Story of the Week
Rather story of the week to come. From an Irish political perspective, everything this week has been a prelude for what’s to come on Tuesday, Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s visit to the White House for the annual Shamrock Ceremony.
His host, Donald Trump, has kept up the frenetic volley of chaos and threats into the second month of his presidency. The defenestration of Volodymyr Zelenskiy, tariffs against Mexico and Canada, a threat to the entire population of Gaza that they will be “dead” unless all the hostages are handed over. It may be the Steve Bannon ‘flood the zone’ strategy – say lots of extreme things and then pull back a little and seem reasonable. But there’s an element too in it of the boy who cried wolf. There will be a point when people tire of it.
The Taoiseach was not short of helpful advice this week on how to prepare for the critical visit. Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald was one. Sinn Féin itself is not going in protest at, among other things, Trump’s scarifying position on Gaza. But it stopped short – a clever political strategy – of telling Martin he should not go. Ms McDonald suggested what he should say in relation to Gaza in particularly. There will be pressure on Martin to speak publicly on Gaza and Ukraine when in Washington DC. That he will do but while the criticism will hardly be muted, it will certainly not be taking inspiration from the reportedly salty language used in a telephone call between Trump and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau earlier this week.
The other potential sticky wicket is the trade imbalance. Irish officials are really conscious about this as tariffs on Irish goods being exported to the US would present a serious challenge to our economy. The counterargument is that services (which form the other part of that relationship) swing very much in favour of the US, and actually outweigh the Irish trade surplus. That might be too subtle an argument to make.
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The other straw in the wind is the mood music going into the weekend has been good. Trump announced March as Irish-American Heritage Month and said of Irish-Americans. “They are great people ... and they voted for me in heavy numbers so I like them even more.”
Let’s hope that lasts until Tuesday.
Bust up
What was it that George Bernard Shaw said about American on the one hand and Ireland an Britain on the other: “We are two countries separated by a common language.”
There was a bit of that this week when the two readouts were made available on a 20-minute phone conversation between Tánaiste Simon Harris and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The Irish readout seemed to indicate all went exceedingly well. But then when the State Department in the US released its readout 24 hours later, there was a reference to the Americans making a priority of the trade imbalance issue. There was no reference to this in the Irish readout.
But it did not end there. Simon Harris came back again and insisted there had been no reference to ‘trade imbalance’ in the conversation. Usually the readouts are pre-agreed by both sides before being released. Obviously this did not happen here. They are not transcripts so there is a possibility that a US official used the phrase as a shorthand to describe the gist of the conversation. But the fact that that particular phrase was used alerted us all to the fact that Ireland’s large trade surplus with the US is on that administration’s radar.
Not really a bust-up yet. Unless the Americans come back to claim the phrase was indeed use.
That’s all very well but does any of this affect me?
The other big development this week was the decision by the Government to end the triple-lock after almost half a century. In future, Irish military deployment overseas will no longer require United Nations Security Council or General Assembly sanction.
The Opposition, in general, were strongly oppose to the change portraying it as a further erosion of neutrality and another step towards some form of military alliance.
How will it affect the State? Could we have peacekeepers in Kyiv? Will a debate now begin on a post-Nato European defence strategy? Will Irish politicians begin to argue that we can no longer stand apart from that? All of these are possibilities in the medium-term. Don’t forget, the first Nice, and first Lisbon, treaties were defeated partly because of fears that Irish citizens would have to join a European Army. That will still be the basis of any popular debate in the future.
Banana skin
Only one. March 12th. Oval Office. White House. As hard to predict as tomorrow’s rugby international between Ireland and France.
Winners and losers
Kevin ‘Boxer’ Moran wins both awards because the jury is still out on it. In the teeth of a sustained attack on Government spending by Independent Ireland (II), Moran did the unthinkable and defended what many consider to be the indefensible.
He first of all defended the infamous bike shelter. He berated the Opposition for calling it a bike shelter and said it was built at the site of a listed building that “is cherished by people all over the world.”
He went on to defend some other projects including the wall at the Hill of Tara, which has been ongoing for 12 years. The point was the Hill of Tara had never closed, he said.
Michael Collins of II told him “you should be ashamed of yourself”.
Hard to know whether Boxer was brave or foolhardy.
The Big Read
Pat Leahy has a big preview on Micheál Martin’s crucial visit to the US and to the Trump White House.
Jack Horgan-Jones has been doing a deep dive for news on the extent of Government awareness in the run-up to the election of estimated housing figures for the hear.
Hear here
Did Brexit make a Border poll inevitable? That’s the question Hugh Linehan asks on inside Inside Politics where he is joined by Alan Gilsenan and John Walsh, makers of documentary The Irish Question.
