Westminstenders: Red Squirrels are British. Groundhogs are not.

[RedToothBrush]

Well the good news is we haven't got a GE yet, and it looks unlike one will be called this week. Purely because we haven't got a crisis point looming this week.

May has officially confirmed plan A is plan B. But says she will try and get more on the backstop whilst working with the DUP. Barnier and Ireland have said 'no'

We now prepare for the Meaningful Vote II.

And a week of speculation about amendments.

Here's a quick summary of likely ones:
Guardian Article on possible amendments

I think the Labour one will struggle to gain Tory support. The big thing about it is leans the party line firmly towards a customs union.

The Grieve one is handicapped by talk of a minority of 300 taking control of Parliament. Otherwise it might have support.

The two most interesting are:

The Benn 'Indicative Vote' as its reflective of the Brexit Select Committee recommendations.

The Cooper-Boles Block No Deal amendment which is cross party and seeks to place a final date on May passing her deal by 26th Feb, after which Parliament will take control. This I believe is being supported by Labour as a whole.

Bercow of course gets to say which amendments are debated and voted on but Benn and Cooper-Boles have broad support so are unlikely to be ignored by him. The two together seem to compliment each other.

The rest of this week is likely to be lobbying on this but otherwise fairly calm. Though someone is bound to throw a few curveball in there with leaks.

The only other thing to watch out for is talk of up to 40 ministers quitting if they are not allowed a free vote on some sort of indicative vote motion. This seems to be being lead by Amber Rudd. But I don't expect this to come to a head until the weekend at the earliest.

In other words, we have a couple of days of calm before the storm. Expect it to ramp up again at the weekend in craziness.

But Leo, and I think particuarly Simon Coveney, are doing very well on foreign policy. There's a big push as well at the moment on opening more consultates worldwide and going for one of the UN rotating security council seats. International diplomacy is really being prioritised, it is not just for Brexit.

I agree with usuallydormant here, and also with her comments on the Blueshirts and the origins of Fine Gael in general.

Wrt the current state of Irish politics, I think Fianna Fail is a spent force, for several reasons...

During the Bertie Ahern years the cumann (local club) organisation and the system in which cumanns communicated grassroots opinion with central office was destroyed, with the aim of strengthening centralised leadership, unfortunately forgetting that grassroots support is essential and grassroots opinion was always seen as the bedrock of FF policy making.

This had two major effects:
It was seen as a betrayal by cumann members of the ethos of Fianna Fail, which had always presented itself and actually operated as a party that listened to its grassroots and developed policy based on grassroots opinion.
With the cumanns pretty much eliminated, election campaigns became a problem. Cumann members used to go out and canvass, hang posters, listen to doorstep opinion, present FF policies, but with no appreciation of their efforts from the central office many felt they couldn't be bothered.

The effect of the cute hoorism that started to gain momentum under Ahern (after the Charlie Haughey revelations years earlier) - so much selling off of national resources, the gleeful lurch into pocket lining at the top at the expense of ordinary people, the planning permission scandals, and in particular the cronyism evident with the financial crisis - was huge.

Accompanying all of that is the rise of Sinn Fein as a force in Irish politics. Defections from Fianna Fail at Dail level have already taken place, and on the ground, people who would rather light themselves on fire than vote for FG as a credible alternative to provide a government could see themselves giving their number 3, 4 or 5 preference to SF if the 'right' candidate/s were presented.

Local conditions count too. Often a strong candidate can get votes in a general election from his or her local area, and if they prove themselves as local reps they will establish a solid amount of support. This is the beauty of the PR system.

Thanks, math 🙂 That's fascinating especially about your grandpa - and very complicated !
I knew that both main Irish parties are conservative.
So, they now have more historical differences than current political differences / objectives ?

Interesting that a historical part of what has long been considered by British govts to be the "safer, responsible" party, was fascist, wanted a corporate / fascist ireland and fought for Spanish fascists

The late PM Ted Heath was one of several Tory & Labour politicians who fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War ...
and later became committed supporters of the EEC / EC / EU

Q: The few supporters of Irexit we occasionally read about

• Farage's fest there and articles by iirc a former Irish ambassador to the US - do they come from old Irish fascists remnants - or just the new far right we see across Europe ?

spudlet - it's not quite so easy if your parents and/or grandparents are still alive. You also need a "certified/notarised copy of the photograph page of current passport". Sorry if that's going to be difficult. This site is good for information www.immigrationboards.com/ireland/ and there's an ongoing thread on FBR. There are definitely people in similar situations to you.

My mother is still alive and it didn't make anything difficult for my application, why would it, Swedish? I don't understand?

This is interesting - to me. I have an email account that I only use (until today) for mn. Set up after the hack. I was idly browsing it - I never look at it as it's only @s from here - and noticed on 26/11/16 and 29/11/16 that I (well, both called me 'Sir' )had emails from Gisela Stuart and Low Tax Chloe Westley. That's quite...creepy.

spudlet said she was not in contact with her dad.

Yeah, that's going to be an issue. I'll have to look into it further. At least it's there as a backup option. If things go bad enough for us to up sticks, I guess I'll have to suck it up.

I can get birth certs anyway, then at least I'll be able to determine whether I am actually eligible or not.

Absent dads are quite common spudlet there may be ways round anything that comes up.

From the same Wikipedia page that mathanxiety quoted.

In February 1932, the Fianna Fáil party was elected to lead the Irish Free State government. On 18 March 1932, the new government suspended the Public Safety Act, lifting the ban on a number of organisations including the Irish Republican Army. Some IRA political prisoners were also released around the same time. The IRA and many released prisoners began a "campaign of unrelenting hostility" against those associated with the former Cumann na nGaedheal government. There were many cases of intimidation, attacks on persons, and the breaking-up of Cumann na nGaedheal political meetings in the coming months. In view of the increased activities of the IRA, National Army Commandant Ned Cronin founded the Army Comrades Association in early 1932. As its name suggested, it was designed for Irish Army veterans, a society for former members of the Free State army. The Blueshirts felt that freedom of speech was being repressed, and began to provide security at Cumann na nGaedheal events.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueshirts

Stanley G. Payne has argued that the Blueshirts "really was never a fascist organization at all".[5] Maurice Manning also did not consider them fascists, with their mixture of patriotic conservatism, militia activities and corporatism amounting "to no more than a kind of Celtic Croix-de-Feu".[6] Historians are divided on the extent to which the Blueshirts took a lead from Mussolini and his many imitators at that time.[7][8] Some of the Blueshirts later went to fight for Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War and were anti-communist in nature, however historian R. M. Douglas has stated that it is incorrect to portray them as an "Irish manifestation of fascism".

Things can be difficult in the years after a civil war. Anyway Mr Main Blueshirt went off to fight with Franco against the communists and the blueshirts died a death.

I think people need have no fear that Fine Gael is a far right party in 2019.

There is this guy though:

www.google.com/amp/www.thejournal.ie/limerick-mayor-comments-3447475-Jun2017/%3famp=1

And in the interest of balance, there's also this guy.

www.limerickleader.ie/news/local-news/138781/-Irish-first--councillor-from.html

Two cheeks of the same arse.

Spudlet, I think under the common travel area rules your DH can live and work in Ireland and even vote in some elections. So you could move here and he could then apply for Irish/EU citizenship after however many years it is. In fact anyone from the UK can.

Under Irish law, all British citizens – including Manx people and Channel Islanders, who are not entitled to take advantage of the European Union's freedom of movement provisions – are exempt from immigration control and immune from deportation.[60] They are entitled to live in Ireland without any restrictions or conditions.[61] They have, with limited exceptions,[62] never been treated as foreigners under Irish law, having never been subject to the Aliens Act 1935 or to any orders made under that Act.[61] British citizens can thus move to Ireland to live, work or retire and unlike other EU citizens, they are not required to demonstrate having sufficient resources or have private health insurance in order to retire. This is due to the fact that British citizens are also entitled to use Irish public services on the same basis as Irish citizens in Ireland.[61]

That's the trouble with fascists, BigChoc - they present as the "safer, responsible party" because they have a conservative appeal. They push the right conservative buttons. The left has always been portrayed as the party of dangerous revolution, mainly because of the Russian Revolution. Interestingly, many commentators quite early on came to see the Russian Revolution as the enemy or even the betrayer of socialism and the left in general, George Orwell among them. This is a nuanced view that was lost on the majority of people though.

As history developed in the course of the twentieth century, it became obvious that all revolution, whether fascist or communist, was very similar. That was not clear at the time. The anti-religious element of the Russian Revolution gave it a flavour that served to make it stand out from revolution in general (though it harkened back to the French Revolution) but underneath it all, fascism was not tolerant of any individual rights (including the right to worship) either. Individual rights were not high on many people's list of important things for most of the twentieth century though. It is only since the 70s that this concept has been embraced and embedded in popular consciousness.

www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/ireland-and-the-spanish-civil-war/
It is interesting that this article suggests The Times judged the Spanish Civil war to be irrelevant.

Catholic Europe was very much preoccupied with the struggle against Communism in the years following the Russian Revolution; maybe that element of the zeitgeist went completely unnoticed by protestant editorial board.

Ireland has always had connections to the European zeitgeist that went deeper then the high politics and royal dynastic links that connected Britain tenuously to Europe because of the RC church, but there were local elements at play too - memory of the Penal Laws of the 18th C (against Catholics and against the RC church as an institution) was kept alive, and it was easy to see in persecution of organised religion in Russia an echo of British anti-RC policy.

Even up to the 1960s, prayers were offered at Mass for 'the conversion of Russia'.
www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/ireland-and-the-spanish-civil-war/
The Leonine Prayers are a set of prayers that from 1884 to early 1965 were prescribed for recitation by the priest and the people after Low Mass, but not as part of Mass itself. Hence they were commonly called Prayers after Mass.[1][2] The name "Leonine" derived from the fact that they were initially introduced by Pope Leo XIII. They were slightly modified under Pope Pius X.

The intention for which the prayers were offered changed over time. Originally they were offered for the defence of the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See. After this problem was settled with the Lateran Treaty of 1929, Pope Pius XI ordered them to be said for the restoration to the people of Russia of tranquillity and freedom to profess the Catholic faith. This gave rise to the unofficial use of the name "Prayers for the Conversion of Russia" for the prayers.[3][4]

The final form of the Leonine Prayers consisted of three Ave Marias, a Salve Regina followed by a versicle and response, a prayer for the conversion of sinners and the liberty and exaltation of the Catholic Church, and a prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel. Pope Pius X permitted the addition of the invocation "Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us", repeated three times.

The Holy See's 26 September 1964 Inter Oecumenici which came into force on 7 March 1965, simply declared: "The Leonine Prayers are suppressed."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_socialist_volunteers_in_the_Spanish_Civil_War
The socialists sympathetic to the anti-Franco side included many former IRA (anti-Treaty Republican) members, and socialists from both sides of the border.

(Peadar O'Donnell, mentioned here ^^, was a friend of my dad's, but even moreso was Nora Harkin - Nora was a colleague of dad's too, and I considered her a grandmother - she sent me books for Christmas and birthdays and on one occasion when I was in hospital sent books that made my two week stretch there far less miserable than it might otherwise have been. She and I had many lovely chats over cake and cookies whenever we visited...)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peadar_O%27Donnell

I agree Apileofballyhoo, FG is no longer a far right party.

I think a new axis is developing in Irish politics, with more of a Social Democrat /Christian Democrat - Socialist tone.

FG sit with the Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) in the European Parliament and have embraced a socially liberal /austerity platform in domestic politics that is perhaps to the left of Christian Dems on the social front but largely within the fold of orthodoxy on the economic front.

FF is interesting from the pov of identity in this axis, and wrt Euroscepticism. It has had difficulties aligning itself with EP groups:
...from 1999 to 2009, Fianna Fáil was a leading member of Union for Europe of the Nations (UEN), a small national-conservative and Eurosceptic parliamentary group. European political commentators had often noted substantive ideological differences between the party and its colleagues, whose strongly conservative stances had at times prompted domestic criticism of Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil MEPs had been an attached to the European Progressive Democrats (1973–1984), European Democratic Alliance (1984–1995), and Union for Europe (1995–1999) groups before the creation of UEN.

Party headquarters, over the objections of some MEPs, had made several attempts to sever the party's links to the European right, including an aborted 2004 agreement to join the European Liberal Democrat and Reform (ELDR) Party, with whom it already sat in the Council of Europe under the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) banner. On 27 February 2009, Taoiseach Brian Cowen announced that Fianna Fáil proposed to join the ELDR Party and intended to sit with them in the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Group in the European Parliament after the 2009 European elections.[61] The change was made official on 17 April 2009, when FF joined the ELDR Party.

In October 2009, it was reported that Fianna Fáil had irritated its new Liberal colleagues by failing to vote for the motion on press freedom in Italy (resulting in its defeat by a majority of one in the Parliament) and by trying to scupper their party colleagues' initiative for gay rights.[62] In January 2010, a report by academic experts writing for the votewatch.eu site found that FF "do not seem to toe the political line" of the ALDE Group "when it comes to budget and civil liberties" issues.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fianna_F%C3%A1il#In_European_institutions

The party remains overall pro-Europe however. It would be suicidal not to be given the 90% favourability rating for the EU among Irish voters in poll after poll.

SF sits with the Confederal Group of the European United Left - Nordic Green Left in the European Parliament, and I think it will inherit the mantle of Republicanism that FF has shrugged off and also whittle away at the Irish left. It will probably have a hybrid socialist/populist/socially liberal/maybe Social Democrat alignment in Irish politics.

All that is needed now is for the Unionist parties of Northern Ireland to hold their noses and jump in, to provide a true liberal/conservative divide in social policy and views on the EU .

...Though it is possible that many SF voters from NI might switch from SF to either FF or FG if Ireland were to be reunited, and there is recurring talk of FF and the SDLP coming to some sort of understanding. Both parties are shadows of their former selves, however. It is also possible that many social conservatives all over the island might find a comfortable home in a party espousing views on social issues like those of the DUP.

To maybe answer your question on Irexit, BigChoc:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euroscepticism_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland

Interesting to ponder how much each very small group owes its existence to the likes of Declan Ganley and the deep pockets of American libertarian think tanks.

I haven't spoken to my mother in four years and got my Irish passport 18 months ago. Didn't need a copy of her passport.

I would love to leave the country. Unfortunately I've been a SAHM and nowhere will give me a visa from what I can tell, despite me being financially sound. I hate that Brexit has trapped us here. My great grandma was Irish, but that is a generation too far.

Was listening to R$ on way back from school run and some Leaver economist was blithely saying "it's only 3 things we need to do to have a successful Brexit 1. Have a good trading relationship with EU (well, we've just walked away from that 2. Have a good relationship with the world (the rest of the world laughing at us daily and now very wary of any agreements with us? The ones moving their business into the EU from our country?) 3. Keep our options open with the rest of the world - EU trade shouldn't stop us doing trade with the rest of the world - so basically as we were before we left but with ability to trade with a couple of countries not worth our effort to trade with? The idea these are 'just' 3 things was mind blowing and typical of the over-simplification of the leave argument. He went onto say Hammond was scaremongering and it's not Brexit's fault but the government's if businesses haven't planned for a no deal that will bankrupt them - unbelievably selfish and thoughtless for an economist to suggest that!

mathanxiety

That's a great analysis of the current situation. I always find it deeply interesting to see where National parties align in Europe - the removal of domestic politics from the equation allows for a clearer picture of how the party sees itself/core tenets.

Part of my support for the EU is based on the legislation being outside domestic politics. As Red says on the latest thread that European law is kind of like a safety net (paraphrasing) - I think this is part of the reason the EU is so popular in Ireland. 'Sher you couldn't trust that shower above in Dublin' etc. etc.

there is recurring talk of FF and the SDLP coming to some sort of understanding

This just shows the sad state of Irish Labour!

I hate that all of this has brought up the ugliness of the past. Charlie McCreevy wasn't far wrong when he said all people want is enough money for a few pints and a holiday - what I mean is most people just want to have enough to get on with things, work, food, clothing, housing, education and healthcare, an interest or hobby of some sort, with a bit extra for luxuries every now and then. When there isn't that you get problems. You certainly can't have it for some of the population only.

Thanks, math 🙂