Month: February 2019

From the IT…

The impounding of two Northern Ireland fishing boats by the Irish Navy has been condemned as “quite outrageous” by the DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds.
The boats, the Amity and the Boy Joseph, were detained in Dundalk Bay on Wednesday for allegedly breaching fishing regulations. They were fishing for crabs, lobsters and whelks when they were arrested.

Then there’s this:

DUP MP for Strangford Jim Shannon said the boats clearly were British fishing vessels. “They were illegally seized in waters that are disputed, waters that belong to this great nation,” he said.

…this happened.

It took until May for a government to be elected.

Thought it interesting the reports during the week that one group in government at the present were not approached at all over the national children’s hospital controversy – those being the Independent Alliance Ministers.
And a curious point is noted by Fiach Kelly.

Insults and animosity flew between Fine Gael, Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil. Halligan’s brief, jack-in-the-box contribution was the reminder that the Independents are still part of this government, too.
Hardly any Opposition figures felt it necessary to attack the Alliance, a change from standard practice on such occasions when the junior partner in government is targeted as the soft underbelly.

I suspect that the IA are regarded as effectively a wing, if not of Fine Gael, then of the government sitting in a slightly detached position. They’re not going to be prised away short of catastrophe so why would the opposition waste their ammunition on them. It would be the equivalent of targeting Simon Coveney in the hope that he would leave Fine Gael.

Kelly makes some other very sound points. Not least that while there are those on the Independent ranks (opposition!) who will never enter government, by contrast there are those who would be more than likely to answer the call since even sharing some measure of power with a Fine Gael government is congenial enough that former WP and Fine Gael members can stomach it.

I do though find the following entertaining:

Ministers of wildly different talent and application would have to be tolerated, and questionable policies – such as Ross’s plan to exempt pensioners from property tax, a proposal shamelessly aimed at his Dublin Rathdown electorate – paid lip service before being shelved. Risible policies and dud ministers, however, are not the exclusive preserve of Independents.

Gazing at the FF benches, or those of FG, I have to say having done so across the years I don’t think it entirely fair on the IA crew, however much their politics seems constrained by ambition, to argue that they contain greater variations in talent and application than their vastly larger partner. Say what one may about their Ministers but they are assiduous and hard-working.

And Kelly isn’t wrong in the following:

Above all, the Alliance has demonstrated that the once-exotic can remain bought. Their quiescence may, in time, be seen as a welcome indication that governments with a handful of Independents in senior positions can last the distance.”

Not so much a flood, not really a trickle…

Hey, here’s no surprise. I find the TIG almost uniquely abysmal. One could I suppose admit that the SDP did have an ideological position, even if it was impossible for it to avoid the contradictions of that position when there was another left of the Tories, right of Labour Party already in situ in the British polity. And there was the particular tragedy that their approach was incredibly destructive in terms of blocking the Labour Party from power in the 1980s. Tellingly many of them made the journey back to the LP. Where else was there for them to go?

The TIG are a group with a programme so vague and insubstantial as to be worthless. They have said they won’t put forward a leader until late in the year. Why ever not one wonders. Perhaps because, and this has been seen in formations this side of the Irish Sea, to do so would generate (or deepen) fissures between what appears to be a remarkably egocentric crew.

As to the effect of the polling, read this and weep. They have already worked a malign magic on the rating of the BLP. One can only hope that as they move forward they demonstrate the vacuity of their project. The acceptance of a possible second referendum by the BLP (something I’m not sure is wise) is at least tactically not a bad move in terms of undercutting them, as IEL noted the other day. One can hope.

In between the reports of the impacts of a no-deal Brexit, some of which are truly concerning, there’s a few straws in the wind as to the likelihood of the May deal going through. Perhaps in the febrile churn of Westminster politics it is finally getting through that all the rhetoric, all the play-acting, does actually have consequences (and no worse play-acting than the TIG crew).

How to explain this from Denis Staunton in the Irish Times who notes the response to the Cooper amendment and some curious noises emanating from those adjacent to the ERG.

Senior figures in the ERG acknowledge privately that if the changes to the backstop satisfy the DUP, all but a handful of the Conservative Brexiteers will support May’s deal.

Is that enough? Or this, apparent moves by May to lure BLP MPs to vote for her deal. And he notes that on the Cooper amendment all but one of the DUP’s cohort abstained.

How very telling to read in the Guardian about the TIG that:

No further defections are anticipated imminently, although the group hopes that the forthcoming parliamentary battles over Brexit could see other MPs coming forward.

And here’s a fault-line…

But despite Lib Dem enthusiasm, TIG MPs said they wanted Lib Dem MPs to quit their party and join them. They argued that the Lib Dem brand has been tarnished by the period when the party under Nick Clegg went into coalition government with David Cameron’s Conservatives.

But wait, didn’t Anna Soubry say she still agreed with austerity?

And then there’s this about the leadership:

Over the weekend, Umunna sought to put himself forward, saying: “I’m clear I want to play the biggest role in this group.” It appears, however, that his immediate ambition has been rebuffed, at least temporarily.

But…

…but friends of Heidi Allen, a former Conservative, have been pressing her to put her name forward when the election process begins.

Was talking to someone recently who thought that the Aontú polling came as a surprise to those involved in that organisation. As noted the other day the SBP/RedC poll indicated they were polling at less than 1%.

And yet the surprise is that this is a surprise. We’ve seen remarkably little momentum behind vehicles that place abortion front and centre. To expect in the wake of a referendum that was so comprehensively a majority for YES and seen as such nationwide and almost overwhelmingly accepted as a legitimate poll that somehow there’d be significant space for a party that tapped into those who voted NO was always an ask. Not least because there’s no clear path forward to over-turning that result. And surely that would be the centre of such politics, would it not? Because simply holding the views expressed by those flocking, or not, to Aontú is surely not enough and that is what would be the de facto situation from here on out.

Perhaps I do those involved a disservice, perhaps they do believe that the pushback begins with them. But again, there’s so little space for any optimism at all that matters would change in terms of public opinion in the near to medium term. And then one has to look at other polities where, at least in the modern period, over-turning provision is a work in progress even in seemingly more favourable (for them) political contexts.

And strip away that issue and what one sees is an essentially ‘centrist’ formation that could easily accommodate itself in Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil.

Add to all that something that has been noted before on this site that building a political formation is a massive task. Just look at the challenging histories of groups as diverse as RENUA and the SDs. Exciting meetings are one thing. The slog is another. It will be interesting to see how this goes.