Michelle O’Neill The View
One mercy of the General Election is that it diminished attention to the actual moment of Brexit on January 31. Brexit was not an election issue, given all-party agreement and support, but history will give credit, absent from the ballot box, to the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and the Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney and their officials for protecting vital Irish interests thus far.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s venue for his keynote speech the following day was symbolic. The Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich is redolent of the era of William and Mary and the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1689, by analogy with which Johnson boasted of a ‘glorious Brexit’.
Edmund Burke, whose north Cork family origins were from ‘the hidden Ireland’, a reasoned champion of Catholic rights, is sometimes credited with being the father of British conservatism because of his outspoken opposition to the French Revolution. He described the ‘Glorious Revolution’ in Ireland as “not a revolution, but a conquest”, and the penal laws created by it “as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people… as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man”.
Sensitivity to Northern Ireland was not displayed during the British cabinet reshuffle which removed the effective Northern Ireland Secretary of State Julian Smith, who with Simon Coveney helped restore the power-sharing Assembly and Executive in Northern Ireland last month. His successor arrived, either badly briefed on the withdrawal agreement regarding conditions for Northern Ireland’s continuing EU access post-Brexit, or engaging in gamesmanship as a negotiating ploy.
Boris Johnson has talked up prospects of a bridge across the North Channel, despite south-west Scotland’s distance from main centres in England. Unless the Chinese were brought in to accelerate the project, could there be a risk that it would connect an independent Scotland to a united Ireland? Sensibly, the fastest link between the two islands and their main centres of population, especially with the high-speed rail link HS2, would be across the central corridor of the Irish Sea, providing a journey of around 3-4 hours between Dublin and London, and if Britain had stayed in the EU it would have attracted EU financial aid.
It would certainly be piquant, if the two heirs of the Sinn Féin that won independence a century ago were to come together again at national level”
The collective duty of the 160 Dáil deputies is to elect a Government. The President is unlikely to accept that this is impossible and grant another dissolution and election any time soon. While some parties may argue that they should stand aside as they have not been given a mandate, no party or deputy has received a mandate never to be in government.
Parties that did well are loosely described as election winners. Indeed, Sinn Féin made spectacular advances, and the Greens and Social Democrats impressive ones. Aontú’s Peadar Tobin and Carol Nolan formerly of Sinn Féin held their own, as did others who held to what till recently were mainstream values. Siding with ‘socially progressive’ liberal humanist changes carries an electoral price, a contributory factor in the disappointing performances of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. No one won the election, and the three front-runners were a virtual dead heat with Sinn Féin joining the mainstream.
It would certainly be piquant, if the two heirs of the Sinn Féin that won independence a century ago were to come together again at national level in coalition. They have long worked together in local authorities. They would face in opposition the other strain in Sinn Féin that has lately started to play a political part in the country’s further development. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael should be proud of the fact that, with others, particularly Labour, they have been partners in democracy. Perhaps now they have to be main partners in government. It is wisely claimed that the challenges of Brexit, housing and health need a majority government.
Peace process
Controversy surrounds the position of Sinn Féin. Times change, but if the hostility it now faces as a democratic party had been shown when it was being persuaded to abandon support for paramilitary violence the peace process would have been stillborn.
The deal offered by the British and Irish Governments from 1993 was that if violence was forsworn they could take part in democratic politics the same as other parties. To partake in the Northern Ireland Executive they had to sign up to and abide by the Mitchell Principles of democracy and non-violence. Their leaders have long denounced dissident republican attacks, and Michelle O’Neill recently appeared at a PSNI recruitment event.
If SF satisfy democratic conditions north of the border, and security and intelligence have been careful not to say that they don’t, it is unfair to people in Northern Ireland to claim that they fail to do so south of the border, notwithstanding differences in the scope of government.
Any perceived attempt to block democracy risks inviting a delayed but stronger reaction later. If, as Mary-Lou McDonald claims, the IRA no longer exists, it would help confidence to declare that the Green Book is obsolete, and that Sinn Féin today takes neither guidance nor instruction from it.
The Government must stick to the terms of the Good Friday Agreement on a border poll”
It is easy to forget our history. Michael Collins, when head of the Provisional Government in 1922, was still a member of the IRB, with which Defence Minister Richard Mulcahy was involved till his resignation in 1924. Fianna Fáil in 1928 claimed to be “a slightly constitutional party”. Political rallies in the early 1930s featured rival paramilitary groups. Shadowy forces are omnipresent in democratic politics everywhere.
The decisive issue is policy compatibility. The Government must stick to the terms of the Good Friday Agreement on a border poll, which, if soundly defeated, would set back the cause of a united Ireland. There is no evidence of any significant unionist conversion following Brexit. The anti-partition campaign of the late 1940s demonstrated that one-sided zeal will not hasten a united Ireland.
Radical tax promises would narrow the tax base and drive out wealth.
The more parties differ in policies the more of them they will have to drop to be in government together.