General Irish politics discussion thread

hotmail.com

Sinn Fein back talking about housing and homelessness.

They've realised talking about Gaza non stop doesn't win votes.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491672#Comment_121491672

Literally tweeted a few hours ago hotmail.

https://twitter.com/sinnfeinireland/status/1734922001670631651

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491278#Comment_121491278

You are indeed correct. I was a little tongue in cheek in my response as there has been a constant narrative from the usual corner that because a member of the DUP once spoke at a FG meeting, that meant that FG were right-wing, reactionary, conservative and in league with the British (and we can ignore everything else they did because of this one meeting.)

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491475#Comment_121491475

The strange fear of any talk about the Commonwealth intrigues me. Reactionary rejection is clearly a sign that it hits some nerve.

hotmail.com

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491769#Comment_121491769

They'll need to refrain from the Gaza talk. People are sick of it.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491494#Comment_121491494

Cool, let's just never engage with any international body or agency ever because they might change in the future into some incredibly twisted monstrosity that bears no relation to what it currently is and we'll have no means of withdrawing when that happens.

This is hysterical stuff. The CW can not change what it is unilaterally. It's nothing more than a country club for nations. You may as well worry that your neighbourhood watch group will become the next Camorra crime family and you'll be unwittingly dragged into it. The Prime Minister of the UK has zero ability to change the direction and purpose of the CW, both of which are fairly anodyne at best.

There are plenty of arguments against joining the CW (it would be utterly meaningless and pointless being right up there. I'm also not a fan of the symbolism) but fear of it turning into a trading bloc against our will is categorically not one of them.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491851#Comment_121491851

Where did I say ‘never engage’ podge?

I was very clear as to what we should be doing.

I think you might have jumped the gun a bit.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491841#Comment_121491841

You have data on this? My opinion would be that most decent people are very exercised by the situation

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491841#Comment_121491841

Are they? Don't make the mistake of extrapolating from your own opinions to the entire country. Most people I know are incensed about it.

Besides, pretty much all of the party leaders have been vocal about their concerns about what's happening to Palestinian civilians.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491945#Comment_121491945

The route the Commonwealth intends to take would have to be very clear. B. Johnson talked about it as a trading alliance to compete with the EU which would make membership for us untenable IMO.

I don't want to continue this on much more, as joining the CW is a pipe dream anyway. But the route the CW intends to take is clear (it is going to remain as an essentially nothing entity) and the UK has no ability to turn it into a trading alliance. Countries are angling to leave it rather than make it stronger. You are suggesting that impossible routes are ruled out before it could be a consideration.

It's just pointless and unnecessary fearmongering - the arguments against joining the CW are easy enough to make and don't require the fear of some impossible Machiavellian scheme. As said earlier, if for some bizarre reason joining the CW was viewed as necessary for a UI then sod it, it makes absolutely zero difference to anything so why not. But absent that unlikely scenario there is no reason to do it either.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491977#Comment_121491977

Quite simply podge - I don’t believe you.

It is evidently clear that the UK is a volatile state flirting with going rogue and anything is possible.

We need to be careful in any new alliance proposed.

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121489687#Comment_121489687

I do wonder what on earth they were thinking. Certainly not the most intelligent thing for them to have done.

Podge_irl

Happily you don't need to believe me. You could simply read the Charter of the Commonwealth

https://production-new-commonwealth-files.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/migrated/page/documents/CharteroftheCommonwealth.pdf

Recalling that the Commonwealth is a voluntary association of independent and equal sovereign states, each responsible for its own policies, consulting and co-operating in the common interests of our peoples and in the promotion of international understanding and world peace, and influencing international society to the benefit of all through the pursuit of common principles and values

Or indeed the London Declaration which was the basis of the post-war Commenwealth

The Government of India have however declared and affirmed India’s desire to continue her full membership of the Commonwealth of Nations and her acceptance of The King as the symbol of the free association of its independent member nations and as such the Head of the Commonwealth.

The CW categorically is not an Alliance, it is not a Community like the original EC, it is a very vague association of countries who just get together for a chat and some sports every now and again. It is an entirely symbolic organisation with all the legal standing of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie but I doubt anyone is expecting that is going to become some kind of competing trading bloc.

Boris Johnson, as was so often the case, was displaying a spectacular ignorance of everything around him.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492081#Comment_121492081

Charters can be changed - agreements re-negotiated.

All I am saying a healthy distrust and wariness necessary.

Nobody knew just how difficult it would be to Brexit or the twisting and turning the British were capable of.

Proceed with extreme caution.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492035#Comment_121492035

It’s what I would think would happen with the political re-alignment after a UI.

Unionism is conservative in nature and I think FG are too. Natural allies in terms of potential coalitions.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492015#Comment_121492015

The UK does not control the Commonwealth. It has no higher standing within the Commonwealth than any other of the 50 or so member nations.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492097#Comment_121492097

Yeah. But that's the thing about agreements. They get changed by agreement.

The Commonwealth Charter can only be changed by the unanimous agreement of all member states. The commonwealth has always been an inconsequential organsation because that's what the vast bulk of its members have always wanted. From time to time the UK has hoped it might be something more, and some of these hopes were a good deal more realistic than Johnson's nonsense, but they never came to pass because the other members weren't interested.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492124#Comment_121492124

Perhaps. As a matter of history, after 1922 those elements in (southern) Irish society that had previously adopted a unionist position politically either withdrew from politics or found their way, directly, or indirectly, to Cumann na nGaedheal.

But Irish unionism was a very middle- and upper-class dominated movement. In the south, there wasn't much in the way of working-class unionism. This of course was true for a long time in NI — the Ulster Unionist Party was very class-bound. But Ulster unionism fractured in the 1970s and 80s, and the DUP represents the more working-class side of unionism. It's true they are conservative, but that largely manifests in social conservatism, and FG is not a socially conservative party. FG is economically conservative, but DUP-style unionism is not — I think they have a "handout economics" mentality that, if anything, would find more affinity in the FF tradition than in FG's.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493221#Comment_121493221

The UK does not control the Commonwealth. It has no higher standing within the Commonwealth than any other of the 50 or so member nations.

Peregrinus, we are talking realpolitik here, not the lines fed to you by Buck Palace.

Even the BBC don't try to hide who the real mover and shaker is:

In theory, the decision is entirely up to the Commonwealth heads of government. It is not an hereditary role.

Yet Thursday's meeting showed the culmination of a concerted operation by the British government and royal establishment to present this decision as a fait accompli against which it would be almost impossible to argue.

Maybe again you need to live in the real world on this, like along the border. Southern Unionists like Heather Humphries gravitate almost exclusively to FG. They (and there all shades of Unionisn/Loyalism living in this constituency) all vote FG. They would never admit it but the Monaghan/Cavan branch is almost two branches as a result, the 'Hughie McElvaney faction' and the 'Humphries faction'.

I used work at their yearly dinner dances as a fill-in barman - fascinating nights of political and social study! 😁

Bobson Dugnutt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493402#Comment_121493402

You’ve had a very rich and fulfilling life, Francie. In Derry with your auld fella in the late 60’s at the peace marches, run your own business, volunteer at the Ulster final each year, a first time SF voter, now a barman at FG shindigs.

That the Protestant minority near the border vote for FG isn’t exactly a massive revelation btw.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493512#Comment_121493512

If I gave you the impression that I took part in 'peace marches' (what peace marches??) with my father then cancel that. I didn't.

Other than that, nothing extraordinary in the rest of what you say. I have done many other things too! 😁

It isn't a revelation that those with Unionist/Loyalist backgrounds in border areas vote for FG, I never said it was, I would have thought most with an interest in Irish politics would know that. And that there is a natural affinity between them.

Nothing wrong with that either and i would expect those relationships to grow in a UI.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491475#Comment_121491475

We should give it a swerve nonetheless.

You also seem to have forgotten that the UK initially believed they could negotiate deals with Germany and France directly, cutting the EU out of the negotations almost entirely, leaving us as at best a semi-member of the single market. Now that was never going to happen but it was still their desired outcome.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492081#Comment_121492081

Boris Johnson's spectacular ignorance of what the Commonwealth is about seems to be shared by some on here.

Hotblack Desiato

Francie, what basis do you have for saying Heather Humphries is a Unionist? She is from a Protestant background, are we back to the sectarian headcount view of politics?

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493877#Comment_121493877

We should give it a swerve nonetheless.

Almost definitely. But I would rather the discussion around it at least acknowledged what it actually is.

You also seem to have forgotten that the UK initially believed they could negotiate deals with Germany and France directly, cutting the EU out of the negotations almost entirely, leaving us as at best a semi-member of the single market. Now that was never going to happen but it was still their desired outcome.

I haven't forgotten. I wouldn't trust the UK government one inch. I have little doubt they would have forced us out of the EU alongside them if they had the chance. They nonetheless didn't mess with our EU membership because they couldn't. Much like the fantasies about the CW, they are constrained by treaty and agreement as to what they actually can do and that is mostly all that we need to worry about.

hotmail.com

Sinn Fein again focusing on housing in the Dail today.

Nothing about telling asylum seekers there's no accommodation and giving them a tent to live in on the streets of Dublin in the middle of the winter.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493402#Comment_121493402

Oh, c'mon, Francie. The episode you're talking about there is the UK government getting the Commonwealth Heads of Government to agreed that, after the death of QEII, the title "Head of the Commonwealth" would pass to KCIII. Precisely because the Commonwealth is an organisation of such marginal relevance, and because the title "Head of the Commonwealth" is an honorific that carries no powers, functions or role, none of the member states were especially invested in this question. The UK cared about it; they didn't, particularly; so the UK got its way.

If you imagine that this means the UK could turn the Commonwealth into a trade or economic bloc over the heads of member states, you are delusional.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121497320#Comment_121497320

Oh come on yourself if you want us to believe that the UK are not the prime movers of the CW and treat it as a remnant of colonisation.

How much clearer an example of them expressing that do you want?

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121497531#Comment_121497531

The point is, Francie, they can't move it very far. All their efforts in the past to move it in the various directions they have desired from time to time have come to nothing. You need to explain why, in an era of conspicuously incompetent government in the UK, you think this might change. And you need to explain why the rest of the Commonwealth would put up with it, given that — as we have seen time and again — they are well able to prevent changes that they don't want.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121497692#Comment_121497692

No Pere, I don't need to do that at all.

I was asked for instances of the UK wielding it's influence over this organisation, I presented it and got told 'ah yeh but that one doesn't really count....etc etc'.

I am saying that membership of this organisation may not always be benign (as you say, they have previously tried to alter it) and world politics and the needs of others may not remain the same and therefore we need to be careful.

'be careful' I said, I did not say 'don't join it'.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121497733#Comment_121497733

It doesn't count.

The commonwealth began as a group of nations who shared allegiance to the monarch. That they now have to all agree on who the head of the Commenwealth is is a lessening of UK power, not a display of it.