Image caption,It’s not just the UK’s media that has been following the political chaos
The UK’s economic and political turmoil over the past few weeks – culminating in nearly all of Liz Truss’s original finance plans now being axed – has been watched around the world.
It is rare for close allies to comment on each other’s key policies at home – and if they do, it’s unlikely to be an outright criticism.
But at the weekend US President Joe Biden weighed in, saying Ms Truss’s original plan was a “mistake” and it was “predictable” that she would have to backtrack.
“I wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake,” Mr Biden said. “I disagree with the policy, but that’s up to Great Britain.”
The EU’s economy chief, meanwhile, said there were “lessons to learn” from what is happening in the UK.
“What happened shows how volatile is the situation and so how prudent we should be also with our fiscal and monetary mix,” said Paolo Gentiloni on Friday after Ms Truss fired ex-Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.
The world’s media has been far more brutal.
“Liz Truss, who’s been the British PM for barely six weeks, has managed to drag her party and her country into a debacle the depth of which the country has never before sunk to. And less so at such speed,” says an editorial in Colombian daily El Colombiano.
Its headline suggests what the PM might be known for: “Liz Truss the Brief?”
“Clinging to her ideology, far removed from the reality facing the country, Truss exemplifies to perfection what it means to go against common sense when steering the politics of a country.”
Meanwhile, the UK is becoming a “cautionary tale” about the effect of “bad politics”, said an editorial in Indian daily newspaper The Hindu on Monday.
The newspaper – a widely-read English-language paper and generally critical of right-leaning political parties – said Ms Truss was “once seen as a new hope for breathing life back” into the UK Conservative Party.
But now she may have added the “label of ‘incompetence’ to the Tory governance image”, it adds.
Russia’s media speculates over Ms Truss’s future, reporting that she might be out of her post soon.
“Embarrassment for Liz”, said the state-owned daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta on Monday.
“Yet another political crisis is looming over Britain: the newly minted prime minister, Liz Truss, may be forced out of her Downing Street residence already in the coming days and weeks,” it says.
“The Tory leader’s unpopularity in party circles and in British society has long been known, but now the [prime] minister has come close to the end of her scandalous career.”
China’s state media also heaped on further criticism. “The outside world does not seem optimistic about the turnaround of the Truss government,” said state-run news agency China News Service on Friday.
The Global Times said Truss’s position remained unstable because of “continued negative reviews”.
But some online media, including Shenniao Zhixun, a blog run in south-west China, noted that the new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, nicknamed “son-in-law of China”, had a Chinese wife and “a good attitude towards China”.
But “once we start writing about a prime minister ‘buying some time’, or ‘seeing off the immediate danger’, they are nearing the end of their time,” the opinion piece on Sunday adds.
The recent census figures for the North attracted significant attention and analysis. It is remarkable that a century after partition, and the creation of the sectarian gerrymandered northern state that the population demographics have shifted so dramatically.
While many people today are reluctant to equate religion with political affiliation and national identity it is nonetheless a fact that the northern state was constructed on that basis. Two thirds of the population was Protestant and unionist. One third was Catholic and nationalist. In the years following partition the Unionist regime at Stormont set about entrenching its domination by creating an apartheid state in which Catholics/nationalists were discriminated against in employment and housing and tens of thousands were denied the vote in local government elections.
When the census figures where published ten years ago in December 2012 the unravelling of the sectarian headcount that was the basis for the northern state was already visible. When the question of identity was asked 40% of citizens registered as Britishonly. Another 8% identified as British and northern Irish. That meant that 48% of citizens in the North had some form of British identity. A far cry from the 66% of 1920.
Those who acknowledged in 2011 that they were Irish-only stood at 25% and the figure for those self-identifying as northern Irishonly was 21%. That was 46% of citizens identifying as Irish and not British. Ten years later and the percentage identifying as British-only has dropped significantly to 32% while those who registered as British and northern Irish is unchanged at 8%. That means that approximately 40% of citizens now identify as British.
The comparison for those identifying as Irish-only shows a jump of 4% to 29%. Those who registered as northern Irish-only has remained unchanged at approximately 20%. In addition another 2% identified as Irish and northern Irish only. That brings the total identifying as Irish to 50.67%.
In addition, in the last six elections in the North political unionism has failed to secure an electoral majority. In every electoral contest since 2017 the combined unionist vote was less than a majority of votes cast. Put simply, the unionist electoral majority is gone.
In the Assembly election Sinn Féin secured the largest number of first preference votes and the largest number of seats – a first for a non unionist party. Michelle O’Neill is now the First Minister Designate. Partition was supposed to make this impossible. Partition sucks. On all counts.
None of this means that winning the unity referendum provided for in the Good Friday Agreement is a dead cert or that Irish Unity is inevitable. What it does mean is that there are more and more citizens who want constitutional change. But it must be planned. For united Irelanders this presents an enormous opportunity and a huge challenge.
The Ireland’s Future event in Dublin at the beginning of this month and the Belfast People’s Assembly on 12th October, along with an Ireland’s Future event in Belfast on 23rd November and a Donegal People’s Assembly on the 24th November are all evidence of the growing determination of people to develop a strategy and encourage the necessary conversation around planning for future constitutional change.
Brexit and right-wing policies bring renewed calls for Irish unity
Probably the biggest factor in the slow-burning cause of Irish unity is the current unpopularity of the Tory government, among both unionists and nationalists.
October 10 2022 11:00 AM
All my life, which has been longer than I ever imagined, I’ve been hearing about the prospects for a united or new Ireland, but suddenly it has become relevant. Maybe it’s because of recent election results, showing how nationalists have almost solidified — in the way that unionists used to do — around one party, in Stormont and Westminster.
Or maybe it’s the 2021 census, confirming what we have long suspected, that there would eventually be more Catholics prepared to declare that was their birthright than Protestants, in a statelet designed for a Protestant majority.
The infamous arithmetical solution, based on Catholic nationalists eventually outnumbering the Protestant unionists at the ballot box, is slowly coming about, even if it is far too simplistic to say all those in both communities will vote accordingly. I recall putting the crude numbers solution to John Hume in the early 1990s and hearing him imply that it was the worst thing he could think of. He was in politics to make sure a united Ireland did not happen that way.
Another possible reason for the rise in nationalist hopes — and unionist fears — is the interest being shown by the parties in the Republic, responding to the campaign led by influential community leaders in Northern Ireland.
In the past, southern politicians have run a mile to avoid any commitment to the national goal, but the success of Sinn Fein in polls and votes has forced them to give serious consideration to the options. This time, learning the lesson of Brexit, they are determined to have a viable plan well ahead of any vote.
Of course, nothing can happen until the Good Friday Agreement commitment, letting the Westminster-appointed secretary of state decide on a border poll, is put into action. And the likelihood of that, under the present embattled government, is minimal, even though the Tories are obviously running out of patience with their customary DUP allies over the Stormont veto.
Underlying all this uncertainty is the divide not only between nationalists and unionists but between pro and anti-Brexiteers, notably over the NI Protocol.
Nationalists appreciate the preservation of the link with Dublin and the European Union in the necessity for checks on trade between NI and GB, while unionists see them as a wedge that threatens their existence as an integral part of the UK. The fact that the DUP backed Brexit heavily and have been consistently let down by successive prime ministers adds to the sense of crisis, as it awaits decisions on a Stormont election and a border poll.
But probably the biggest factor in the slow-burning cause of Irish unity is the current unpopularity of the Tory government, among both unionists and nationalists.
Since the Brexit vote, brought about by false promises, the government has been veering to the hard right, breaking away from its nearest and most profitable trading partner and trying to find a buccaneering, regulation-free role for itself on the world stage.
Boris Johnson was soon proved to be a false friend to the DUP, by signing up to a withdrawal treaty that put a border in the Irish Sea, and there is little confidence that Liz Truss, under pressure, will persist with her protocol-busting bill and initiate a trade war with the EU.
It is certainly arguable that the United Kingdom is a very different country, under increasingly right-wing government policies, than it was even a decade ago. How much support is there here for sending asylum seekers to Rwanda? Or for restricting people’s right to protest or strike?
Therein lies the dilemma for the expanding middle-of-the-road voters here, as they contemplate the next series of elections and a possible border poll. If Britain drifts further from Europe towards deals with the Far East and USA, will Irish unity, incorporating EU membership, become more attractive? Unionism, using its veto on Stormont, has made little attempt to widen its appeal, split three ways.
Keir Starmer’s Labour could change all that, if the opinion polls are to be trusted, but can it really upset a 71-seat Tory majority within two years? He needs a revival in Scotland, still concentrated on its own nationalist referendum, as well as a rejection of the populist values, eagerly promoted by the right-wing media and bought in Red Wall constituencies in 2019.
He, too, is stuck by his acceptance of the Brexit result, despite all the evidence. He says he will make it work, presumably by dampening hopes that the UK can go it alone and restoring relations with the EU. Whether he can also create the growth that the Tories aspire to is another matter, but if he could recoup some of the ground being lost he could be a long term premier.
Essentially, therefore, the fate of Northern Ireland, constitutionally and economically, may be in the hands of the British public. It will decide which direction the UK goes, towards greater isolation and economic decline — making NI more of a millstone — or settling for another Labour-led attempt to resolve age-old problems of identity within a new kind of Irish unity.
What is clear is that if we must have to share the island under totally new circumstances we need to know a whole lot more about each other — what makes us tick, what government would be like, what basic things cost and what painful parts of history have kept us apart.
The politicians here in Ireland and Britain would have the last, or near last, word after lengthy negotiations that would follow a positive unity vote.
Frankly my main interest would be in retaining the free health service, as well as the BBC, but if I could be convinced that instead of two divided entities — Northern Ireland and the UK of Britain and NI — both could find a peaceful, progressive future in a new configuration, I would think it worth supporting. What we have demonstrably isn’t working.
The Ancient Order of Hibernians is urging the appointment of a U.S. Special Envoy to the peace and political process saying it would be an embarrassment if an envoy is not in place “and up to speed” by the 25th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
The Hibernians, in a statement, said that “600 Days and 28 U.S. Special Envoys Later” the Northern Ireland post was still being ignored.
Said the statement: “It has been over 600 days since the post of U.S. Special Envoy to Northern Ireland was occupied.
“Since taking office, President Biden has appointed 28 Special Envoys to other posts, including the creation of four new Special Envoy posts. The Ancient Order of Hibernians respectfully asks why the delay in appointing a Northern Ireland Special Envoy given the concerning developments in Northern Ireland around the impacts of Brexit, a collapsed devolved government, and a proposal to grant an amnesty for British forces from prosecution for unjustifiable and unlawful killings committed during the Northern Ireland Conflict.
“United States Special envoys are appointed to address complex, multilateral issues outside of the typical remit of an ambassador.
“Certainly, the situation of Northern Ireland is a prima facie example of the need for a special envoy; the unique confluence of history, culture, and political forces putting Northern Ireland outside the scope of the ambassadors to the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland and requiring unique and focused attention.
“It is widely acknowledged that the work of the first U.S. Special Envoy, Senator George Mitchell, was pivotal to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, allowing a generation in Northern Ireland to grow up in peace.
“However, the work started by Senator Mitchell is far from over and faces new challenges. A Brexit which the community of Northern Ireland rejected by 56% and Britain’s threat to unilaterally renounce the Northern Ireland protocol imperils the open border that is crossed daily by 30,000 people from both communities and replace it with checkpoints and division.
“A Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the only major political group in Northern Ireland to oppose the Good Friday Agreement, has collapsed the devolved parliament by refusing to participate in government. While the British government has publicly admitted their cover-ups of Bloody Sunday, the Ballymurphy massacre, and the murder of Pat Finucane, they have yet to hold anyone accountable.
“Now a bill before parliament seeks to grant an amnesty for those actions and others by Crown forces during the Northern Ireland Conflict, undermining the belief that justice can be obtained by peaceful judicial means.
The United States must appoint a Special Envoy to Northern Ireland now to reinforce the U.S. commitment to peace in Northern Ireland and not squander one of the outstanding achievements of U.S. diplomacy.
“It would be an embarrassment if a U.S. Special Envoy to Northern Ireland was not in place and up to speed by the time of the 25th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. A U.S. Special Envoy should be on the ground today meeting with all the leaders of Northern Ireland in the hope that this anniversary can be an opportunity to build on the work begun by Senator Mitchell.
“The United States must not miss this chance for the U.S. to once again play a role in advancing the peace of Northern Ireland.”
Early in the Biden presidency, former congressman Bruce Morrison told the Echo that he would accept the offer of becoming a U.S. envoy if asked.
Pope John Paul II arrives in Dublin for the first ever papal visit to Ireland. His visit coincides with the feast of St. Michael, celebrated on September 29th. Pope John Paul II marched through Phoenix Park on this day, greeting over one million people, the largest gathering of Irish people ever. He made a speech, saying that like St. Patrick he had heard “the voice of the Irish.” The Pope also celebrated the first ever Papal mass on Irish soil.
