Will February matter in May?

I’ve got in-laws who live south of the border, most of them in Dublin. Over the last forty years we’ve visited them regularly, had a meal, checked out the shops and the sights. They’ve come north of the border to Belfast too; but the visit ratio is around 30: 1. Over the last twenty years they’ve come a little more frequently – say 25:1 -  but nothing you would notice.

Why? Their main reason, especially in the early years, was that they didn’t want to be shot or blown up.  That’s understandable. When you watch TV and see only reports of violence coming from an area, you tend to associate danger with that place. But it’s more than that. Although they’ve never articulated it, my in-laws exude a sense of uneasiness, of not being at home (yes I know, I KNOW they’re literally not) when  they’re here.

Contrast that with our appetite for visits south. Dublin has a grace and charm that Belfast can never aspire to. The accent is easier on the ear, the people more relaxed, the atmosphere more...cheerful. Even, in the midst of their economic nightmare, optimistic. When I was a child, my father used to take us on a summer Sunday from Omagh to Bundoran and the seaside. As soon as we’d crossed the border into Donegal, we always gave a spontaneous cheer.  I don’t actually punch the air any more but I still feel my spirits lift as I move south.

I say all this because the BBC’s Mark Devenport has been busy spinning a theory about the impact of Sinn Féin’s electoral success south of the border on the north’s upcoming elections.  Consider, Mark says, Sinn Féin’s movement into ministerial office in the north and how that was supposed to impact on their electoral fortunes in the south in 2007. It didn’t happen.  Far from electoral success, Mark notes, the party’s Dail representation dropped from five to four TDs.   His suggestion is that in the coming election in the north,  Shinner success  south of the border could well have little resonance.

But then as a lad, Mark never crossed the border between Belleek and Ballyshannon and gave a yelp of delight or felt his spirits lift, yes totally illogically,  at the sight of a green post-box. The truth is, we in the north are more impressed by the south than they are by us.  Even now the violent conflict is largely over, they’d rather watch from a safe distance; and  they quite like the way the southern media paints Gerry Adams as in need of a sat-nav to find his way to the Dail. In point of fact,  it’s the other way round – southerners need a northern map.  Being less provincial and less partitionist, nationalists in the north are more aware of what’s going on in the south, respond to it, argue over it, visit it.

So while there are commentators who’ll tell you that Sinn Féin success over the weekend may well prove irrelevant to what happens north of the border in May,  I don’t buy it.  Check Facebook, check Twitter, check your own experience. Thousands of nationalist homes in the north followed every twist of the south’s election campaign,  thousands more did a good deal of yelping and air-punching when Adams and Doherty featured in the top-five vote-getters in the south, and regardless of what Tony O’Reilly’s  Sindo  may say, even the dullest northern dog noted that Sinn Féin near-quadrupled its numbers in the Dail last Friday.

When it comes to elections yes,  it’s the economy, stupid.  But it’s also momentum.  And while it may stick in some craws,  SF have the big M  now. 

Don't ask ME to move on...

Tectonic plates - seismic shift - electoral tsunami...Have I used all the available metaphors/clichés for  the south's general election results?  Oh right - I forgot the most important: 'This marks the end of civil war politics'.  It'll no longer be Fine Gael (Free Staters)  vs  Fianna Fail  (republicans). That's because Fianna Fail has been cut, sliced and diced by the electorate; people are now concerned to elect politicians who will look after their jobs, their income, their pensions, and save them from the vice-like grip of the ECB. It'll be right-wing vs left-wing politics from now on. And don't say 'But the Labour party will be in coalition with the Blueshirts - how can that be right-wing?' or my cat may hear you and give himself a hernia.  And especially don't mention that the shrivelled remainder of Fianna Fail will be on the opposition benches alongside the left, opposing the government moves to implement plans originally drawn up by, um, Fianna Fail.  It's a bit like working on your right hook for some months and then punching yourself in the face.

But while attention to one war may be finally petering out, attention to another remains as stubborn as ever. I was watching an episode of Madmen the other night - that's the series about a Madison Avenue advertising company in the early 1960s - try to keep up, would you? The plot in this episode centred on a Honda account being brought to the company by a group of Japanese businessmen. It's a major acquisition, but then one of the advertising company goes all racist, who the hell are these little bowing buggers, who won the war anyway, I'll never forgive them for what happened to my buddy on that destroyer in the Pacific, Hiroshima sure socked it to 'em, etc etc. The other advertising people try to shut him up, tell him it's over, you hear,  OVER, the war is FINISHED, we're working with these people now,  act civilized for God's sake. Etc, etc. No good. The racist one is locked in the past, some fifteen years earlier.

Similarly there are those who just can't let go of the conflict here in the north. During the election campaign  Fine Gael's Fergus O'Dowd lost no opportunity to  raise the hare of  Gerry Adams's membership/non-membership of the IRA during the Troubles. On his programme yesterday Vincent Browne mixed congratulations to the newly-elected Adams with comments on the killing of Jean McConville in the early 1970s. And on the same programme former Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald, who with Thatcher devised the Anglo-Irish Agreement in the hope of reversing the Sinn Féin electoral tide of the 1980s,  demanded Adams explain why Sinn Féin hadn't made electoral progress in Dublin? When Adams hesitated  (kind of understandably, since Sinn Féin was fresh from getting three candidates elected in Dublin)  Fitzgerald told him 'It's not a trick question, I promise you' and then went on to say he admired Adams's skill, the way he'd moved his party from violence. 

I'm afraid this calls for one more metaphor: Mired In The Past. The Madmen chap who saw not businessmen but  kamikaze pilots was stuck in a past that was fifteen years old. O'Dowd, Browne and Fitzgerald, for whatever reasons, saw not the president of a party that's been sharing government in the north for five years, could well become the north's largest political party in May,  and on Friday last had some  fifteen TDs elected to the  Dail -  they saw a psychopath with a bomb in one hand and an AK47 in the other, aching for a chance to get in some fresh mayhem.  

Cmon, guys. Adams is a POLITICIAN, one who on Friday got, what was it, the second-biggest voter-endorsement in the state. Criticise him for his policies, go ahead. Attack his attendance record,   build a case for economic illiteracy if you have a neck that's sufficiently brass.  But enough of the increasingly wrinkled-and-bent references to events and a time when a lot of voters weren't even born.

All their yesterdays...

So  - who’s going to win? I don’t know.  I could say Fine Gael will do spectacularly well, Labour will do well, Fianna Fáil will do disastrously but better than Sinn Féin, yet Sinn Féin will still do well.  But if I did I’d be basing my prediction on the polls and the polls, as you know, can get it horribly wrong.

The truth is, no one knows what the voters’ verdict will be. That doesn’t stop the pundits pretending. Yesterday on RTÉ  Stephen Collins predicted that Sinn Féin this time out would get ten seats. That’s Stephen Collins of the late unlamented Sunday Tribune, which has been to Sinn Féin what global warming has been to polar bears. The fact is, predictions are shaped by your political perspective. If you want Sinn Féin or any other party to do badly in an election, when you scan the entrails prior to an election, your eye will be drawn to or even construct signs of cock-up. And the other way round – if you hope a party will do well, you run the risk of over-estimating their chances.  So before you swallow a journo’s prediction, have a think about the journo in question’s past and present political loyalties.  I’m not suggesting you shoot the messenger  - however tempting that may be - but a quick check of their credentials could show their prediction in a new light.

In fact, regardless of elections, it would be useful if the background of journalists was made explicit. We ask it from other people, so why not from journalists? There are, of course, journalists who have come into existence through a kind of virgin birth and have remain unsullied throughout their lives. People like Liam Clarke, Henry McDonald, Ed Moloney,  and Charlie Bird have always been meticulously neutral in all they’ve said and done. Other journalists, a quick look back shows they had links with Republican Clubs and/or Official Sinn Féin and/or the Workers’ Party, so of course their writings reflect that bias; but Liam, Henry, Ed and Charlie have always floated like recording angels above such things...No, no, I haven’t checked their records.  What would be the point? If they had been involved with Republican Clubs, Official Sinn Féin or the Workers’ Party, I’m sure they would have told us. Wouldn’t they?

Pass the manifesto, Reilly

I Iike Vincent Browne. I remember him when he was a lanky lad of twenty at UCD, where he was, among other things, a leading light of the college Fine Gael party. I met him at Feile An Phobail a few years ago and confronted him with his youthful past. He hung his head in mock shame and murmured “It’s true, I’m afraid. All true”. His programme on TV3, ‘Vincent Browne Tonight’, is easily the best general election commentary you'll find south of the border. It certainly makes its supposedly funny and slick rival on RTÉ,‘The Eleventh Hour’, look sad and flimsy.

What makes the programme work? The short answer is ‘Browne’. He breaks through the polite facade of discussion to show his incredulity at much of what he hears. Last night was a good example. Fine Gael’s deputy leader Dr James Reilly (don’t forget the Doctor) was emphatic: Fine Gael had never said they’d take unilateral action in their dealings with bond-holders and Europe. Browne insisted they had: “It’s in your manifesto” he told the bearded Doctor. “No it isn't” the ex-sawbones said. “Show me where in the manifesto it uses the word 'unilateral'. We never said at any point we’d take unilateral action”.

 Other presenters would have left it at that but not Browne. He told the Fine Gale guru to pass the manifesto, thumbed through it for several minutes while Reilly obligingly rumbled on about negotation, sitting down, discussion, rhubarbrhubarbrhubard. “Here it is” Browne said, and read out the paragraph which did indeed contain the word ‘unilateral’. The overweight Fine Gael health spokesman had the grace to look flustered but only for a moment, after which he tried to maintain that ‘unilateral’ and ‘negotiated’ were the same thing. As a bonus last night the show also had a screamingly funny skit involving Browne, Fianna Fáil’s Willie O’Dea and Micheal Martin.

Given that audiences fall off dramatically after 10.00 pm, I don't know why in God's name they push the programme back to an 11.05 pm starting point. But maybe we should be grateful for Browne at any hour, and the brain and bite he brings to political discussion. Just imagine if we had someone half as good this side of the border.

The Three Amigos

I  was in Dublin yesterday morning and as I walked along Stephen’s Green, a cluster of United Left Alliance people were being interviewed by the media – notably Joe Higgins  and Richard Boyd-Barrett.  Last night I watched the Leaders’ Debate on RTÉ and there was no sign of either man. Or of the leader of the Greens or of Sinn Féin.  In fact, watching the debate you might have concluded that there were just three parties running in this general election.  Why were the smaller parties air-brushed out?

Two reasons – the polls and programme logistics.  The polls tell us that the parties which voters like most are  Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fáil respectively. (Yes I know, it seems daft to use the word ‘popularity’ and ‘Fianna Fáil’ in the same sentence but that’s what the polls say.) So on the basis that FG, Labour and FF are the top three, they get to go on TV.  Programme logistics say that five leaders  debating on TV  (adding the Greens and Sinn Féin to the list) doesn’t work because there are too many for developed answers.

Logistics, eh?  Five politicians  are too many? Odd then how every day,  thousands of teachers conduct discussions in classrooms of twenty or more hormonally hyped-up teenagers.  Nor do teachers get paid anything like the kind of money Pat Kenny or Miriam O’Callaghan make.   It’s simple: if they need more time in a five-way debate, then make the programmes longer.  Or sharpen the questioning.  There’s no logic to the notion of whittling back to three leaders. Why not four? Or Two?  Showing just three suggests that these are the only three which matter, which could impact on the United Left/ Sinn Féin/ Green vote. Democracy my arse.

But as poor old Brian Cowen used to remind us, we are where we are.  Last night’s debate did make one thing clear:  the three leaders featured are a third-rate lot. Ninety minutes of relentless finger-pointing and yet party plans remain  as obscure and leaky as ever. As to leadership qualities – a yapping Micheal Martin, a plank-like Enda Kenny and an impossibly pompous Eamon Gilmore – the heart sinks. The ECB/IMF boys will do a Tiger-Woods-on-the-twelfth-green when they meet up with Enda and Eamon after the election : they'll chew ‘em up and spit ‘em out.  

Two 'outsiders'

I was listening to RTÉ radio this morning and they were doing an archives thing about one of the periodic internecine feuds that tear at the entrails of Fianna Fáil. When I tuned in, a FF-er was screeching in a thick accent that somebody or other “should go back to Kildare!” Not “Go back to Kildare and check you haven’t left the cooker on” or “Go back to Kildare and take the road for Drogheda” or “Go back to Kildare and see if there’s any word of Paddy Reilly”. No, just “Go back to Kildare!” Delivered in a yelp of rage.

This is a condition known as uber-provincialism and it’s been around for decades. Back in the 1960s, an uncle of mine from Ballinascreen, Co Derry, got very indignant when he heard Bernadette Devlin had visited the town and made a speech on a local issue. “Sure she’s not even from here!” he spluttered. When Mary McAleese first ran for the Irish presidency, there was quite a bit of steam jetting out of overheated brains. One well-known commentator declared that, if elected, Mrs McAleese would be a “ticking time-bomb”. Geddit? She’s from the north, that’s where they have explosions, she’s a bit nationalist, therefore…

The current target of uber-provincialism is Gerry Adams. You don’t normally hear opponents come out and say “We don’t like you, Adams – you’re from the north”. It’s more often slipped in obliquely. “You’re not up in Stormont now, Gerry” was a comment I heard from one of his opponents. Not the same as saying “You know, you shouldn’t be here at all, if you belong anywhere it’s up there shouting at them unionists and what’s more mind your own business” but the message gets across just the same: “He’s…different from us, isn’t he? He…doesn’t belong, does he?’

Commentators are more direct. Miriam Lord spent one column a few weeks back referring to him as ‘Jarry’. That’s how he pronounces his name, you see - slap my thigh and split my sides! JARRY! Nearly as much of a laugh as Micheal Martin’s take-off of those Chinese. Eoghan Harris doesn’t mind Adams’s accent, doesn’t even mind his economics, apparently – it’s his morality that upsets Eoghan. And I heard a commentator this morning declaring that Sinn Féin were being impeded in their progress by the presence of Adams in the election, because he brought with him ‘baggage’.

He does too – northern baggage. A radio panelist the other day said that yes, Bertie Ahern had his faults, but we should never forget what he’d done for the peace process in the north. In other words, Bertie has baggage, but his bag is a big shiny suitcase with his name and “I ended the Troubles” on it. When Gerry Adams’s baggage is referred to, southern commentators hint that his suitcase is marked “I started the Troubles”. Hero Bertie, villain Gerry : it simplifies things.

And distorts. If you were to believe commentators, the peace process has been fathered by at least half-a-dozen people: Bertie, Albert Reynolds, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Ian Paisley, David Trimble – the list goes on. The truth is, there were two people at the heart – the real, beating heart - of the work that brought the peace process into being.

The first was John Hume. For his pains Hume was vilified on a steady basis by a cohort of southern hacks, most of them employed by Tony O’Reilly. But the SDLP leader stuck at it and eventually, the cease-fires came into being and the rest is history. John Hume took enormous political risks for what he believed in and it paid off.

But there are political risks and there are life-threatening risks, and it was the second person who made the peace process possible who took the life-threatening risks. He kept on taking them for some fifteen years, until eventually the apparently-impossible had been achieved – the Good Friday Agreement. Everybody carries a range of baggage, but history will mark Adams’s suitcase with “He took the risks that made peace and joint authority possible”.

But don’t expect the uber-provincialists to give him credit for that. So much easier to keep throwing stuff at this awkward, destabilizing, goddam it radical bloody Northerner with his bloody accent and his bloody beard…

Looking after money - and money people

Money talks but most of us don’t like talking about money, but I feel provoked this sunny near-Spring afternoon.

I’m fresh from Facebook and reading an interesting suggestion re TV debates and interviews. Since we know the political allegiances of politicians who are involved, and when someone contributes from the audience the presenter often insists they reveal any political links or allegiances, then what about journalists? There’s an assumption that journalists/commentators come from some sort of God-above-all-paring-his-fingernails realm where objectivity is in-built - a very silly assumption. So shouldn’t journalists be asked to declare their allegiances so we can filter what they say through that fact? And presenters: since many of them earn over €100K and some political parties want to tax such people fairly robustly, shouldn’t presenters come clean re (i) income; (ii) political leanings?

The other money item I note today is a report in The Guardian which says that, while bankrupts in the twenty-six counties have to wait twelve years before they’re free of pursuit, in the UK you’re out of the woods after twelve months. Got that? – TWELVE MONTHS. So if I break into your house and steal, say, £5,000 and am caught, I’ll be bound for prison. But if I am a businessman and leave you holding a debt of £5,000, or £50,000 for that matter, I’m free as the wind after twelve months, providing I spend less than a year in Britain. If I’m a banker, on the other hand, and put a small A-bomb under the national economy, nothing happens to me. No sorry, I mis-spoke. Something does happen. I get a fat waddly bonus.

And oh, I forgot. If I'm a senior European bond-holder and lose a massive amount of money, no worries. The Irish tax-payer gives me it back.

Money - ya gotta love it, eh?