Founded in 1924 , the Party was a split from Cumann na nGaedheal caused by the treatment of Army Officers in the 1924 Army Mutiny. This episode covers the Party as well as the Army Mutiny. The Group were also known as The National League and National Party
Downing Street rebuffed talk of a split between No 10 and No 11 over how to deal with the market reaction to the mini-budget, and denied that there was a row.
However, Whitehall sources said there was talk within the civil service of an argument between the prime minister and chancellor at the meeting on Monday morning.
Sky News said Truss had been resisting Kwarteng’s suggestion that a Treasury statement was needed to calm the markets.
On the one hand the anti-Tory in me goes, excellent. Keep this up PM. Go your own way. Damn the torpedoes. And so on. On the other hand all this means so much misery on the ground that another part of me looks on appalled. Yet another part of me wonders at the political fantasy that this represents. How did seemingly adult people arrive at this situation where sterling has tanked in the first couple of weeks of their leadership.
As to the ROI Budget. There was none of the drama of the UK one. Much to be said for living with a pan-national currency, not that this one was every likely to trigger economic weather of that sort. The best comment I heard on that was from a friend who noted that there was nothing in it to address systemic issues. It’s not that it’s an awful budget – there are some good points – but it is a budget that deals with symptoms, not causes. In some instances that’s understandable. To address the roots of energy cost inflation will take years, and in some aspects is entirely outside the control of the state in the short to medium term (though as was put to me, why not take energy supply into state hands?). But in other instances – as with the unwillingness to address housing using the weight of the state, one has to wonder. Do they truly appreciate what is coming down the track politically? That light up ahead isn’t the end of the tunnel. It is vastly more likely to be the SF express. And that party won’t make this mistake. But then perhaps it truly is a case that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are simply ideologically unable to address housing in a way that would provide clear tangible evidence that they had moved beyond market driven approaches.
The problem is that if this Budget seeks to ameliorate these issues and the public perception of them it is only half done. More, much more, is required. And if they won’t do it, well others will, sooner or later.
Any thoughts on the best and worst aspects of the Budget?
Some of the media is in trouble over statements as to numbers at the march on Saturday, and proper order too if such statements can’t be supported. But here’s another example of a not dissimilar dynamic. For during last week RTÉ reported this:
Ceann Comhairle Seán Ó Fearghaíl has “rejected outright” a statement made in the Dáil yesterday “that the Chair was not providing protection to the Government from opposition heckling and interruptions”.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin had yesterday said that there were frequent heckles and interruptions when he was speaking in the chamber, adding that those who were interrupting were not being “pulled up”.
Which sent the Ceann Comhairle and the Clerk of the Dáil off to review Leaders’ Questions and the Order of Business.
And, surprise, surprise, this is what they found:
It revealed “a typical session with interruptions and heckling from many sides,” he said.
“What I also saw was the now normal habit of some leaders ignoring the chair, its requests and its remonstrations,” he added.
“So, reverting to the chair only when the temperature rises in the chamber, in light of the foregoing, is in my view understandably futile and unfair,” he said.
Isn’t it notable the rather unlovely phenomenon of the government’s largest formations bemoaning the supposed heckling and interruptions, and indeed criticism from the opposition (much of this directed against a particular opposition party). An interest in political activity has unfortunately had me watching Oireachtas debates across the last twenty odd years. I can’t say I’ve seen any great difference between the present situation and that, of say, the interactions between Labour and the then FF-PD governments, or indeed the GP during the same period. Oppositions oppose, governments defend. Sometimes it gets heated, sometimes not. What I have seen, and factoring in that SF is, like all opposition parties far from angels in the crucible of parliamentary exchanges, very heated attitude to SF from some in FF, almost a willingness and overwillingness to take or find offence. One can certainly suggest that that attitude hasn’t been of much use to FF in that time if polls are to be believed. It doesn’t seem like a stretch to argue that many of the complaints being made are a function of that.
Northern Ireland unionists have expressed alarm after the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Kyle, said he would be prepared to call a referendum on Irish unity if certain conditions were met.
“If the circumstances emerge as set out in the Good Friday agreement, I as secretary of state, would not play games. I would call the border poll,” he said. “I am saying I am not going to be a barrier if the circumstances emerge.”
As the Guardian notes:
Under the 1998 agreement, a secretary of state must call a referendum if it appears likely a majority of those voting would want the region to leave the UK – but the agreement does not specify the criteria, a vagueness that the UK government and unionists have been keen to maintain.
And note that:
The Irish government, Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP) have pushed for clarity on the criteria, which would lay out the steps needed for a vote that could abolish the state of Northern Ireland and unify the island.
Kyle’s position was in a sense both a restatement of the status quo and a statement of the obvious:
Kyle said Sinn Féin’s emergence as the biggest party in Northern Ireland and last week’s census results, which showed Catholics outnumbering Protestants, did not suffice. “We’re not even in that circumstance yet, so when we move towards the point where those circumstances set out in the Good Friday agreement start to emerge and it becomes a priority for the people of Northern Ireland, I will act,” he said.
As indeed he should.
But consider the response from parts of unionism.
On Monday the Ulster Unionist party (UUP) leader, Doug Beattie, criticised the comments as an “unhelpful and ill-timed” distraction from the cost of living crisis and other problems facing Northern Ireland.
The pro-union Belfast News Letter newspaper said the Labour politician had muddied the waters on a border poll and that it was essential any UK government kept wide discretion. It said: “It is unfortunate that Mr Kyle has chosen this time to give succour to those who want to shatter the UK.”
Beattie’s contribution is curious. There is currently and has been since Brexit considerable interest in this topic. Was the shadow Secretary not to speak on this? Is that somehow forbidden? Would his stature or credibility be enhanced by refusing to do so? That makes not a whit of sense.
As to the News Letter. Well, it is entirely reasonable given the GFA/BA for unification of the island as a political entity to be pursued as determinedly within constitutional politics, as is the case for those who seek to maintain the union. So it’s dispiriting to see a media outlet pretend that it is otherwise or that those trying to clarify aspects of the GFA/BA dispensation are somehow unreasonable in attempting to do so.
Indeed a bit of clarity around all these issues would be of considerable benefit.
Liz Truss’s spokesman has declined to comment on today’s market moves, following the hammering given to UK government bonds this morning, and the pound’s slide to a record low overnight.
The spokesman said (via Reuters):
“The chancellor has made clear that he doesn’t comment on the movements around the market and that goes the same for the prime minister.”
The spokesman added there are no plans to make any changes to the measures set out in the so-called ‘mini-budget’ by chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng on Friday.
That may disappoint investors who were alarmed by the scale of the tax cuts in the mini-budget, and the surge in borrowing needed to pay for them (as Mohamed El-Erian explained this morning).
Depressing to read this in the SBP at the weekend.
Cathal Friel, the executive chair and co-founder of Open Orphan and Poolbeg Pharma, said the government should not “overreact” this winter when Covid-19 cases begin to peak once more.
He’s decided that:
“The Covid-19 pandemic is over. The government should disband its Covid-19 test centres, while there’s no need for people to be wasting their time with lateral flow antigen tests either. We just need to treat Covid-19 like the common cold or flu and just move on,” Friel told the Business Post.
“There’s no doubt there’s going to be a big spike in Covid-19 cases in November and December this year. But that’s because the virus will behave like the common cold or influenza, which both peak at set times each year.
And:
“The Covid-19 virus is now going to peak every winter, which means everybody, including governments and businesses, needs to deal with it as they do with the common cold and flu outbreaks.
“This idea that people should sit at home from work for a full week after contracting the virus is nonsense. People should take a day or two to recover as if they had the flu and get back to normal after that.”
As the SBP notes:
Friel’s comments run counter to the HSE’s current official advice, which says people who develop Covid-19 symptoms or get a positive antigen test result should self-isolate for seven days. If people have symptoms after this period, other than a mild cough or a change to their sense of smell, they should continue to self-isolate until they have had no symptoms for 48 hours.
But that’s not correct about the how to treat flu either. The advice around dealing with flu is long-established and predates the Covid-19 pandemic. As the HSE notes:
Flu can be severe and may cause serious illness and death. Those most at risk are the very young and elderly.
But if you are generally fit and healthy, you can manage your symptoms at home. You can usually treat the flu without seeing your GP and should begin to feel better in about a week…
You can start your normal activities again when you feel well enough.
In other words flu would likely leave you unwell enough that you would be unable to resume normal activities for, well, a full week, after the symptoms manifest.
There’s a further couple of points – a cold outbreak is not the same as flu, and flu is not the same as Covid-19. They are very different viruses and with different effects – the latter significantly more severe than the former. At best we could say that Covid-19 is as lethal as a bad flu season but Covid appears to be prevalent across the year in a way that flu isn’t. And Covid-19 is more severe that the flu, even with vaccines. He also appears blithely unaware that Covid-19 is going to see numbers affected in addition to those with flu. So the health service is going to likely be stretched further than it already is during bad flu seasons.
He argues that the pandemic is over, that ‘even Joe Biden has said so’. That is far from a settled opinion. And while we have been fortunate that currently variants of concern are not a factor that does not mean they could not manifest further down the line. Keep in mind Andrew Flood’s thoughts on this matter about costs – and some indications of cases rising again.
All 3 waves passed without additional health measures being needed (except reclosing night clubs in wave 1). But the cost was significant in terms of hospitalisations & around 2,000 deaths notified this year. Also means a big additional impact on other healthcare /4
Particularly depressing to see this in the SBP piece:
Friel, along with Professor Luke O’Neill, an immunologist at Trinity College and a non-executive director in Poolbeg Pharma, will host a number of events around the country this week in Cork, Limerick, Galway, Belfast and Dublin to outline what they believe will happen this winter regarding Covid-19 and influenza cases.
I’d love to think everything was done and dusted, that there was no continuing threat from Covid-19 and we could all pack up the tents. And there’s absolutely no harm in people – as best as they are able – enjoying the lack of restrictions (while bearing in mind that not everyone has that luxury). But assuming all will be well seems panglossian.
International confidence in the UK has been badly hammered by the mini-budget, and the Truss government’s tax-cutting policies, and the pound is paying the price.
Sterling had plunged to a record low against the US dollar in Asia-Pacific trading, extending the losses suffered on Friday, and moving closer to parity.
The pound plunged nearly 5% at one point to around $1.0327, Reuters data shows, a record low since at least decimalisation in 1971, as belief in the UK’s economic management and assets evaporated.
And now there’s talk that the Bank of England needs to step in with higher interest rates. Of course in a beleaguered economic climate like the current one that’s not going to be easy for people either. As an LP MP noted as it stands the weak pound ‘drives up imports such as fuel’. The immiseration of many continues apace.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 