Political World
What are the chances of Berlin happening here?
World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com
Berlin has come to symbolise many things over the centuries – many good and, sadly, many bad; all of the fault-lines of 20th century history seemed to pass through Germany’s capital city.
From the First World War to the perniciousness of Nazism to the physical manifestation of the great schism between capitalist Western Europe and communist Eastern Europe – it was the original version of Donald Trump’s great big wall except it was real and not just a post-truth marketing tool.
After that wall was dismantled in 1989, a united Berlin slowly became a great city, a symbol of unity, and tolerance and new possibility. It has long been Germany’s most interesting city, young, tolerant alternative and imaginative, a beacon for artists and writers.
On Monday night, over a quarter of a century after that historic moment, a truck ploughed into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin.
It was a deliberate act of terror, designed to foment another breach, this one between the secular west and radical fundamental Islam, with its sinister sociopathic culture.
The attack was very similar to the one in Nice earlier this year. Like Nice, a civilian vehicle became a weapon that was ploughed into defenceless people.
It was indiscriminate and random – the target was everybody, anybody it was western society and the tolerance that these fanatics find intolerable.
We are used to terror on a similar scale here (and in Britain) where dozens have died in bomb attacks. You can’t begin to start comparing them or put them onto a scale of atrocity – all are appalling, all involve senseless death.
Is what happened worse than Birmingham or worse than Birmingham in 1974 or worse than Omagh in 1998 or worse than the Dublin-Monaghan bombings? Such attacks strike fear and invite hardline reaction. They are actuated by hate and invite a hateful response.
There are connections here. Not direct ones. But connections all the same. The terrible horror wreaked on Aleppo – Syria’s second city reduced to rubble, tens of thousands killed.
The waves of desperate evacuees seeking refugee status and finding only indifference or hostility. The other conflicts fuelled by fanaticism in the middle east, that spread like a cancer.
It’s galling to think that Germany was the lone European voice of reason – that its chancellor Angela Merkel was the only one who didn’t pull up the drawbridge.
She too was just about the only European leader who didn’t grovel or back-peddle when the US elected Donald Trump as its leader.
Let us hoped that the horror in Berlin last night won’t blunt the tolerance. You can see why this city was chosen as a target. It stands for everything that Al Qaeda, ISIS or Daish hate.
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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