Political World
Sold a pup by Shatter’s dismissal of the anomalies in the GSOC bugging saga
World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com
Unlike a loaf of bread from Griffin’s Bakery the weekly political column isn’t whisked out of the oven just before the Connacht goes to press every week. It’s more in the Delia Smith style of ‘here’s one I prepared earlier’.
Sometimes you are caught out by timing. Colm Keaveney’s decision to join Fianna Fáil was a case in point, coming just a little too late after this column was written to be commented upon.
Journalists hate when their newsdesks sit on exclusive stories they have or when editors delay in order to give them a good display. There is always the chance that one of their rivals will nip in first or the story will get overtaken by events.
Of course, that is all becoming a bit moot with the demands of online consumers for everything to be immediate. Tomorrow morning is an eternity away.
The demands of the deadline have demanded in the past that journalists have been forced to report on events that had not yet occurred as if they had already taken place – in the past tense. The reason? The event had not taken place by the time their deadline came but the publication hit the streets after the event was over. Usually in those situations, journalists have written ‘at the time of going to press’ to show it hadn’t yet happened when they wrote it but giving as last-minute an update as they could muster.
In extremis, journalists have taken the chance and reported on an event as if it had already taken place. I remember a long time ago writing for the Galway City Tribune that a funeral had taken place on the Friday morning (the morning we went to press). Later the photographer Joe O’Shaughnessy came in and said “haven’t you heard, that funeral was called off”.
Cue, shock and panic on my part. Joe was merely slagging, but also making a point.
The best known example in recent years is Toby Harmden of the Telegraph’s report on Saddam Hussein’s ‘execution’. The piece was straight enough and gave a very straightforward account of a very conventional execution. Problem was that he had written it up beforehand and the execution was anything but straightforward and conventional, with the event being videod as the executioners hurled coarse insults at the former Iraqi dictator.
That’s all a lead-up to saying that last week’s column was the victim of slightly unfortunate timing. It was written on Tuesday evening after Minister for Justice Alan Shatter had spoken in the Dáil but before one of the three Garda Ombudsman commissioners, Kieran Fitzgerald, had responded on RTÉ’s Prime Time.
When I heard Shatter give his account to the Dáil, my only reaction was ‘puff of smoke’ and “that story is over”. He quickly trotted though his account of the three breaches and described them all as if they were the most innocuous things in the world, completely explained away by innocent explanations.
But Fitzgerald gave an account on Prime Time that night that was the polar opposite of what Shatter had said. To listen to both accounts was almost like listening to outlines of two different events.
Anyway, my whole column last week was based on a wholesale acceptance of what Shatter had said in the Dáil (naive on my part, mea culpa, mea culpa). As it happened I was on Vincent Browne’s programme on TV3 that night and had a chance to go through everything that Fitzgerald had said. With a sinking feeling I guessed that I had been sold a pup.
And so that’s why I am begging your indulgence to retread that ground this week and look at all that was not said by Shatter, the omissions that made a material difference.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
Academically, politics is described as a science. But in the real world, it’s more of an art – and one of the big decisions a Government has to make is to decide when to call an election.
Will they see out the full term, or will they go early – either to mitigate the damage they will ship, or to secure a victory before things go awry, or the economy takes a dip, or some kind of controversy erupts?
Timing is everything.
And there’s a bit of art to that – not to mention a lot of luck. If you call it early and win big, you’re a genius. If you call it early and lose, you are the political version of the village fool.
Charlie Haughey was a poor judge of the public mood. Twice he called snap elections and on both occasions they backfired. Haughey succeeded Jack Lynch as Taoiseach in late 1979 and did not – technically – have his own mandate. He tried to remedy that by calling an election in 1981. But it recoiled. Ray MacSharry warned him not to hold it during the H Block hunger strikes when republican prisoners were dying each day. He did not listen to the advice and found himself out of office.
After his return to power in 1987, Haughey tired of presiding over a minority government that kept on losing votes in the Oireachtas (the opposition won nine private members motions).
So he called a snap general election and it backfired. Fianna Fáil lost seats and had to broker a coalition deal with the Progressive Democrats and his long-standing political adversary Dessie O’Malley.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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World of Politics with Harry McGee
I was cycling down Mount Street in Dublin on Tuesday. It’s a wide esplanade that links the Grand Canal with Merrion Square. The street is a mixture of fine Georgian buildings and modern office blocks.
About half-way down is the office of the International Protection Office, which deals with asylum seekers who have arrived in the country.
Needless to say, the office has been overwhelmed in the past year. Besides an estimated 80,000 refugees who have arrived from Ukraine, there have been about 20,000 people from other parts of the world who have arrived into Dublin (mostly) claiming asylum.
The numbers peaked around Christmas, but they have been falling a little. In January, more than 1,300 people arrived seeking asylum but the numbers fell back to 831 and 858, in February and March respectively.
They are still huge numbers in a historical context.
So back to my cycle on Tuesday. I knew that some asylum seekers were camping outside the International Protection Office, but I was taken aback by how many. There were six tents lined up on the pavement directly outside. Then on the ramp that led down to the basement carpark on the side of the building, there were about another 20 tents.
It looked like what it was, a refugee camp in the middle of Dublin’s business district. If you pan out from Mount Street, you will find tents here and there in nearby streets and alleys. There were a good few tents in an alleyway off Sandwith Street about 500 metres away.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
God that was a dramatic and historic weekend in England, wasn’t it? So much excitement, so much change, so much hype, so much out with the old and in with the new, and what looks like the coronation of a new leader. Yes, the local elections in Britain were something else weren’t they!
Apologies for not going on about King Charles III but the contract I signed when I became a lifelong republican forbids me to discuss the topic!
I know the British local elections sound a bit boring by comparison, but the results were stunning.
The Conservatives lost nearly 1,000 seats, the British Labour Party gained almost 500 and both the Lib Dems (with 350 gains) and the Greens (gaining over 200) also had amazing days at the polls.
It was Labour’s best day since 2002 but its victory was only partial. The Greens and the Lib Dems actually made gains at the expense of Labour in more affluent areas, and in parts of Britain where there were high numbers of graduates.
It was in the Red Wall constituencies in the North of England where the Labour recovery was strongest. These are working class constituencies with pockets of deprivation where people voted for the Labour Party forever. But all of those constituencies voted for Brexit and then voted for the Tories in the next general election. Labour is now winning back some of those votes.
Local elections are classified as second-tier elections which essentially means – from a national perspective – they are not life-or-death affairs, and not everything turns on them. Of course, it’s really important to have good local representation. But they are not an amazing weather vane for who rules the country.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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