Contradiction piled upon contradiction July 3, 2024
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Thy name is Farage. Here’s a bit of light on a side issue in Northern Irish politics:
Farage casts a long political shadow and it has crossed the Irish Sea to influence, in a curious and almost comical way, how unionists might vote on Thursday…before Farage became its leader that the Reform UK party, then under Richard Tice, should form an alliance with the TUV. And even when Farage decided that rather than stay in the background he should take over Reform and run for election, the Reform-TUV axis appeared a well-forged partnership.
But then Farage did what mavericks do: go his own way. “As far as the Northern Ireland thing is concerned,” he said, “I want to make it clear that whilst there have been negotiations going on in previous times I will personally be endorsing Ian Paisley and Sammy Wilson.”
Ouch.
Farage’s almost dismissive description of “the Northern Ireland thing” grated with the TUV leader but his support for Wilson in East Antrim and more especially for Paisley in North Antrim, which Allister also is contesting, was heavily ladling the injury on to the insult.
Reform’s co-deputy leader Ben Habib, striving for damage limitation, tweeted that his party “stands shoulder to shoulder” with the TUV “and supports all its candidates in Northern Ireland. ALL of them!!”
Regardless of the double exclamation marks and capital letters that didn’t make sense as Allister was forced to concede when he told BBC Radio Ulster’s Talkback programme that the situation was “rather incongruous”.
But wait. That’s not all:
There also was reference to Mark Paul’s interview with Farage in The Irish Times in September where he said that “one day there will be a united Ireland”. Allister’s droll response was that Farage’s contribution to the Brexit debate was “unparalleled” but he had “some idiosyncrasies that come to the surface from time to time”.
Yeah, quite the idiosyncrasy. The reality is that Northern Ireland in this instance plays a similar role for Farage as the use of the ‘working class’ does for Steve Bannon. It has no particular meaning other than a backdrop upon which he can project more or less whatever he wants and use as a stick to beat his opponents – most immediately a sense of ‘loyalty’ albeit in his own mind he actually believes that ultimately Ireland will be united. How does he square that, as he sees it, inevitability with his support for those who most stridently seek to avoid it? He doesn’t have to. It doesn’t actually matter to him. It’s a prop. Nothing more. He doesn’t care about Ireland, he’s not so stupid that he doesn’t see that there are dynamics that will likely play out as a united polity, and even though he has a, likely, genuine fellow feeling with Wilson and Paisley – probably as much over Brexit as anything else, his affection is oceans wide but a puddle deep. He doesn’t even have to be consistent – he isn’t even consistent. TUV are, arguably, cleaving – whether we like it or not, to a more principled unionist position – at least it’s coherent. But he’s not troubled by that. Of course not. He doesn’t believe the Union will last.
But then this is the self-proclaimed man of the people who kicked up because Coutt’s bank dared to drop him. The person for whom Brexit is never pure enough – anything that happened on foot of the process he championed isn’t his fault, others ‘betrayed’ it. The person who effectively ‘owns’ a party but walks back from those who represent it and spout toxic rhetoric, saying it’s nothing to do with him – that they’re either crisis actors or the media is partisan in only pointing at Reform (despite that media pointing at both Tories and the BLP for years now about candidates). It truly is telling how far he has got on a paper thin political programme, holding a pint up for the cameras and mildly code switching his accent.
A working-class UK cabinet? July 3, 2024
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This surprised me, but the Guardian notes that in a break from the past fifteen years:
by Friday morning, Britain could have its most state-educated cabinet in decades. The shadow cabinet heading into the general election is 77.5% state-educated, with seven out of 31 members having attended fee-paying schools.
And while:
State education tells a limited story about socio-economic class – state schools range from those in the poorest areas to selective grammars in wealthy ones. But many leading members of the shadow cabinet grew up in working-class households, some in deprivation. Jon Ashworth, the shadow paymaster general, said last week that the incoming cabinet “could possibly be the most working-class cabinet of all time”.
What you want to say – 3rd July 2024 July 3, 2024
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As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.
And what about the election in the North? July 2, 2024
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Is this a good overview of the situation from Freya McClements in the Irish Times?
The DUP going in to the contest in remarkably poor shape, both for its inability to hold the line on the absurd approach to the Windsor Declaration. Alliance perhaps in a position to capitalise on that. Others too, but Alliance not quite surging as the media would sometimes portray. The UUP hoping that it can regain a Westminster seat. The SDLP hoping to hold the group that it has. Sinn Féin, actually in robust political health despite a very poor set of local and European elections in the South.
And turnout is key, as always.
A Conservative Party, that Starmer BLP July 2, 2024
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While the Tories promise tax and welfare cuts, it offers minor increases in tax and spend, premised on cuts in other areas. Labour says it will not increase benefits, or remove the two-child cap; it will only make improvements to education and healthcare that are trivial in the context of the challenges faced, adding only marginal numbers of appointments and teachers.
It tells us it is now the party of wealth creation and growth, not redistribution or equality (that is, people at the bottom will only get more if the size of the cake increases, and they will keep the same share of the cake as before). It sees no Israeli war crimes in Palestine. It will marginally retilt capital-labour relations, which one hopes will reduce inequality somewhat, but it does not differentiate between good and bad types of business – all business is good. Brexit is accepted.
Many will undoubtedly find this hard to believe. But the whole premise of Keir Starmer’s Labour is precisely that it needed to hug Tory dogma tight, perhaps to the point that it believes it. Starmer’s Labour does not believe that the key voting parts of the British public want change, and it may well not believe in serious change itself. That is a legitimate position for a political party to take, not least a party its leader calls “my” Labour party and which he constantly tells us he has changed.
And he notes that is legitimate for a party, but that it is not the ‘historical position’ of the BLP. And this is pointed:
New Labour, far from becoming hegemonic, ran its support into the ground. This was obscured by the first-past-the-post electoral system, which at the time gave Labour high seat shares from low vote shares. In 2005, its vote share was down to 1979 levels; in 2010 and 2015, it was down to near 1983 levels. Meanwhile, the vote share of the Tory party increased with every election to 2019, when it reached 1979 levels.
Like other formerly social democratic parties in Europe, Labour was on the way out. It had nothing left to say. Indeed, the nadir of Labour support came not in 2019, as so often alleged by Starmer’s Labour, but in 2010 (with 2015 not much better). Jeremy Corbyn’s dismal 2019 performance was better in vote share than that of Ed Miliband or Gordon Brown, and indeed that of Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock in the 1980s.
Edgerton offers three ‘scenarios’. Labour wins and fails – delivering the UK to the hard-right/far-right in five years time. Or it shifts position into genuine ‘change’, or, and I suspect he thinks this is the most likely option:
Starmer’s Labour succeeds, as New Labour did not, in fully marginalising the Tories; Labour would, in effect, becomes a new, competent, small-C conservative party. This would be welcome – a Starmer-led conservatism is infinitely preferable to a Sunak-led one. It also opens up the possibility that the stultifying consensus of the past 40 years is broken not by the extreme right, by new political forces of the centre and left – who have fresh stories to tell about where we have been and where we might go.
Perhaps.
I’ve long noted that the party (at least in my experience) was a lot less radical than some might have thought, but it’s one thing to not be particularly radical, another to be actually conservative.
Sure, a Starmer Labour Party would be better than the hard right and/or the Tories. It would, for many reasons, push in a different direction, but we in this state have long experience of seeing how the self-proclaimed ‘centre’ can bring minimal or contradictory ‘change’ and how patchwork that can be in practice. I’m not sure that that is the necessary bulwark against the hard/far right.
ILA Podcast #59: Sinéad Mercier: Environment and Just Transition July 2, 2024
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Sinéad Mercier: Environment and Just Transition – Irish Left Archive Podcast
In this episode we speak to Sinéad Mercier. Sinéad is a lecturer in Environmental Law & Policy and PhD Researcher in the Sutherland School of Law in UCD with the PROPERTY [IN]JUSTICE project led by Amy Strecker and Amanda Byer. We discuss Sinéad’s political background, her engagement with Trade Unionism and work with ICTU; environmental campaigning, how environmentalism has developed in Ireland, and some of the campaigns and groups that have played a role in that; Sinéad’s previous experience in environmental law and as a policy researcher with Senator Alice Mary Higgins and with the Green Party; and the contrast between an environmentalism still embedded in colonialism and capitalism and a genuinely transformative socialist environmentalism and Just Transition.
Sinéad’s paper, “Four Case Studies on Just Transition: Lessons for Ireland”, can be found on the National Economic and Social Council (NESC) website . The discussion also mentions Adrian Kane’s book, Trade Unions , published by Cork University Press . Listeners can find the Not Here Not Anywhere campaign to end fossil fuel infrastructure and exploration at notherenotanywhere.com.
The Irish Left Archive Podcast website is at podcast.leftarchive.ie. You can follow us on the Fediverse (Mastodon, Pixelfed, Peertube etc.) at @ila@leftarchive.ie.
Three parties of similar support July 1, 2024
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I was always a bit dubious about the claims that Sinn Féin’s rise had ‘broken’ the old system. The old system had been broken a while, as evidenced by the precipitous fall in Fianna Fáil’s poll ratings (and elections returns), and the somewhat less precipitous fall for Fine Gael. Sinn Féin’s rise was part of that, but so was Labour’s disintegration.
Not that Sinn Féin becoming the leading party was a problem; quite the opposite. This was precisely the shake-up this polity needed with a challenge from the centre-left. But the idea that Sinn Féin’s rise was inevitable and irreversible was another thing, and attached to that the notion that there was now a large party and two smaller parties and a raft of small parties ‘model’ seemed to have been called prematurely by SF.
Those poll ratings always looked a little high and it was difficult to determine what they were based on. Was it a pandemic/post-pandemic context?
Anyhow, Sinn Féin has returned to Earth with a bump. If I were them I’d look at the current polls and I might hope that this is as far as they fall, because its rating is significantly better than its results at the local and European elections.
The current state of play?
Fine Gael 21 -1
Sinn Féin 20 -3
Fianna Fáil 19 +4
Others/Independents 15 -6
Green Party 5 +1
Independent Ireland 5 [n/a] [presumably their rating was in the O/I pool previously]
Social Democrats 5 NC
Labour 3 -1
PBP 3 NC
Aontú 3 NC
It’s probably not worth parsing the minor changes. Fine Gael down 1% is noise, though the fact they’re not capitalising on their reasonably good elections is interesting. Fianna Fáil is a clear winner from this, but they’re not at 20%. That does seem to suggest their weakness continues. Sinn Féin’s fall appears to be real. But ,again, it could be so so much worse.
Others/Independents. Given the good showing by them at the elections (if we add Independent Ireland to their tally) the fact they are a fraction lower is curious. Could it be that close examination of some of the ‘Independents’ has had an off-putting effect? Independent Ireland’s rating is solid for a first time party (with an MEP no less!). How will that work at the next election though?
Disappointing for Labour and PBP and the Green Party and indeed Social Democrats. All mired at or around the 3-5% area. Not a lot of action going on there. And yet no wipe-out for the Green Party. This is not 2011. And nor is it 2020. The chance for the smaller parties to maintain numbers, or at least a toehold in the Oireachtas, is stronger as Sinn Féin is weaker. And Aontú abides.
So we have, perhaps, a real sense of the environment that will be facing us (and the parties and others) in the run-up to the elections, be they after the summer or early next year. Three parties on similar ratings, in or around the low 20s. Independents and Others as a bloc somewhat smaller. A raft of parties of left and perhaps hard right in or around 3-5%.
Said it for years, long before Sinn Féin’s polling numbers began to decline – Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael look well positioned to lead the next government.
UK polling July 1, 2024
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But a few short days to go until the UK poll. So what are the weekend polls telling us?
Labour solidly in the 38% to 42% area. The Tories oscillating between 18% and 24% but generally in or around 20%. The Liberal Democrats shedding a percentage point or two as they go into the last few days – say 11%. The Green Party in the mid-single digits; they’ve been bouncing around too. Reform (who could forget them?) in the mid-teens, perhaps a little higher, somewhat lower than a smatter of more hyperbolic polls.
There’ll be plenty of time to compare and contrast, but it seems implausible that Labour won’t do well.
Worth considering that Labour has added about 8-10% on its December 2019 showing at the General Election then. Also worth considering that much of that is likely down to the near incredible missteps by the Tories in subsequent years. And bear in mind that, as with this polity, there’s remarkable volatility. At that last General Election the Tories won 365 seats, Labour just 202. It’s plausible that the Tories may come back at half that Labour level. It could happen.
We looked at seat numbers before the weekend. I’ve no idea how this will pan out in those terms. There’s multiple projections floating around. Perhaps the most sensible approach is to say that Labour should do well, the Tories should do badly. We’ll know soon enough.
Left Archive: Anti-Extradition News – Newsletter of the Dublin Anti-Extradition Committee, Imleabhar 2, Uimhir 2, Márta/Aibreán 1992 July 1, 2024
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To download the above please click on the following link:
Please click here to go the Left Archive.
This is a significant addition to the Archive, and many thanks to the person who forwarded this document.
The newsletter of the Dublin Anti-Extradition Committee this four page document is focused on the issue of extradition from the Republic of Ireland at that point in time.
The front page article looks at the case of Angelo Fusco. The publication outlines his history – that he was ‘sought for offences arising from an SAS attack on house in West Belfast on 2nd May, 1980’ during which a British soldier was killed. One of those in the house – Joe Doherty was later extradited from the United States – despite ‘US courts [ruling] that this costed ‘the classical political offence’ in rejecting British extradition warrants’.
The article argues:
Angelo Fusco would not have been charged with any political offences were it not for the exceptional political situation which exists in the North. His offences are political offences.
It argues too that:
The Irish government by doing away with the traditional political offence exemption and accepting warrants for Angelo Fusco, is saying hat he and his comrades should have allowed themselves to be killed on the spot by the SAS. It is saying that, even though he has already spent ten years in prison, he should now be returned to the North for years more incarceration.
It offers a list of ‘How You Can Help’ including ‘write/phone your local TDs about the case’.
Other pieces include an overview of Justice Awareness, a project set up by those who had been involved in the campaigns around the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four amongst other cases. There’s a piece that notes Anti-Extradition Committee video series as a means of countering Section 31. There’s another long article on a visit to Dublin by ‘members of several Belfast justice campaigns’ including the Beechmount Five, Voice of the Innocent and Casement Accused.
An article looks the Northern Ireland Human Rights Assembly held in London and the information that prisoner ‘Joe Doherty named as [New York St. Patrick’s Day’] Parade Grand Marshal.
Any further general information on the Committee, its foundation, establishment and activities would be very welcome in order to build a complete picture in the Archive.
Meanwhile, in France June 30, 2024
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The exit poll is out. There’s another round next week and so far, not great. As noted by Paul Culloty in comments:
Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) party emerged ahead in the first round of France’s parliamentary elections, exit polls have shown, but the unpredictable final result will depend on days of horsetrading before next week’s run-off.
The RN was seen winning around 34% of the vote, exit polls from Ipsos, Ifop, OpinionWay and Elabe showed.
That was ahead of leftist and centrist rivals, including President Emmanuel Macron’s Together alliance, whose bloc was seen winning 20.5%-23%.
The New Popular Front, a hastily assembled left-wing coalition, was projected to win around 29% of the vote, the exit polls showed.
And:
The RN was seen winning the most seats in the National Assembly, but only one of the pollsters – Elabe – had the party winning an absolute majority of 289 seats in the July 7 run-off.
Experts say that seat projections after first-round votes can be highly inaccurate, and especially so in this election.
Clear as mud, so.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 