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Showing posts with label Brexit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brexit. Show all posts
Fra Hughes ✒ Brexit might be the catalyst to reunify Ireland sooner rather than later, but have no doubt reunification is coming.

First Published In
Al Mayadeen English.
12-November 2021

When the British Parliament finally completed the negotiations with the European Parliament on Britain's long-awaited departure from the European Union on January 31, 2020, for many the deal had been done - there were winners and losers but Brexit had been delivered.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was now outside of the European Union, except it wasn't.

The Good Friday Agreement signed in 1998 and endorsed by the people of Ireland, North and South, through two national referendums, agreed that the status of Northern Ireland would be decided by the people of Northern Ireland, at some as yet unspecified date. As long as the majority of the people in the North of Ireland (the colonial settler element) wished to remain part of the United Kingdom that was the de facto position of both the Irish and British governments.

The hitherto border which had operated on the island of Ireland between the two countries, when they were established in 1921 after Britain partitioned the island, would become to all intents and purposes invisible, with no physical presence.

The campaign of national liberation waged by the Irish Republican Army and the Irish National Liberation Army would cease as would the counter-revolutionary violence from the colonial settlers elements of the Ulster Defense Association, The Ulster Volunteer Force, and the Red Hand Commando.

We have had relative peace in the intervening 23 years but with little of the much-hyped peace dividend of prosperity reaching the poor, the underprivileged, or the working class. A small cohort of republicans continues a campaign of armed resistance against what they see as the ongoing colonial occupation of the North of Ireland by British imperialism while loyalists have refused to decommission their weapons and stand accused of drug dealing and criminality.

Brexit, the slow-burning fuse

By the slimmest of majorities in a referendum on Britain’s continued participation within the European Union, a No vote resulted in Brexit, a British exit from Europe.

While the majority of people in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain in the European Union, it was the traditional Labour strongholds of the North of England and parts of Wales, both decimated by neoliberal government policies over 40 years, who pulled the plug and gave a vicious two fingers to the British establishment and voted leave in their millions.

The referendum was held on 23 June 2016 with 52% of voters voting to leave and 48% of voters voting to remain.

A timescale was agreed for Britain to conclude its withdrawal negotiations and a Britain free from European red tape would once again rule the waves of economic and trade success, or so we were told.

The opposite appears to have happened, as inflation is fuelled by rising prices, petrol shortages, and empty supermarket shelves, combined with the ongoing restrictions in the labor market compounded by the Covid pandemic.  Britain is reeling from its Brexit exit strategy. The UK Parliament is now in a fishery war with France, at loggerheads with the European Union over the Northern Ireland Protocol and facing a bleak winter of discontent and potential strikes from its disgruntled workers.

The Good Friday Agreement

As part of the withdrawal agreement between the EU and GB, Northern Ireland was allowed to remain within the single European common market for trade purposes. Meaning no hard border/customs border on the island of Ireland.

It would also remain part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for trade purposes thereby having the opportunity to operate in both sectors unhindered. A huge potential benefit to business in Northern Ireland.

A positive boom to the underperforming economy of the North of Ireland.

While unionist politicians actively campaigned to leave the European Union under any and all circumstances and initially voted in favor of the withdrawal agreement they have subsequently backtracked and the agreement now stands on a precipice of collapse.

While the majority of people in N. Ireland voted to remain within the EU and business is booming between the North and South, between Ireland and the EU, the east-west connection between Britain and N.Ireland is faltering.

The voters of Northern Ireland voted 55% Remain and 44% voted Leave.

Those who live here who demand to be as British as those in Brighton are like the Algerian or Lebanese who chose to be as French as the Parisians.

The colonial settler remnants that inhabit the North of Ireland have long held a veto over Irish reunification, have acted as a military militia both officially and unofficially over the centuries, and are now claiming that the Brexit withdrawal agreement which they were in favor of, has now magically somehow diminished their Britishness and they are fearful Brexit will inexorably lead to a United Ireland.

The writing is not only on the wall, it is on the birth certificates of the children who see themselves as the indigenous people who desire national reunification, but it is also increasing, as reunification draws near, on the minds and the lips of some, who might previously have been seen as wishing to maintain the link with Britain.
 
Loyalism

The loyalist of Northern Ireland is loyal to Britain, loyal to the British Parliament, and loyal to the British Crown. They serve in the British army, the British navy, and the British airforce. In return, they seek the loyalty of the British establishment as guarantors to maintain their place in society and power in the North of Ireland.

They have supported and enrolled in the British military occupation of Ireland, and now Northern Ireland, with official support through the regular armed forces and unofficial support through paramilitary organizations such as the Ulster Defense Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force, two protestant pro-British now illegal terrorist organizations who through campaigns of violence and collusion with British state forces have murdered, tortured, bombed and maimed the indigenous catholic Irish population in a campaign of counterinsurgency and extra-judicial murder, to include the assassinations of human rights lawyers, possibly at the behest of the British government itself.

These very same actors are now threatening to destabilize the peace process, withdraw from the GFA and return to using the gun to enforce the continued British occupation of Ireland.

Timing is everything in Politics and everything can change in a day.

As the Democratic Unionist Party in the North of Ireland, the largest political group representing the pro-union vote base, threatens to pull down the institutions, returning the North of Ireland to direct rule under the British Parliament, and sections of Ulster loyalism possibly connected to the Ulster Volunteer Force have hijacked and set alight several public transport buses costing damage estimated at 1 million euro, we can see how Ulster unionism, Ulster loyalism, and the British government appear to be in perfect political alignment.

Like the three stars which aligned to guide the three kings to Nazareth this triumvirate of forces is aligned to Brussels.

The British government will use the leverage provided by the Democratic Unionist Party threat to bring down the region assembly at Stormont, coupled with the recent burning of hijacked buses and sporadic violence which loyalists have used to draw the indigenous population into conflict with the state, as the stick with which to beat the European Union.

While the American Administration (no friend to anyone) demands the Northern Ireland Protocol, which allows a trade border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland to remain in place, thus supporting no physical border on the island of Ireland as per the Good Friday Agreement, the EU will most likely stand its ground.

Britain threatens to enact Article 16 and suspend the Brexit agreement. There is much at stake.

While the Unionists of Northern Ireland threaten the government and the loyalists threaten the peace, I wonder if we’ll finally see an end to the Union.

The people want an absence of violence. Political unionist rhetoric and loyalist violence have nothing to offer anyone except the recalcitrant few with many more voters and citizens turning away from yesterday's men, espousing yesterday’s messages, and embracing a shared unified future.

Brexit might be the catalyst to reunify Ireland sooner rather than later, but have no doubt reunification is coming.

When "Israel" was created in West Asia through the Balfour Declaration of 1917, it was described in 1924 as 'A little Loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism' by Lord Ronald Storrs First British Governor of Jerusalem.

The sins of the colonial fathers are being continued by their colonial sons both in Ireland and in Palestine. May peace be upon us both.

𒍨The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al Mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

Fra Hughes is a columnist with Al Mayadeen.

Brexit Is The Burning Question ➵ Burning Buses Appears to be the N. Ireland Loyalist Answer

Caoimhin O’Muraile ✒ Boris Johnson is the Prime Minister of the so-called United Kingdom. 

This entity came into being in 1801 and consists of the countries which make up Britain, England (by far the senior partner) Scotland and Wales, and originally until 1922 Ireland. The modern variant of this bloc is made up of Britain and “Northern Ireland” which came about as part of the treaty of 6th December 1921 ending the Irish War of Independence. 

Today, Boris Johnson, the PM and leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party - emphasis for the purpose of this piece being on the Unionist part of the title - and is the man, along with his side kick, David Frost, responsible for trying to hold the European Union to ransom. He constantly threatens to invoke article 16 of the “Northern Ireland Protocol” if the EU do not cede more ground held within the said protocol. This is despite him, Johnson, signing an agreement with the EU some time ago which by de-facto places a “border in the Irish Sea”, despite promising the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) he would not do so. 

This arrangement between the UK Government and the EU was introduced to prevent, in line with the internationally recognised Good Friday Agreement (GFA), a hard border on the island of Ireland. The ink on the agreement was not dry when Barmy Boz and Frosty Dave demanded more concessions from the EU. They were, and are, greatly supported by the DUP who, incidentally were never really in favour of the GFA in the first place back in 1998. 

The “Northern Ireland Protocol” is designed to protect the GFA not wreck it as, it appears, the DUP wish to do. The DUP claim this protocol lessens their role and “Britishness” under the union with Britain, which it certainly does not. If anything, it gives the six counties (Northern Ireland) the best of both worlds, access to the EU market, which after Brexit they are no longer part of despite voting to remain in the bloc, and the British market. All the protocol does is ensure checks are made at the ports in The North of Ireland, as opposed to having a customs border with the twenty-six counties. 

This to the DUP is not on as they are the only country, as they see it, within the UK where goods from one part of the entity are checked before entering another component part. For example, they may point to Wales and ask; do checks between England and Wales on goods travelling around the UK get checked? The answer is, of course, no. Then, goes the DUP argument, why do goods coming from one part of the UK to another in the case of “Northern Ireland” need to be checked? The answer is simple, and the DUP know it, is because the twenty-six counties are still part of the EU and goods coming from the six-counties to the twenty-six are, as far as the EU are concerned, coming from a jurisdiction outside the European Union. As there is no hard border on the island what has effectively become known as a border down the Irish Sea was a way round this conundrum.

The DUP have been crying merry hell over this, ignoring the fact that their jurisdiction benefits from two markets, since the protocol was signed. Johnson signed this, then went back on his word and every time the EU make modifications to try and placate unionist concerns, Johnson and Frost ask for more. It is a little like Hitler's claims on Czechoslovakia for the Sudetenland back in 1938. Once he was granted these he came back for more until in the end he took the whole country. Johnson and Frost are acting similar over this protocol. Every time the EU make concessions they come back with more demands, demands they know the EU cannot give! So, what are their real intentions? The DUP would, it appears, prefer to be third class Englishmen impoverished than give into the EU and, perhaps more importantly from their angle, the Dublin Government.

Article 16 of the “Northern Ireland Protocol” allows under certain circumstances both the EU and the UK to invoke unilaterally, something Johnson has been threatening to do for some time. The EU, foolishly, some time ago threatened to invoke the article over Covid-19 vaccines and, realising their idiotic error, backtracked after two hours and withdrew the threat. Johnson and Frost just keep making the same threat and this time it looks like they may go through with it, much to the delight of the DUP. The DUP were always for leaving the EU, once again as they do so often when it suits them, ignoring the popular vote to remain within the EU by the electorate of the six-counties. 

For the record, and in brief, article 16 reads; “safeguard measures can be taken if the protocol is leading to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist.” The protocol does not lead to economic difficulties, as has been explained (though a little tweaking could be applied to limit the checks) as access to two lucrative markets is available to the six-counties. It certainly does not cause environmental difficulties, certainly as far as I can see anymore than already exist under capitalist conditions, and, by safeguarding the GFA societal difficulties are minimal compared with the years between 1922 and 1998. The unionist position within the UK is safeguarded under the GFA so why undermine it? 

So, what are these two, Johnson and Frost, after? The DUP would rather live in the gutter, it appears, than give up any of their self-perceived “Britishness”. The six-counties, or “Northern Ireland” are not part of Britain at all, apart from in the eyes of the Unionist and Loyalist politicians they are a far-flung outpost on the western flank of the UK, something totally different. So, their argument against the protocol does not stand up at all, unless their real agenda is scrapping the GFA! After all, the late Ian Paisley before he reportedly mellowed once said; ‘our mission is to smash the Sinn Fein agenda’ which was why they did not initially sign up to the GFA. Does this still privately and clandestinely still apply?

In Britain, along with Frost and Johnson, though not in the Conservative and Unionist party, a man called Nigel Farage is always on the prowl trying to undermine the Dublin Government over the twenty-six counties membership of the EU. He wants, as do Johnson and Frost I suspect, Ireland out of the EU with Britain. This would, of course, make us once again economically dependent on the UK and our government would be, like Vichy France after the German invasion of that country in 1940, an executive in name only. Could this be their real agenda? 

I do not have the answers but these two men, Johnson and Frost, continue placing obstacles in front of any compromise with the EU which could result in a hard border on the island of Ireland. They will then turn around and blame the EU for this happening and the breaking of the GFA. They can then agitate from afar for the twenty-six counties to leave the EU and re-join their misleadingly named “commonwealth.” Could this be on their radar? I do not know, but be prepared for every expediency and contingency when dealing with the British Government, the DUP might do well to remember this also. Should this be the case, and I do hope I am wrong, the Irish people must remember if either through the clandestine antics of Johnson and Frost we finish up back under the heel of Britain, who the Head of State would be! It would not be our democratically elected President as the British monarch is the head of the Commonwealth. In this aspect, and if my far-flung suspicions hold any water, Fine Gael, the party most sympathetic to re-joining the British Commonwealth may prove hidden allies to this venture, allies Johnson and Frost may find invaluable! This is pure speculation but these are strange times and sometimes it is better to be prepared for every eventuality no matter how far-fetched these may appear.

I am no lover of the European Union as it is a capitalist bloc to promote capitalist economic ideas but Ireland out of the EU would not change this. It would not bring socialism, or the socialist republic, any closer. In fact, it would be worse for us as the alternative in the modern economic world would be back under the yolk of the UK something I suspect Johnson, Frost and perhaps the DUP have not lost sight of!!

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent 
Socialist Republican and Marxist


What Are Johnson And Frosts Real Aims?

The Northern Ireland Protocol has added fuel to Unionism and Loyalism’s unease about the safety of the Union in this the centenary year of the Northern Ireland state. Political commentator Dr John Coulter urges political Unionism to get its act in gear before fringe dissident Loyalist views become mainstream pro-Union thinking.

Mention unease about Loyalism and there is always the danger that I can be accused of political sabre-rattling, upping the ante, and even ‘egging the pudding.’

But the recent European Union debacle over triggering Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol, the so-called border down the Irish Sea, tackling the Covid pandemic and the impact of Brexit in general has created a radical unease among Loyalism and Right-wing Unionism not seen since the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement and the early years of the Drumcree protests in the mid to late 1990s.

What the leaderships of the various Unionist parties seem to have either misread or ignored is that a new brand of Loyalism is emerging for whom the ceasefires of 1994 by the Combined Loyalist Military Command and the Good Friday Agreement four years later are merely dates in history books.

There is an assumption that 2021 Loyalism is more concerned with gangsterism and that modern day Loyalist leaders can be neutralised by throwing plenty of British dosh at community groups.

To make such an assumption is to vastly underestimate the threat posed by the post Brexit radicalism emerging within sections of the Loyalist community.

Historically, Unionism and Loyalism always looked to the British security forces to protect their communities from republicanism - namely the police and the Army.

Those parties linked to Loyalist terror groups - such as the Progressive Unionist Party (linked to the UVF and Red Hand Commando) and the old Ulster Democratic Party (linked to the UDA and UFF) - did not enjoy the same support electorally in the pro-Union community as Sinn Fein has enjoyed within the nationalist community.

Put bluntly, if Loyalism had copied the Armalite and ballot box strategy of the republican movement, then the so-called ‘Big Two’ running the power-sharing Stormont Executive would not be Sinn Fein and the DUP, but would be Sinn Fein and the Progressive Unionists.

The leadership of the modern day dissident Loyalism movement recognises the reality that there will never be electoral support for their militant views or actions within the broad, democratic pro-Union community.

Indeed, they would take the view that probably the fiercest of modern day radical Loyalism’s critics would be theologically ecumenical Protestant church folk and politically liberal or civic Unionists. Again, put bluntly, there is no point in 2021 radical Loyalism forming yet another pro-Union political party as it would have next to nil electoral support.

The danger is that such dissident Loyalism ideologically is adopting the same thinking and tactics of radical Islam, namely actions speak louder than words and groups should be organised in either small cells of two or three people, or even the so-called ‘lone wolf’ tactics of the Far Right.

The view could also be expressed - the Loyalists have no stomach for a fight and just have to accept that at some point in the next quarter of a century, there will be a border poll in favour of Irish unity. That, too, would be a total misunderstanding of the new growing radical Loyalism.

The British and Irish governments as well as political Unionism need to remember what happened in 1974. Okay, the days of thousands of marching Loyalists tramping the streets of Ulster against the power-sharing Sunningdale Executive are long gone.

But what happened in 1974? Political Unionism - then mostly represented by the Unionist Coalition of the UUP, DUP, Vanguard Unionists and UUUP - aided by the street muscle of the Loyalist paramilitaries brought down the Sunningdale Executive during the Ulster Workers’ Council strike of May 1974.

But political Unionism had no workable alternative to Sunningdale. Oh yes, they could issue ideas which effectively were old style Unionist majority rule restored. Those ideas, unlike Sunningdale, would never be acceptable to a significant section of the nationalist community.

The then Irish government attempted to break this logjam in 1974 by putting forward its own ideas for running Northern Ireland. But these were very quickly swept off the negotiating table following the no-warning Loyalist car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan which murdered around 30 people and left another around 300 with various degrees of injuries.

Again put bluntly, the Dublin administration does not have the financial clout to ‘soak up’ the consequences of a no-warning Loyalist bomb blitz on the Republic in the same way that the British economy could ‘soak up’ the IRA and INLA’s bombing campaigns in Northern Ireland and mainland Britain.

Therein lies the Achilles heel of Leinster House pushing for either a shared Ireland, all-Ireland, Irish unity form of running the Emerald Isle. Again, put bluntly, could the Dublin economy cope with no-warning bombs being detonated at peak time or rush hour at Connolly Station or O’Connell Street?

Critics of Loyalism’s capacity to mount such a campaign might say - surely the British and Irish intelligence communities would have the Loyalism movement so heavily infiltrated with spies and informers that such a terror campaign would never get off the ground?

Whilst it can be agreed that British and Irish intelligence organisations have become more advanced since the days of internment in 1971, they still have been unable to prevent terror attacks by radical Islamic individuals and cells, or the ‘lone wolf’ attacks in Norway and the United States which left hundreds murdered.

The IRA bombed mainland Britain in an attempt to get Westminster to say - ‘here, take Northern Ireland and have your Irish unity!’ In the event of a border poll resulting in favour of Irish unity, are there those in the Loyalist community who could create a terror campaign where Dublin says - ‘here, take Northern Ireland back into the UK, or have an independent Ulster!’

The onus to prevent such scenarios becoming a reality is for the Unionist parties to agree a political solution whereby the Northern Ireland Protocol no longer is perceived to be a threat to the Union.

The pro-Union community has a moral obligation and duty to ensure that current dissident Loyalist thinking never becomes mainstream ideology in Loyalism.

Threats and graffiti are to be soundly condemned, but Unionism must ensure this current radical Loyalism does not become tomorrow’s bombs and bullets. Remember the old proverb - it only takes one rotten apple to spoil the barrel.  

Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
 Listen to Dr John Coulter’s religious show, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 9.30 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM, or listen online at www.thisissunshine.com
 

When Does Dissident Loyalism Become Mainstream Thinking?

Ian Major ✒ How can the governments resolve the difficulties caused by the NI Protocol - the inconvenience of delays in food supplies from GB, indeed the outright banning of vegetables and plants that have any soil on them, etc?

Good will would not have allowed these nit-picking customs checks to have arisen - but the EU is more interested in making Brexit difficult for the UK than finding a solution. 

Their insincerity about protecting the Belfast Agreement was demonstrated in their resort to Article 16 in pursuit of controlling the export of vaccines to the UK.

Their action, even though they quickly pulled back from it in the face of protest from all parties in NI and the Irish Government, has hardened the suspicion of Unionists and Loyalists here. They suspect that the Protocol is just in place to edge them further down the road to a United Ireland. Now the customs border checkers have had to be taken off duty, following cases of their personal details being taken by sinister elements.

Come on, Boris and EU - either get the customs checks operating smoothly and minimally, or redo it.

How about fresh thinking on who should be the special case, as NI currently is?

A solution that would benefit both NI and ROI would be to make the whole island of Ireland a special case, like they have done with NI. That is, all goods from GB to anywhere in the island enter without checks.

The duty to ensure the other EU countries are not compromised in trade taxes and standards would be taken up by ROI. Their exports to the rest of the EU would be checked at their ports and airports by ROI/EU officials. Same for exports from NI to the EU (excluding ROI).

A big benefit to both ROI and NI. A worthwhile 'all-Ireland' venture.

⏭Ian Major grew up a heathen Protestant, was converted at 17. He lives out his Evangelical faith as a Baptist.  

A Worthwhile 'All-Ireland' Venture

Financial Times ✒ Strategic misjudgments are weakening not preserving Northern Ireland’s place in the UK.

Robert Shrimsley

This year marks Northern Ireland’s centenary. But, given the effects of Brexit, few are betting on there being a 125th birthday.

While post-Brexit talk of UK disintegration focuses on the more immediate risk of Scottish independence, the narrative rarely excludes the province. And with good reason. The Brexit terms keep Northern Ireland inside the EU customs union and single market for goods, weakening its legal and commercial ties to the UK. 

The first weeks of Brexit have amplified this. British retailers halted some supplies while they grappled with the new trade rules. Customs checks stymied hauliers with multiple loads, and there are fears over the looming expiry of a grace period on health certification for food products. 

While ruling out an early push for reunification, the Irish Republic is playing a long game. The Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, has created a Shared Island initiative, with €500m for cross-border projects. Dublin also took on the cost of keeping Northern Irish students in the EU’s Erasmus university exchange scheme, another tie to the youth of the North. 

The strategy is plain: polls show higher support for unification among younger voters.  

Continue reading @ Financial Times.

Democratic Unionists Are Now Irish Reunification’s Secret Weapon

Maryam Namazie ✒ To the Brexiteers’ cancel culture (which aims to cancel people as well) let me say this. I don’t take offence at your opposition to my views. Throw it at me. 



I have no problem standing my ground and arguing my position. I have a lifetime of experience arguing for what I believe in.

But telling me to leave Britain because you don’t like my views on Brexit and open borders only proves my point, not yours. That behind all the talk about sovereignty (as if Britain was a colony) and border control (in a country with toughest immigration rules already) Brexit appeals to a visceral small-mindedness and xenophobia.

If an argument can be won by telling those with opposing views to leave, shall I suggest you leave? If you cannot accept a culture of freethought and inquiry, doubt and dissent then you should go to a country where they use deportations to handle dissent against government policy or where they arrest anyone who disagrees with the state.

And if you are so concerned about people being grateful, maybe you should be more grateful to all the migrants who put food on your table, deliver your packages and prop up the NHS.

Your words not mine: It would be ‘nice to weed out the ungrateful and incompatible’.

See how this works? Being entitled and superior because of a lottery of birth makes a poor argument and reveals so much about the bigotry within.

#Brexit


Maryam Namazie is an Iranian-born activist and Spokesperson 
of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and One Law for All.

Brexit Cancel Culture

Evening Standard ✒ The worst evening I spent in Downing Street? 

George Osborne

Easy: September 18, 2014, sitting in the small wood-panelled dining room in Number 11 with David Cameron; eating a tepid curry; waiting for the results of the Scottish referendum. 

We thought: are we the people who have lost Scotland? History allows for no recovery from a disaster like that. Ask Lord North, the prime minister condemned for all time for the loss of America. The mistake he made — and with Irish calls for home rule a century later — had been to assume that doing nothing was an option. Our referendum was a proactive plan to keep the United Kingdom together — and it looked like it had put Scottish nationalism back in its box for a generation.

Not any more. By unleashing English nationalism, Brexit has made the future of the UK the central political issue of the coming decade. Northern Ireland is already heading for the exit door. By remaining in the EU single market, it is for all economic intents and purposes now slowly becoming part of a united Ireland. Its prosperity now depends on its relationship with Dublin (and Brussels), not London. The politics will follow.
 
Continue reading @ Evening Standard.

Unleashing Nationalism Has Made The Future Of The UK The Central Issue

The Guardian ✒ So this is it. Forty-eight years after Britain joined what was then the European Economic Community, the fasten seatbelt signs are switched on and the cabin lights have been dimmed. It is time for departure.
Larry Elliott  
 
Many in the UK, especially on the left, are in despair that this moment has arrived. For them, this can never be the journey to somewhere better: instead it is the equivalent of the last helicopter leaving the roof of the US embassy in Saigon in 1975.

The lefties who voted for Brexit see it differently. For them (us, actually, because I am one of them), the vote to leave was historically progressive. It marked the rejection of a status quo that was only delivering for the better off by those who demanded their voice was heard. Far from being a reactionary spasm, Brexit was democracy in action. 

Now the UK has a choice. It can continue to mourn or it can take advantage of the opportunities that Brexit has provided. For a number of reasons, it makes sense to adopt the latter course.

Continue reading @ The Guardian.

The Left Must Stop Mourning Brexit ➖ And Start Seeing Its Huge Potential

Counterpunch ✒ The power of England is on the wane. 

Patrick Cockburn

I met pleased and gloomy people in the first half of last year when I travelled around the UK writing about the potential impact of Brexit. But by far the happiest of those I interviewed were veteran Irish republicans in Belfast, mostly present or past members of Sinn Fein, who had devoted their lives to opposing British rule.

They grasped that Brexit had made the question of the Irish border a live political issue by turning it into an international frontier. This was no longer just a 310-mile-long dividing line between the UK and the Irish Republic but the border between the UK and the EU.

Irish nationalists had been trying to interest the rest of the world in the partition of Ireland since it happened in 1921 but had failed dismally. Now the British government was self-destructively doing their work for them, significantly eroding the status of Northern Ireland as part of the UK.

Unionist fears that they would be sold out have been amply fulfilled, an outcome confirmed this week by the EU-UK government deal on the Irish Sea border, which is complicated and confusing – perhaps deliberately so ...

Continue reading @ Counterpunch.

Brexit Bluster Exposes The Waning Of English Power

Belfast Telegraph ✒ The DUP is very lucky that the next Assembly election isn't until May 2022.

Suzanne Breen

If it took a hit over the cash-for-ash scandal, then any imminent Stormont poll would surely be a complete car crash for Arlene Foster’s party.

On the eve of the centenary of the Northern Ireland state, the Union will look increasingly precarious in the eyes of many unionists following the agreement between London and Brussels on the new Irish Sea border.

Staunchly loyalist Larne will become a border town in 2021.

The DUP issued an unusually long statement yesterday evening in relation to the Brexit developments.

Notably, it was from the party centrally and not in the name of Mrs Foster or any individual representative.

It welcomed some aspects of the deal and was critical of others.

Given the potentially grave implications for the Union, it was moderate and measured in tone.

There wasn’t a single angry adjective in the 800 words.

The DUP knows that making a song and dance of the latest betrayal by the Tories would draw attention to its own ineptitude and incompetence in this saga.

Continue reading @ Belfast Telegraph.

Inquest Into Latest Tory Betrayal The Last Thing DUP Wants

George Monbiot ✒ Brexit isn’t about Europe, and isn’t about the UK. It’s the outcome of a civil war within capitalism. 

Where there is chaos, the government will multiply it. Where people are pushed to the brink, it will shove them over. 

Boris Johnson ignored the pleas of businesses and politicians across the UK – especially in Northern Ireland – to extend the Brexit transition process. Never mind the pandemic, never mind unemployment, poverty and insecurity – nothing must prevent our experiment in unassisted flight. We will leap from the white cliffs on 1 January, come what may.

Perhaps, after so much macho bluster, the government will take the last of its last chances and strike a deal this week. If so, with scarcely any time for refinement, the agreement is likely to be rushed and bodged. In any event, pain will follow. Disruption at the border is likely to be felt across the nation.

So it is worth repeating the big question: why are we doing this to ourselves? I believe the answer is that Brexit is the outcome of a civil war within capitalism.

Continue reading @ George Monbiot.
 

Caught In The Crossfire

Matt Treacy ✒ On Tuesday, Taoiseach Micheál Martin reported back to the Dáil from the weekend’s EU Council meeting in Brussels.

 
The main issue of concern was the implications of the lack of an agreement between the Commission and London prior to Britain leaving the EU at the end of December.

Martin echoed the Brussels line that the British had contravened the terms of withdrawal. All of them appear to be missing the point that the British electorate voted to leave, and what they do now is their own business subject to the normal strictures governing trade and other relationships between sovereign entities. Or the one which has subsumed that position in the case of the Irish state.

 
The sudden concern expressed over the implications Brexit might have for the Irish fishing sector is a bit ironic given the manner in which the same sector has been sold down the river for half a century. Martin’s claim that Barnier and the others go to sleep every night worrying about “peace in Ireland” is likewise frankly risible.

You would expect nothing other than the craven attitude of the Irish state towards the EU, but the sycophancy of those who were formerly opposed to the surrender of the Republic’s sovereignty is something to behold. Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald referred to the “British Government’s use of Ireland’s future” by London as a bargaining chip, but not to a similar tactic by Brussels.

She also referred to the need to protect the Good Friday Agreement which – almost a quarter of a century since it was regarded by Sinn Féin as a temporary arrangement on the road to a united Ireland – has become a sacred cow underpinned by a seemingly perpetual undemocratic coalition of the two main nationalist and unionist parties which for the foreseeable future will include Sinn Féin and the DUP.

Fianna Fáil trotted out platitudes about ending Partition for decades without ever doing anything meaningful to achieving that object. It would seem that “don’t hit me with the Good Friday Agreement in my arms” has become the Sinn Féin equivalent. What they also now share in common is an abject deference to our new overlords in Brussels, although in fairness Sinn Féin manage to serve both the Queen in London and the Kaiser in Berlin, to butcher the Citizen Army slogan of 1916.

The party has, like the pigs on Animal Farm, completely bought into the deception that the EU is looking after our interests. How anyone can claim this to be the case following the bank bailout which is estimated to cost us almost €65,000,000,000 or the €17,000,000,000 net contribution to the Covid fund agreed in July is a mystery And yet this was celebrated by the Irish elite as somehow constituting a victory.

John Brady, the Sinn Féin TD for Wicklow, spoke of the “spectre of Brexit” casting its shadow over “all aspects of EU activity,” and how the Brits were seemingly now opposed to food safety standards. What does he think will happen?: British bakers grinding mortar into loaves of bread? Creameries diluting milk with polluted river water?

It is embarrassing in fact to hear an alleged Irish republican – I would never describe him as that dreadful being a “nationalist” – using exactly the same sort of bromides deployed by Irish shoneens more than a century ago who opposed Irish independence because if Old Mother England left us to our own devices, it would be pigs ating off the table before you could say Top of the Morning, and us all starving to death again because we would have more childer than potatoes to feed them with.

Most pathetically of all, Sinn Féin now seemingly supports the EU’s claim to everyone else’s fishing waters. Up until the time that Sinn Féin performed a somersault on Irish independence and sovereignty, the con that was perpetrated on our fishing sector was cited as the main reason for the party opposing the EU, and indeed for arguing in favour of a withdrawal.

The main sticking point now in the Brexit denouement is the stance taken by Britain on their fishing waters, which the EU seems to think ought to still remain mostly under its control even when Britain is no longer a member. Padráig Mac Lochlainn of Sinn Féin backs the Brussels line and cited the once rightly derided Common Fisheries Policy as a reason why the EU is correct on this.

Yes, the same CFP that organised the plunder of the Irish fisheries. In 2008, Sinn Féin tabled a motion in the Dáil calling for a complete overhaul of the CFP. In moving the motion the then Spokesperson on fishing, Martin Ferris declared:

the Common Fisheries Policy has been the bedrock of the disastrous mismanagement of the Irish fishery since this state joined the EU. Unless and until an Irish Government reverses the shameful sell out made at that time, we will be merely tinkering around and allowing Brussels to engineer the effective liquidation of the Irish fishing sector.

He also referred to the conclusion of a 2002 review group on the CFP that “Ireland has only a small piece of its own cake.” Martin Ferris was completely correct in his assessment which is as valid today as it was then.

If other European countries have had the cojones to reject this economic betrayal then they ought to be the object of admiration by Irish nationalists, not the butt of a former nationalist party’s derision which is reflective of how far along the road they have travelled with the rest of them whose main mission in life seems to be to deceive the Irish people about the real consequences of our surrender to a bigger bully than the one across the Irish Sea.


Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland.
He is currently working on a number of other books; His latest one is a novel entitled Houses of Pain. It is based on real events in the Dublin underworld. Houses of Pain is published by MTP and is currently available online as paperback and kindle while book shops remain closed.

Sinn Féin’s Backtrack Buys Into The Deception That The EU Is Looking After Ireland’s Interests

Will it be Scotland or Northern Ireland which an English Tory Party dumps out of the Union first? Political commentator Dr John Coulter maintains this is the real dilemma facing British Prime Minister Boris Johnston.

BoJo’s Internal Market Bill has once again thrown the UK cat among the EU pigeons as the Right-wing of the ruling Conservative party at Westminster battles to ensure the UK has an effective Brexit deal in the bag by Halloween - Covid 19 or no Covid 19 pandemic!

While there has been much discussion that the latest bill - which passed through the Commons last week - may have broken international law, the bill’s actual existence actually lifts the lid on the real crisis facing BoJo’s Tory loyalists - who do the English dump first, Scotland or Northern Ireland?

Or to put it in hard fiscal terms, which nation (or nations!) of the existing United Kingdom could England Wales financially benefit from by cutting that country adrift in a post-Brexit British Isles?

With Scottish nationalism once more on the ascendancy after a past General Election hiccup, and Northern Ireland firmly in the ‘Remain’ camp and still championing the outcome of the 2016 EU referendum specifically in the Province, it is abundantly clear the folk who run Westminster need to cut their losses somewhere.

Six years ago in an earlier article, I teased out the subject of dumping Scotland and keeping Ireland: https://www.thepensivequill.com/2014/08/theyve-scot-no-chance-republic-would-be.html?m=0



After all, how much more North Sea oil can the Scots provide for the English Government in London? While Welsh nationalists may shout ‘what about us’, the political reality is that there’s a better chance of a snow storm in hell than Wales voting to become an independent nation adrift of the UK.

Northern Ireland has become an increasingly expensive sideline for the Westminster Government over the past almost 100 years. It took a global pandemic to get a three-year suspended Assembly back on its feet.

With all the problems of a potential border in the Irish Sea, would it be easier for London to agree an all-island set-up with Dublin, give the Scots their independence and make the English/Scottish border the real future border with the EU.

After all, Scotland did vote ‘Remain’ and it would be inevitable that an independent Scotland would want to rejoin the EU as soon as politically possible. Indeed, the key question which the pro-Union community in Northern Ireland has to address is: what advantage is it to London to keep the Province in the UK?

Now that Unionism is no longer the majority political ideology in Northern Ireland given the results of three past elections, the pro-Union community is constantly being lectured that it has to ‘sell’ the benefits of being in the Union to so-called non-Unionists.

However, when the contents of the recent Internal Market Bill are taken into consideration, perhaps the real ‘hard sell’ should be as to why London should keep Northern Ireland?

If the Internal Market Bill is proven to be a breach of international law, what is to stop the London Government bringing in legislation which effectively ‘dumps’ Northern Ireland out of the UK, creating a united Ireland in all but name?

Was it not the so-called staunch pro-Union Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher who said during a parliamentary speech in November, 1981: “Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom; as much as my constituency is”.

Maggie’s ‘As British as Finchley’ speech seemed to have been forgotten conveniently four years later when she signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement in November 1985 to give Dublin its first major say in the running of Northern Ireland since partition in the 1920s.

The worst case scenario for Unionists in both Scotland and Northern Ireland is that London concludes it would be economically viable to have a mini-UK of just England and Wales and get rid of both the other nations.

Perhaps the bitter medicine which the pro-Union community in Northern Ireland must face is that an all-island scenario may be their only way forward to secure some kind of position within the UK.

However, the persuasion tactic will be to persuade the Irish Republic that it should rejoin the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, especially if Brexit isolates the Republic not just geographically, but also economically.

Ireland in 1911 - when the entire island was part of the British Empire - was a founder member of the Empire Parliamentary Association, which became the CPA in the years after the end of the Second World War.

The present CPA represents more than 50 national and regional parliaments, not all of whom were members of the former British Empire.

What must be recognised in today’s post pandemic global market is that Ireland - north and south as an island - must be part of a major financial grouping if it is not to suffer the economic Celtic Tiger-style meltdowns of the past.

Long gone are the days when a unionist politician could be disciplined for going south of the Irish border on official business. The pro-Union community must realise that what happens in the southern 26 counties radically affects what happens in the northern six counties - and vice versa.

The new coalition government in Leinster House has clearly shown that when it comes to dealing with the Shinners, old foes in Fine Gael and Fianna Fail can come together to keep out Sinn Fein.

Is this a blunt message to the republican movement; if there’s no role for your Sinn Fein party in the 26 counties, then there’s certainly no place for you Shinners in a united Ireland?

If Westminster can push through the Internal Market Bill, could it be persuaded to pass the New Anglo-Irish Treaty which brings the Irish Republic back into the CPA to guarantee Southern Ireland’s economic survival in a post Covid 19 market?  


 Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter

 Listen to Dr John Coulter’s religious show, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning   around 9.30 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM, or listen online   at www.thisissunshine.com

BoJo’s Dilemma - Who Do The English Dump First, Scotland Or Ulster?

Barry Gilheany discusses populism.

The rise of a range of self-advertised, openly nativist “strong men” propelled to power on waves of nationalist and populist resentment across the democratic world has prompted much concern by the liberal commentariat about the future of precisely this “democratic” world.

 Some with grim foreboding imagine an illiberal, authoritarian democracy along the lines of Victor Orban’s leadership in Hungary or a managed, celebritised democracy like Vladimir Putin’s kleptocracy in Russia or the sui generis market authoritarianism of a China or Singapore as models for states in the developing world to aspire to rather than the free market, liberal democratic teleology so confidently predicted by Francis Fukuyama after the end of the Cold War (an optimism from which he has long since retreated). 

Of particularly pressing concern for liberal agonists is the threat to the post-war rules based and cooperative trans-national order as these leaders, be they a Modi, Erdogan or Bolisanario, are openly contemptuous of the ethos of this institutional architecture. Most alarming of all for them has been the stunning successes of populist fueled nationalism in both the United States, with the election of President Donald Trump in 2016 and in the United Kingdom which in the same year became the first member state to exit the European Union in a referendum. They rightfully view with horror President Trump’s appalling handling of the current Covid-19 pandemic and, to a lesser extent, the UK’s confused handling of it and wonder if they presage a complete collapse of these two actors on the international stage. Indeed, one commentator wonders if the era of Donald Trump is a foreshadow of the Roman Empire style denouement for the United States. [1]

In the words of one forecaster of the eventual death of democracy, “identity politics is fuel to the fire of populist frustrations’ (Runciman, 2019). There has certainly been no shortage of combustible material for such bonfires in the first two decades of the 21st century: the global financial crash of 2008 which exacerbated to an almost exponential degree the stark economic equalities generated by globalisation; the cumulative alienation of populations from their representative institutions including the European Union; clash of cultures engendered by mass migrations and the “War on Terror” and the dizzying speed of digital communications revolutions which has made so many local conflicts global and has given airtime not just to emancipatory movements in areas like the Middle East but to murderous jihadi narratives of white nationalists as well as Islamist fanatics and to all sorts of cranks, conspiracy theorists and disinformation specialists who have found ready constituencies amongst the legions of anti-expert; anti-elite cynics. But, arguably, the triumph of populism in the Anglo-American world would not have occurred but for the political entrepreneurialism of Alt-Right guru Steve Bannon who, after spotting the potential for such in the gaming industry, successfully weaponised the rage of young white Americans seething in the underbelly of the internet for his culture war for Donald Trump and for the brazen technological genius of Cambridge Analytica who illegally harvested personal data from Facebook under the less-than-watchful eye of Mark Zuckerberg in the service of both Trump and the Leave campaigns in the EU referendum in the UK.

But it is also arguable that, in a perverse version of the ‘return of the repressed’, that 2016’s double calamity for liberalism and globalism, represented the ultimate triumph for the supposedly defeated side in the US culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s and, to somewhat lesser extent, Britain’s economic and cultural left-behinds (the “left” carries a potent double meaning in the context of the extent of the Brexit vote in what later became former Labour electoral heartlands). If this is to be the case then some inquiry is needed into the role of postmodern narratives in academe and the prevalence of subjectivity in popular culture as exemplified by the classic feminist mantra ‘the personal is political’ and symbolised by the confessional and self-help literature of Tom Wolfe’s emancipatory Me Decade or Christopher Lasch’s decadent Culture of Narcissism (depending on your viewpoint obviously).

Populism is a notoriously slippery concept. There is much dispute within political theory as to whether it is a political style which can be harmlessly deployed at certain junctures by political parties within the boundaries of liberal democratic norms, or whether it is a form of anti-politics which marks a decisive rupture with those norms and thus constitutes an existential threat to liberal democratic foundations and structures (Bolton and Pitts, 2018). However, there are a number of key and distinctive characteristics of populism. 

The basic idea behind populism, whether from the right or left, is that democracy has been stolen from the people by the elites. In order to reclaim it, the elites have to flushed out from their hiding places, where they obscure what they are up to by paying lip-service to democracy. Such logic can often lead to conspiracy theories (Runciman: p.65)

In their analysis of the ‘left-populism’ of ‘Corbynism’, the diffuse ideology attributed to followers of the erstwhile leader of the British Labour Party, Bolton and Pitts utilise the theory of the left-populist Chantal Mouffe[2]. For Mouffe, the central determinant of a populist project is the creation of a stark divide between ‘them’ and ‘us’. She argues that a successful populist political movement must bring together different social groups under the banner of a collective identity, a ‘we’ which in defining itself as such produces a ‘political frontier’ against the collective enemy, those who are not included within that ‘we’. (Bolton & Pitts, p.10).

In addition to this binary divide, Jan-Werner Muller states that the ‘logic of populism’ leads to ‘a particular moralistic imagination of politics’. In this vision ‘a morally pure and fully unified people’ are counterposed to ‘elites who are deemed corrupt or in some other way’ morally defective.[3] For Bolton & Pitts the supreme benchmark though which the moral are distinguished from the immoral is that of productiveness. Populist rhetoric, whether of Corbynite or Trumpian staple or the ‘austerity populism’ of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government of 2010-15 (and its earlier 1980s vintage of the Thatcherite populist folk-devil of the ‘scrounger’ and the Reaganite counterpart of the ‘welfare queen’) routinely pits a ‘pure, innocent, always [4]hardworking people … against a corrupt elite who do not really work’. From this moralistic, productivist perspective (with its loud echoes of the Protestant work ethic)) – are regarded as undermining the internal solidity of the ‘we’. Corbyn’s (and Trump’s) routine denunciation of a ‘rigged system’ deliberately set up by ‘elites’ in order to hold back the ordinary ‘wealth creators dovetail perfectly with this construct. Indeed, Corbyn’s successful invocation of the unsullied ‘we’ against the nefarious ‘them’ was key to Labour ‘s unexpected successes in the 2017 General Election (Bolton & Pitts, pp.10-11) [as it was to an extent in Trump’s 2016 US Presidential election triumph].

The ‘austerity populism’ narrative was framed during the Coalition years on an opposition between a national community of ‘hard-working people’ and a feckless, Vicky Pollard, Shameless, Benefits Street type of underclass who had brought Britain to its knees – namely the ‘scroungers’, the benefit cheats, the workshy who chose to live off the munificence of the state. In the telling of this the 2008 financial crash was the outcome of the Labour government prolificacy in running up a huge national debt in order to subsidise the lifestyles of its indolent clientele. In contrast to this rotten threesome of a bloated state, corrupt liberal elite and workshy spongers, the Tories would take the side of the morally superior, economically active (the ‘hardworking families’, the inhabitants of ‘alarm-clock Britain’) to the parasitic, unproductive classes. 

 In this classic productivist fairy tale, George Osborne, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, was to ask in his speech to the 2012 Conservative Party conference:

Where is the fairness for the shift-worker, leaving home in the dark hours of early morning, who looks up at the closed blinds of their next-door neighbour sleeping off a life on benefits… When we say we’re all in it together, we speak for that worker.

In this parable, austerity was deemed to be economically necessary and morally right with the savage benefit cuts and sanctions that were to be imposed on the poor through workfare (the inconvenient truth that the majority of the poor were in-work was never allowed to get in the way of the telling of the austerity gospel) and the shrinking of the state through public expenditure cuts proper prices to pay for the rebirth of society around the righteous desires of the productive (Bolton & Pitts: pp.33-36).

And tragically for the liberal-left, this productivist, populist narrative of austerity had sufficient cut-through to ensure the return of an absolute majority Conservative government in the 2015 General Election. Having shape shifted into a populist English nationalist party that was pledged to ‘get Brexit done’ and to put austerity behind it (the amoebic qualities of the Conservative Party have few counterparts anywhere in the liberal democratic world), the Tories were returned with an even more shattering majority in the 2019 General Election, perhaps the penny has dropped on the left that the left does not do populism very well nor should it try. 

The basic credo of populism whereby the elite or the deep state has stolen democracy from the masses and that therefore, the swamp has to be drained of the ubiquitous elites and their administrative flunkeys creates the logic of the conspiracy theory. Writ through Donald Trump’s inaugural speech as President of the USA on 20th January 2017 were classic conspiratorial tropes and ominous signs of the possible consequences of the politics of the bully pulpit being unleashed from on high on the polity at large. His speech was replete with apocalyptic vistas such as ‘the rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation … the crime and gangs and drugs’. In the manner of a revolutionary figure from history, he reminded his audience that ‘we all bleed the same red blood of patriots while repeating constantly the notorious isolationist mantra from the 1930s- “America First”. Trump lacerated professional politicians for their betrayal of the trust of the American people thus: 

He fulminated that ‘for too long, a small group of in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have born the cost … ‘Washington flourished – but the people did not share its wealth’ … Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories closed.” He declared that his election marked the transfer of power not just from president to president or from party to party but from Washington, DC back to the people (Runciman: pp.11-12).

Runciman optimistically assures us that none of the words put in Trump’s mouth by his speechwriters, Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, were explicitly hostile to democracy or to the fundamental premise of representative democracy, which is that at the allotted time the people get to say when they have had enough of the politicians who have been making decisions for them. He asks us to take comfort in the acceptance of the result of the 2016 US presidential election by the defeated candidate and popular vote winner, Hillary Clinton, and outgoing President Barack Obama and by America’s top military brass who were now content with Trump’s possession of the nuclear codes. But he does not ignore the most troubling counter-factual: Would a defeated Trump have accepted the election result and, concomitantly, will a defeated White House incumbent accept the result of the 2020 result. The clue lies in Trump’s repeated declaration throughout the 2016 campaign that he would only accept the result if he was the victor. Will American democracy again, in Runciman’s words, “dodge a bullet” in January 2021? (Runciman: pp.13-19).

Despite these reassuring words concerning the state of American democracy, Trump’s rhetoric in his inauguration speech aligns him with populist leaders elsewhere who frame politics in similar terms. In Turkey, President Erdogan's default explanation for political opposition to his rule that his enemies are conspiring against the Turkish people. The conspirators include not just the dissident cleric Abdullah Galen and his followers, but the EU, the IMF and the ‘interest rate lobby’, code for Jews. In Poland, the Law and Justice Party (PiS) government repeatedly blames the “system” for the problems that confronts it. The system is made up of unelected officials and institutions that have been infiltrated by foreign agents and, in the words of the PiS founder and co-leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, democracy needs ‘to be able to make decisions ... ‘instead of a handful of people bought by foreigners and internal forces that don’t serve Poland’s interests. In India, Narendra Modi uses Twitter like Trump to rant against those supposedly plotting his downfall, from foreign powers to the Indian ‘deep state’. Modi’s opponents circulate even more outlandish conspiracy theories about him; his election victories were secured by ballot-rigging; he is a Pakistani secret agent; he is a Jew (Runciman: pp.65-66).

Populist leaders seek to use the legitimacy conferred by democratic elections to consolidate power. They claim direct charismatic connection to “the people” who are often defined in narrow ethnic “in-group” terms that excludes large parts of the population as “out-groups”. They don’t like institutions and seek to undermine the checks and balances that limit a leader’s personal power in a modern liberal democracy: courts, the legislature, an independent media, and a nonpartisan bureaucracy. The bloody extra-judicial war waged on drug dealers by President Rodrigo Duterte (“Harry”) of the Philippines is, in terms of human cost, the most egregious violation of liberal democratic norms and practices (Fukuyama, 2019). Less violent but no less consequential has been Victor Orban’s power grab in Hungary during the Covid-19 pandemic and Donald Trump’s multiple acts of aggression towards judicial and bureaucratic authorities and the “mainstream media” relating, not just to the alleged acts of collusion with foreign powers that led to his unsuccessful impeachment, but on so many other matters of public policy.

The greatest driver of modern-day populism has been the increasing salience and projection of identity. The terms identity and identity politics are of fairly recent provenance, the former having been popularised by the psychologist Erik Erikson in the 1950s and the latter coming into prominence only in the cultural politics of the 1980s and 1990s. In his revision (but no mea culpa) of his End of History forecast, Francis Fukuyama formulates identity and identity formation as a process that develops, for starters, out of a distinction between one’s true inner self and an outer world of social rules that does not adequately recognise that inner self’s worth or dignity. Although throughout history individuals have always found themselves in conflict with their societies, it has only been in the modern era that the view that the authentic inner self is of intrinsic worth and that the outer society is systematically unfair and unjust in its valuation of the former. Accordingly, it is not the inner self that has to be fashioned to conform to society’s rules, but that society itself that needs to changed (Fukuyama: pp.9-10).

The modern concept of identity fuses three different phenomena. The first is thymos, a universal aspect of human personality that demands recognition. The second is the distinction between the inner and the outer self, and the raising of the moral valuation of the inner self over outer society. This emerged only in early modern Europe. The third is an evolving concept of dignity, in which recognition is conferred not just to a narrow class of people (for example, the aristocratic warrior classes of Ancient Greece and other antiquitarian societies), but to everyone. The broadening and universalisation of dignity has turned the private quest for self into a political project. The most explicit endorsement of this quest in early modern political thought was made by the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, Hegel conceived of human beings as morally free agents who are not simply rational machines pursuing the maximum satisfaction of their desires. But unlike Rousseau or Kant, Hegel put recognition of that moral agency at the centre of his description of the human condition. In The Phenomenology of Spirit, he argued that human history was driven by a struggle for recognition; recognition was achieved by the acquisition of dignity through labour or some other capacity to transform the world into a place suitable for human life and flourishing (Fukuyama: pp.37-40).

Living as he did in the aftermath of the French Revolution and as a witness, as a young man, to Napoleon’s triumph at the battle of Jena in 1806 which for him represented the triumph of the Revolution’s principles and the universalisation of recognition (notwithstanding its imposition by a conquering general on horseback). Hegel thus illuminated an intrinsic truth about modern politics, that the great passions generated by moments such as the French Revolution were fundamentally about struggles over dignity. The self-determining status of the inner self would be embodied in rights and law in the two centuries after the French Revolution and the democratic upsurge of the modern era was driven by peoples demanding recognition of their political personhood, that they were moral agents capable of sharing in political power (Fukuyama: pp.40-41). 

This dynamic has been particularly true of the new social movements that have emerged and developed since the late 1960s over racial equality – the Civil Rights movement and the contemporary Black Lives Matter in the US; the women’s movement agenda - abortion rights; outlawing of rape within marriage, equal pay and universal childcare; the gay and transgender agenda – legalisation of homosexuality, proper treatment of HIV; education about gay and lesbian rights and relationships in schools and civil partnership and marriage equality and disability rights movements. These and phenomena like the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, the ‘colour’ democratic revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia in the 2000s; the successful revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the unsuccessful student Tiananmen Square protests in China the same year were all powered by the cries for the recognition of one’s inherent human dignity and agency through democratic empowerment and citizenship. On university campuses in the UK and US students and academics of colour as well as female scholars and students have sought to highlight their demands for dignity and agency by successful lobbying for the opening of the canon to women’s and black scholarship.

More problematically. religion and ethnicity have also been potent signifiers of dignity driven identity politics as the rise of global Islamism and the resurgence of nationalism today and the rise of Nazism in the 1930s shows. How a nativist nationalist narrative drawing upon the language of dignity and exclusion was successfully weaponised in the Trump and Brexit campaigns in 2016 will be the subject of Part II of this article.


Bibliography:

Matt Bolton & Frederick Harry Pitts (2018) Corbynism. A Critical Approach. (SocietyNow.) Bingley, West Yorkshire: Emerald Publishing

Francis Fukuyama (2019) Identity. Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition. London: Profile Books

David Runciman (2019) How Democracy Ends. London: Profile Books.

[1] Fintan O’Toole ‘Donald Trump has destroyed the country he promised to make great again’ Irish Times 25th April 2020.

[2] Chantal Mouffe, ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s Left Populism,’ Verso, 16 April 2018.

[3] Jan-Werner Muller, What is Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) p.19

[4] The Latest Pejorative of the Elite


⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter seeking the Promised Land of the Premiership!

To Be Or Not To Be. Trump, Brexit And Contemporary Populism ➤ The Spawn Of Identity Politics? Part I

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