in the Labour-staged referendum of 1975. Margaret helped negotiate the 1986 Single European Act, which removed so many national vetoes in pursuit of the valuable concept of a single, open market for people, capital, goods and ... I always forget the fourth one. I backed her stance.

But Margaret and I shared doubts about the next big decision we had to take together: the euro. Along with Gordon Brown – I'm afraid Master Blair was a bit wobbly, but he doesn't really get economics, does he; just look at his house-buying record – we didn't think it the right choice for the outward-looking British economy, though we wished our neighbours well.

Now to this constitution business. French and Dutch voters rejected this deeply tedious document, which I read on Ken Clarke's behalf. So Brussels scaled down its pretensions and produced the Lisbon treaty, which enshrines practical advantages – easier voting majorities, a council president etc. Continue reading...

On either side of the Irish border, there exists, at present, an electoral version of the cold war doctrine of mutually assured destruction.

In the pre-1989 world, MAD signified the nuclear stalemate between the US and the Soviet Union – that there was peace for more than four decades, despite the world being split into two competing ideological camps, because of the threat of each side being obliterated by the other.

Terrified by the knowledge that their nuclear armed missiles could destroy life on either side of the divide, Moscow and Washington sought detente rather than outright war.

In the post-Celtic Tiger, peace-process Irish world, the island's mini-MAD may just keep the electoral peace for a few months, possibly even for a couple of years. Continue reading...

The Irish referendum on the Lisbon treaty is going to be more interesting than many people predicted, it seems.

A poll in today's Irish Times reveals that there has been an 8% drop in support for the legislation since June, with 46% of people now in favour – down from 54%. Continue reading...

To the majority of voters south of the Irish border, the north is just like the past – another country, where they do things differently.

The outcome of last weekend's elections in the two states of Ireland underlines that basic political fact.

A three-way split in unionism and the tribal desire to get ahead of the Prods and be number one put Sinn Féin at the top of electoral pile in Northern Ireland.

For the first time since elections to the European parliament began in 1979, it topped the poll ahead of the Democratic Unionists.
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Up until yesterday evening, the BBC's Robert Peston has been the Cassandra of the British economy. From the sub-prime mortgage collapse in America to the subsequent credit crunch and on to the global recession, the Beeb's business editor has sounded like an oracle of doom. Throughout the last turbulent 18 months, viewers and listeners have tuned into and analysed Peston's reports the way seafarers pay careful attention to weather forecasts. So when Peston started to sound upbeat, at least about the banking system, on Thursday night, governments, financiers and normal human beings sat up and took notice.

Imagine then the shock if Peston turned around this weekend and announced that he was stepping down as BBC business editor to stand in a key byelection for the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats. Whichever party enticed him from his post into politics would justifiably think they had scored a major, morale-boosting publicity coup.

In fact this is exactly what has happened in the Irish Republic this week. George Lee was RTÉ's economics editor. Like Peston, Lee has pointed out the serious weaknesses in his nation's economy and its vulnerability in the overall global economic system. Even during the latter years of the celtic tiger boom, Lee warned of wasted opportunities, lack of social investment and an exorbitant property market that could, and eventually would, be the downfall of the Irish economic miracle.

His critics in the main ruling Fianna Fáil party have complained bitterly (and unfairly) that even before Lee announced his decision to enter politics he was broadcasting anti-government party politicals in his reports. Lee, an assiduous journalist and talented on-screen broadcaster, was, however, merely behaving like the little boy who kept pointing out that the emperor had no clothes. The venom directed at Lee this week simply reflects the desperation within the ranks of Fianna Fáil as it faces two crucial byelections, local government elections and the European poll all on one day – 5 June to be precise.
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The pain kicks in next month. The payback comes a month later.

It begins to bite the moment that Irish workers tear open their May pay cheques and discover they are paying more tax on their increasingly shrinking salaries. Shrinking because despite relatively low interest rates and falling fuel prices, staples such as food continue to rise.

Revenge will be exacted on 5 June when Ireland goes to the polls in the European and local government elections as well as a crucial byelection in Dublin Central. Fianna Fáil, Ireland and arguably Europe's most successful postwar party, expects to take one of the severest hits in its history. It may for the first time even fail to return a candidate to represent Dublin in the European parliament.

Ireland has just passed one of the most brutal, some would say most important, budgets in its history as an independent state. Taxes were hiked and public spending slashed as Brian Cowen's government sought to plug a widening black hole in Irish public finances Continue reading...

Inside the Great Hall of Queen's University Belfast on Monday lunchtime, Seamus Heaney and Mary Robinson stared down from the walls at Ireland's Europe minister.

Dick Roche was surrounded by portraits not only of the university's former vice-chancellors but also some of its most famous alumni, such as the Nobel laureate and the current Irish president.

Roche was in Belfast, between crucial meetings in Brussels and Dublin, to argue the case for a second referendum on the EU Lisbon reform treaty, which Ireland first rejected last June.

A Europhile since the early 1970s, the Fianna Fáil minister delivered a passionate defence of Ireland's role in Europe and the necessity of the republic being at the heart, rather than the periphery, of Europe.

In his speech, the minister more or less hinted that the Irish people will be asked again to vote on Lisbon this autumn.

Moreover, he ruled out any move to synchronise the second referendum with the European and local government elections this June.

Just 48 hours before Roche's speech at QUB, the Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams, made an equally impassioned speech to his party faithful at the RDS conference centre in Dublin.

In a bid to make the party more relevant to the Irish republic's electorate, Adams launched a scathing attack on the bankers and financiers people blame for the country's current economic crisis.

He sought to reach out to an electorate that spurned Sinn Féin's advances in the 2007 general election by calling for the creation of "left unity" Continue reading...

Buswell's hotel's foyer and bar became the Irish political equivalent of a UN safe haven on Wednesday lunchtime.

A safe haven, that is, for the shaken ranks of Fianna Fáil parliamentarians.

Inside the hotel, whose side faces directly onto the Dáil, the Irish parliament, nervous-looking Fianna Fáil MPs sat around tables deep in conversation, some glancing diffidently towards the windows at the crowds beyond.

Outside, hundreds of angry civil servants held a rally in protest not only against the Irish government's decision to impose a levy to top up public sector pensions but also to express their anger over the country's financial crisis.

There were fiery speeches about "golden circles" of bankers and financiers still making millions in share deals even while the economy was disintegrating and jobs being lost on a daily basis. While the crowd's ire was mainly trained on the banks, there was also considerable hostility to the politicians, mainly Fianna Fáil, whom some opposition parties are claiming are somehow linked to some of the "golden circle" that borrowed €300m (£265m) from the troubled and now nationalised Anglo Irish Bank.
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Seven billion euros were injected into two of Ireland's major banks yesterday as part of a desperate plan not only to rescue the country's financial institutions but also to save the republic's entire economy.

Despite the Irish cabinet approving the aid plan for Allied Irish and the Bank of Ireland, shares in the two lending institutions fell yesterday, again demonstrating a profound lack of economic confidence throughout the state.

On the same day, around 1,200 workers were in danger of losing their jobs at an aircraft maintenance firm next to Dublin airport, while the low-cost airline Ryanair confirmed cuts in both posts and flight destinations from Ireland to other parts of Europe.

Of all the countries within the eurozone, Ireland is perhaps the most vulnerable to the continuing global economic tremors.

The re Continue reading...

Among the many casualties of the economic downturn afflicting the Irish Republic at present is the SDLP in Northern Ireland.

In an Observer poll just over a year ago, an overwhelming majority of SDLP delegates at their annual conference voted in favour of merging with the republic's largest party, Fianna Fáil. Out of 40 delegates surveyed, 29% said they wanted to join forces with Fianna Fáil.

The delegates' enthusiasm for uniting with the dominant political force south of the border followed months of speculation about a possible link-up between the two parties.

As SDLP members – moderate nationalists who consistently outpolled Sinn Féin until the Troubles ended – gather for their 2009 conference in Armagh this weekend, those who were so keen to rush into a marriage with Fianna Fáil might be forgiven for feeling like a bride jilted at the altar. Continue reading...

Europe was the toxic issue that tore the Tory party apart in the early 1990s, defenestrating a prime minister and creating a byproduct of sullen rebellious "bastards" who made her successor John Major's life a misery.

The issue of Europe is now set to become equally poisonous for some of Ireland's big political players, north and south, in two parliaments, throughout 2009.

In Northern Ireland the forthcoming European elections will be the first serious test of the popularity of power-sharing, particularly in relation to the unionist community. At present two out of the three local MEPs are unionists: Jim Nicholson of the Ulster Unionist party and Jim Allister of the Traditional Unionist Voice.

Of the two Jims, Allister poses the most significant political challenge. Allister was elected to Brussels last time around on the Democratic Unionist party ticket. In fact he was persuaded by his former mentor, Ian Paisley, to come out of political retirement and give up a career as a QC to take over the big man's seat in Europe.

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"Alternative government" in Ireland constitutes two near permanent components: an absence of Fianna Fáil from power and a coalition led by Fine Gael with the support of the Irish Labour party.

The two main opposition parties are often propped up by an array of smaller political forces and independent members of the Dáil. None the less the two main forces that have in the past excluded, and could again exclude, Fianna Fáil from office remain Fine Gael and Labour.

Last weekend Fine Gael held its annual congress (Ard Fheis) in Wexford in an atmosphere of renewed optimism. The party currently has a seven-point lead over Fianna Fáil and is in its best position for more than a decade to form the next government. The upturn in Fine Gael's fortunes is due principally to the global economic crisis, which has hit Ireland harder than most EU nations.

This was why Enda Kenny, the Fine Gael leader, concentrated most of his fire on the Fianna Fáil-led government's handling of the credit crunch and its aftermath.

However, Kenny also focused on rising public anger about the seemingly endless gang warfare in cities such as Dublin and Limerick. The idea that the crime lords are out of control crystallised earlier this month following the murder of a young rugby captain in Limerick, his death the result of criminals mistaking him for a rival gangster in the city. The murder of Shane Geoghegan shook the republic to its foundations and seemed (temporarily at least) to have the same impact as the gangland killing of campaigning journalist Veronica Guerin 12 years earlier.
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Booms on the Irish border used to mean bombs, rockets and landmines exploding. Now they equate to something entirely different.

Towns and cities on the northern side of the Irish frontier are enjoying rapid retail growth despite the credit crunch. Places once synonymous with terrorism, destruction and division such as Newry and Derry are benefiting from a mass influx of shoppers from the Irish Republic. The southern bargain hunters are driving up to 50 miles to stock up on food, drink and other goods that are substantially cheaper in Northern Ireland's sterling zone as opposed to the euro one of the republic.
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