New Government will take over at a time like no other

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harry.mcgee@gmail.com

Did we ever think that all those weeks and months spent writing about Brexit would somehow seem so trivial – and so soon? And of course Britain leaving the EU isn’t trivial at all – but it’s been dwarfed by the Coronavirus crisis.

In other lifetimes, global wars and other outbreaks – the Spanish flu in 1918 and 1919 – were the defining moments. But nothing in living memory – or hopefully future memory – compares with this.

I was in the back garden late in the evening over the weekend listening to birdsong. It was clearer and more distinct than I had ever heard it before.

Because there was no background noise. There were no jets criss-crossing the skies. There were no cars – none of the usual background thrum of the city.

All of that silence and desertion points to the other catastrophe that we potentially face – a global recession on a scale we’ve never seen; one that will make the wounds of a decade ago seem like a scratch.

Other than food and medicines, everything else has been shuttered. That means that millions of people in Ireland have lost their jobs or are working for companies that aren’t making any money.

Some have no money. For others – businesses and individuals – it is only a matter of time before the money runs out.

The response of governments to this has been two-fold. They have exhausted their reserves and borrowed money to prop up failing companies and give households enough money to survive.

And they have also introduced liquidity or quantitative easing (remember that?).

In other words, they have printed money. But that’s just a sleight-of-hand; just producing more money is not going to get the world out of the canyon-sized crater that has been caused.

There is debate between economists (usually liberal versus fiscal conservatives) about how long the recovery will take.

Some say that the recovery will be V-shaped, with the world bouncing back quickly. Others say it will be a less neat shape – a drawn-out zig-zag of recovery.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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