Ireland

We all have our roles.  In the world order which we inhabit, Ireland has one chief international responsibility: each St Patrick’s Day, its Taoiseach (prime minister) sets off to the Oval Office bearing a bowl of shamrocks. Ireland’s current Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, has been in the job since March 2011.  In Ireland’s last elections, last February, he fell 29 seats short of an overall majority.  From then, he started to face calls to resign.  In February 2017, a scandal broke involving a whistleblower in the Gardaí, Ireland’s police.  Kenny survived a confidence vote in February, but barely.  Later that month, he addressed his parliamentary party, saying he would make the

When Martin McGuinness said he was retiring from politics due to serious illness it gave vent, almost immediately, to the sort of ‘How McGuinness became a man of peace’ stories. Personally I have always thought the salient point about the man is not that he became a man of peace but that he was ever a man of violence. Over recent years a narrative has developed around the Troubles, that the people who ‘became men of peace’ are much to be admired. This narrative overlooks the fact that the real people to be admired are those from all sides who – despite sharing many or all of the same grievances as the ‘men

Irish eyes aren’t smiling – when it comes to Brexit. As one who hails from the Emerald Isle, I’ve taken plenty of ‘schtick’ from Irish diplomats, relatives and pundits after publicly voting to leave. For the Republic of Ireland, European Union membership carries deep political significance. Joining in 1973, along with the UK but on equal terms, was hugely symbolic. A country then less than 30 years old was finally able to represent itself on the world stage. It is this escape from British dominance, more than Brussels-funded motorways, that makes EU membership central to modern Ireland’s identity.  Liam Halligan and James Forsyth discuss Theresa May’s Brexit plans: That’s why

It’s strange that, even now, the Brexit vote is routinely referred to as an expression of anger or frustration — as if the most easily baffled half of the population had voted in response to forces they could not understand. In fact, the result of the 23 June referendum seems to look wiser with every week that has passed. Of course, leaving has its risks. But 52 per cent of voters judged that a greater one lay in staying in a European Union that is changing all the time — and invariably for the worse. The British vision of the world — of free trade, friendly competition and respect for

So the European Commission has today released its much-delayed iTax. This time, it’s not an Apple innovation but a ruling ordering Ireland to claw back €13bn in back tax from Apple – a record penalty and one that the company and Ireland have both vowed to appeal. The Commission announced its decision in a typically terse ruling, in which they chuck rotten fruit at Ireland’s low corporate-tax environment. But whilst every one is talking about tax, this fracas between the EC and Ireland over Apple’s bill—what we here locally might call a ballyhoo—actually has less to do with one of the two inevitabilities of life, and much to do with the Commission’s Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager. Vestager could barely

June the 24th was a grim morning for Remain voters, and we’ve been working through the seven stages of grief ever since. Given that nobody has the faintest idea when, how or even if the UK will actually leave, acceptance is still some way off. But Remainers are a pragmatic bunch and many have now worked out that their own personal Brexit can be deftly avoided by taking another EU nationality. Likewise, UK citizens living in the EU, who have found to their horror that they are pawns in a very complex game of migrant chess between Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker, are concluding that now is a wise moment

It sounds logical that Vote Leave should now disband, since the people have obligingly voted Leave, but is it wise? Who else can try to ensure that the Leave cause is not forgotten in internal Tory struggles, or in a war between Ukip and the rest? If it is right — which I think it is — that the Leave vote is the biggest shock ever administered to the main parties and the ruling elites since the collapse of the Munich agreement, then it follows that those parties and those elites will try to reverse or at least neuter the decision. There needs to be an organised resistance to them,

From ‘Reconstruction’, The Spectator, 5 May 1916: What Ireland wants just now is firm and judicious military government. The rebellion of last week has been put down, but undoubtedly the embers of the fire are still red-hot, and a very little might fan them into flame again. All students of Irish history know that rebellions in Ireland do not run the course that they run in other countries. The fact that they have become hopeless seems, indeed, sometimes to act as a stimulus to the race which specialises in lost cases. Unless, therefore, a very firm hand is kept in Ireland, and kept till the end of the war, there is a