Brexit Day

[luka]

Same thing isn't it

 

[droid]

Apparently the Sinn Fein surge in the Ireland that isn't part of the UK is all about domestic politics has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit, but it still feels in at least some sense like a new development in the B-word story.

It has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit, I cant stress that enough.

In fact pretty much the only thing the electorate agrees on about the current regime is that they've handled Brexit fairly well. I hate their guts and I think they've done a pretty good job.

The Sinn Fein vote is almost entirely about domestic social and economic issues. There is a minor cultural element due to a recent scandal regarding the war of independence commemorations, but id go so far to say that nationalism, republicanism and the north played virtually no part.

 

[comelately]

To be clear I wasn't being remotely ironic, of course it's a very interesting turn of events for Ireland. There's a few 'Brexiteers' saying it's like Palestine electing Hamas.

 

[Mr. Tea]

There's a few 'Brexiteers' saying it's like Palestine electing Hamas.

Hahaha, oh god, I can just imagine this.

 

[droid]

To be clear I wasn't being remotely ironic, of course it's a very interesting turn of events for Ireland. There's a few 'Brexiteers' saying it's like Palestine electing Hamas.

You wouldn't believe the number of terrible takes Ive seen coming out from the UK over the last while. Im expecting a tsunami over the next few days. Nothing new, but the sheer volume is eye popping.

 

[craner]

There's a few 'Brexiteers' saying it's like Palestine electing Hamas.

An English person saying that about Irish politics - I literally couldn't think of a more perfect combination to wind up Droid. (I didn't say it, by the way.)

 

[Mr. Tea]

(I didn't say it, by the way.)

A likely story!

 

[john eden]

You wouldn't believe the number of terrible takes Ive seen coming out from the UK over the last while. Im expecting a tsunami over the next few days. Nothing new, but the sheer volume is eye popping.

My (possibly terrible) take is that the Ireland election is a good example of what can happen at a time of crisis when you don't have Brexit going on.

I don't know much about SF in the republic but have found the kind of deep, embedded community work they have done in the North very inspiring.

 

[droid]

That has some truth to it. Its a crisis of chosen establishment policies, high rents, housing, health - not a million miles away from austerity.

SF tend to be far less community driven down here. They have a mixed record in local government and are often criticised by the left for their intransigence. The main theme of this election is people being fed up with the appalling neo-liberalism of the ruling parties and grabbing the most obvious prospect for change. If SF had run more candidates they now be the biggest party - and that may yet happen in a second election, in which case we could be looking at an SF/Green/Left coalition.

 

[droid]

Still didn't get my vote though. No major objection to the party as a whole, but my SF TD made the Hyde and Regents park bombs. I gave him a 5th preference but he got in an astonishing 44% of first preferences, and its looking like my vote may actually go to a left candidate in a shock result.

 

[john eden]

It's good to have this perspective, Droid - appreciated.

 

[droid]

Its a shame sectionfive isnt around, he's currently writing the best political column in the country.

 

[craner]

Its a shame sectionfive isnt around, he's currently writing the best political column in the country.

Which column?

 

[droid]

Editorial columns for the Phoenix.

https://www.thephoenix.ie/

 

[craner]

Oh, I'm not a subscriber.

 

[droid]

!! Unbelievable.

 

[droid]

Sample here:

MEDIA MONSTERING of Sinn Féin over the 2007 Paul Quinn murder and the contradictions between Mary Lou McDonald and SF’s northern finance minister, Conor Murphy reached hysterical proportions this week. The Sunday and Irish Independent, the Irish Times and RTE lost the run of themselves, descending from their usual anti-SF electoral combat mode to McCarthyite levels. But in their political haste and abandonment of editorial criteria tell tale signs of an expertly choreographed campaign and its own contradictions emerged.

The Sindo published a column by Mairia Cahill last weekend, six days before the election, supporting the demand by Paul Quinn’s parents for Murphy to retract his allegation of criminality against their son. At that stage this demand for retraction and apology was the only demand made by anyone. It has since morphed into pressure for Murphy to name the IRA individuals he contacted to ascertain who killed Quinn and why. Such a precedent would seriously deter any future efforts to establish certain facts when required.

Cahill’s column was just one of several alarmist articles in that day’s paper about SF’s surge, exemplified by the front page headline, “SF at the gate”. The Sindo also gave a full broad sheet page to a syrup soaked interview with Fianna Fail leader, Micheál Martin and also carried the obligatory Eoghan Harris columnlionising Martin and excoriating SF (still controlled by the IRA Army Council, apparently).

That same morning Sindo deputy editor, Brendan O’Connor, temporarily hosting RTE’s Weekend on One, gave plenty of oxygen to the Sindo story on Quinn, mentioning to former SF MEP, Lynn Boylan, “Micheál Martin is bringing up if you will Sinn Féin’s history today”. Next day’s Indo spoke of the two big parties effort to “stem Sinn Féin tide”, but was relatively objective in its election coverage. Not so on Tuesday following Brian Dobson’s interview with McDonald and the Indo front page was headlined, “IRA murder casts shadow”, was followed by a two-page spread attacking SF and an editorial belittling SF’s election pledges. Wednesday’s Indo devoted two pages and several stories to the Quinn story and an editorial crack at SF promises, although Colette Browne’s column, almost uniquely in mainstream commentary, offered a serious, even positive, overview of SF’s election manifesto.

Today saw the Indo rev into top gear with the front page claiming, “no answers for Quinn family; Martin’s “Omerta” jibe at SF and eight articles spread over five pages attacking SF mainly focusing on the Quinn murder. By all accounts, Tuesday’s IT poll showing SF leading the two big parties on 25% destabilised editorial heads at Independent House. Today’s Indo editorial gave the game away, remarking, “Such moments of revelation (the Quinn exposé) can also come in elections, when suddenly something hidden comes into focus and we see a clearer, if still not complete picture”.

Such commentary indicated an over confidence in the by now barely concealed electoral agenda and it began to slip into the ostensible hard news coverage as Indo hacks went into over drive. Paul Williams stated, “One source said gardaí were satisfied ‘it (the Quinn murder) was 100pc the work of the IRA’, a fact that was established by the PSNI and the International Monitoring Commission (IMC)”. This is factually incorrect on a number of counts.

The BBC stated in a 2008 report headlined, “Group clears IRA of Quinn murder”, “it was the result of local disputes and some members, or former IRA members may have been involved”. (The IMC, it should be noted, was regarded by SF as a body that involved a former Department of Justice civil servant and controlled by spooky British chaps. It was created, they believed, as a sop to Unionists dissatisfied with General John de Chastelain and his international colleagues in the Independent International Commission of Decommissioning).

As well, the then Taoiseach told the Dáil in November, 2007 that he had received security briefings that said Quinn’s murder “was not paramilitary but pertained to feuds about criminality that were taking place”. He added that this conclusion was based on a number of reports from the gardaí and the PSNI. Bertie later backtracked on Paul Quinn personally saying, “we have no evidence whatsoever that Paul Quinn was involved in criminal activity”. But he said nothing about his previous statement referring to garda and PSNI reports.

The claim about the IMC is also repeated in a ‘Timeline’ in today’s Indo, which says the agency found that Quinn was murdered by members of the IRA. Given what the IMC actually said, this is at best disingenuous. More interestingly, the Timeline points to just two occasions when the SF leader was asked by media to support the Quinn family’s demand for Murphy to retract his allegations. One was when McDonald was pressed to do so this week — days before the general election. The second was on 25 October, just two days before the presidential election in which SF’s Liadh Ní Riada was a candidate.

The Sindo’s O’Connor became very exercised when Lynn Boylan suggested on his RTE programme last Sunday that,“the voters at home are wondering why do these issues come up at elections? Or when Sinn Féin is doing well all the time”.

RTE also went into paroxysms overthe Quinn family’s plight with the airwaves dominated this week by the issue in an orgy of selective recrimination. But did the media go too far with this blatant exercise timed to exact maximum electoral effect? This political-media operation will have an unquantifiable effect on SF’s vote, but people are not as stupid as opinion formers seem to think and most voters recognise a blatant media campaign when they see it. And many families badly damaged by the northern carnage may not be helped by the flagrant political exploitation of one or more victims at election time. Will the (S)Indo continue its campaign on behalf of the Quinn family post election?

The Quinn family’s ordeal has been cruel but there are hundreds of atrocities and murders involving all sides during the Troubles and their aftermath with many, many families traumatised. However, even handed scrutiny of the catalogue of murder in this dirty war would reveal an ‘appalling vista’ of collusion between Loyalist murder gangs and British security forces. Unfortunately, such revelations would not be electorally useful.

 

[comelately]

I think the point that John was getting at is that there were lots of people, even before the Referendum campaign with all of The Lies, who did have legitimate reasons and arguments for exiting the EU. And in response you still basically say, "OK, Eden, apart from your Dad, most of them are Tracy and Stacey, duped by lies because they were too thick and/or racist to avoid doing otherwise. I'm sure your Dad is a lovely guy and all that, but he's accidentally triggered race war economic Armageddon."

Coming back to my threat to defend Tea-ism here, the term 'legitimate' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. One doesn't really want to say it was illegitimate, but no matter how much you steelman, it's difficult to sustain the idea that there was an intellectually robust argument for leaving the EU on WTO or even CETA terms and noone serious was peddling it ("Absolutely noone is talking about threatening our place in the Single Market"). But I can scarcely recall how Hannan et al thought being 'in vassalage' would be remotely better - it seems like a weird argument to have ever made now, but such is politics. Some kind of EFTA/Swiss fudge cake was probably what he had in mind, but of course that relied on Europe essentially capitulating to whatever the UK wanted - always a deeply suspect idea (Theresa May's redlines also removed the possibility. Point is, such reasons and arguments were only really legitimate looking from 10,000 feet and were never going to survive political reality intact.

Corbyn's 'custom union' that Remainers didn't get behind was a crude device designed for political consumption rather than implementation. The idea that if Remainers had just voted for it then it would have been right on for the soft Brexit is laughable. Labour and Tory Remainers were doing a pretty decent job of keeping things in stasis, then Swinson and then Corbyn blew that one.

Any kind of soft Brexit would have been labelled BRINO and wouldn't have been a lasting settlement anyway. In some ways, better to give Brexiteers what they want and have them own it. They'll try not to, but it will be harder.

Of course, I understand the idea that sometimes freedom means doing the insanely unreasonable, lose-lose thing - especially when you have been gamed into a corner. Trying to make sense of Brexit is to guarantee misunderstanding of it.

 

[luka]

You've come lately. That argument has been had and lost.

 

[comelately]

I'm not late, I'm European. Still.