War without end and without goals

The conflict in the Middle East appears to have been started in part due to Israeli security considerations, if one is to believe Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. One that its chief proponent now suggests may be a ‘forever’ war despite campaigning against that specific approach. One that has triggered multiple impacts from the death of civilians to social and economic outcomes.

Vox offers this:

The United States went to war with Iran for reasons that remain unclear.

At various points, the president and his allies have argued that this was a war of preemptive self-defense, an effort to prevent Iran from rebuilding its nuclear program, and even an attempt at regime change. The justification seems to change based on who is speaking and who they are speaking to, making it difficult to divine what the president seeks to get out of all of this — or if he even has a coherent end goal in mind.

As noted by Fred Kaplan on Slate.com:

In his efforts to make his war on Iran seem thought through and sensible, President Donald Trump is only bolstering the case that it was spun from pipe dreams all along.

The most head-spinning confirmation came on Tuesday, when a reporter asked what would be the war’s worst-case scenario. “I guess,” Trump replied, “the worst case would be we do this and somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person—right? That could happen.”

That ‘could happen’? Thus speaks someone whose grasp on cause and effect and responsibility is weak to the point of non-existence.

There’s an excellent piece in the Guardian which outlines four possible outcomes. Two are least worse, two offer an appalling vista, as it were. But that this is discussed in terms of four outcomes, all widely varying in their nature, is a further indictment of this chaotic adventurism.

The possibility of civil war and a failing or failed state seems very high. But who knows, and it is that void, that sense that there is no actual end goal, that is most deeply disturbing.

Vox suggests, speaking to various experts in the field:

The clear consensus is that the best-case scenario offered by the Trump administration — that US bombs inspire Iranian people to rise up and topple the regime — is extremely unlikely. Nothing like that has happened in the history of air warfare, and Iran experts do not think this will be the exception to the rule.

And:

If this analysis is right, there are two broad categories: some kind of settlement, where the US stops short of its maximalist aims, or escalation.

Of the two, the former is generally seen as more likely. A settlement could follow something like the “Venezuela model,” where President Donald Trump receives some policy concessions in exchange for leaving the regime broadly intact, or the US simply declaring victory based on some lesser accomplishment (say, doing more damage to nuclear program sites).

‘Somebody takes over who is as bad as the previous person’. So what is the point of the current conflict, even on its own terms?

“No world leader has ever launched a military operation expecting a quagmire,” says Caitlin Talmadge, a political scientist who studies war at MIT. “What you’ve essentially heard our leaders saying is denying that these risks exist, and that they’re effectively in control of the tempo and outcomes — and that’s antithetical to everything we know about how war works.”

But then this isn’t quite like other wars. Consider the rhetoric from one source:

Pete Hegseth, the ex-Fox News host now leading the Pentagon as defence secretary, confirmed that the US sank the Iris Dena as it sailed close to the Sri Lankan coast. The Pentagon released black-and-white footage of a Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo striking the frigate, sending a geyser of seawater into the air.

“An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” Hegseth said. He said the attack was carried out late on Tuesday night.

“It was sunk by a torpedo, a quiet death – the first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II,” added Hegseth. “Like in that war, back when we were still the war department, we are fighting to win.”

Rhetoric, just rhetoric.

Given all else in this post, fighting to win what?

Polling issues with Ireland Thinks/Independent this last weekend

Found this worthy of attention.

If attitudes on international affairs reveal a public more sophisticated than the political debate allows for, attitudes on domestic issues reveal something simpler: sustained pessimism about the Government’s ability to deliver. Housing remains the top issue, and recent rent reforms have done little to shift mounting scepticism about the Government’s ability to tackle the crisis, with 84pc indicating they do not believe the Coalition will hit its housing targets. This includes 65pc of Fine Gael voters and 58pc of Fianna Fáil voters.

The figures were:

Housing 52%

Cost of Living 43%

Immigration 20%

Healthcare 13%

The economy 10%

Crime and Drugs 8%

Climate Change 7%

Government spending 7%

Poverty and inequality 7%

Defence 5%

Transport 5%

Trump’s administration 4%

Government corruption 4%

Rise of the far-right 4%

Disabilities 3%

Israel/Gaza war 3%

Childcare 1%

This is relevant to the figures “Those polled were asked to pick two options, so the above numbers add up to more than 100%; percentage given is the percentage of respondents that selected the option”

Is it surprising that neutrality isn’t in there, though it could be part of defence? Then again, the issue will likely gain salience as the government attempts to force through various measures. Immigration at 20% is relatively high, give. that it seems to have calmed – but then one might have issues pro and contra immigration so that’s not perhaps quite so surprising. Very unsurprising that housing and cost of living top the poll.

And that point made in the first quote about a pessimism that the government will do anything suggests that the public is becoming ever more aware of the hostility to action on the part of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. That’s not unimportant.

Smaller parties and coalition: Grown-up politics or a waste of political capital?

Reading this Irish Times piece and the belief among some members of the Green Party (who held their national convention this weekend and are much buoyed by the UK by-election win for the Greens there) that climate has slipped ‘down the political agenda’ the thought struck that there’s been a delusionary line peddled by some in the media and some in smaller parties. I’ve heard it myself from members of the GP and at times the Labour Party, that it’s only possible to make gains by entering government. Commentators like Leahy and Collins have often articulated this line too. And yes, there’s a truth to that to an extent. But there’s also a problem.

Ryan was being pilloried on social media and polling for The Irish Times showed climate was, at the time, a priority issue for just 3 per cent of people.

His party had its best-ever election in 2020, winning 12 Dáil seats. It drove a hard bargain for entering government.

The party insisted on a 50 per cent cut in emissions, binding climate legislation, a radical move away from single-car culture towards public and sustainable transport, and policies prioritising nature and biodiversity over development and pollution.

In the 2024 general election, the Greens suffered a hiding, losing 11 of their 12 seats. 

Ryan has often quoted Samuel Beckett’s line: “Fail, fail again, fail better.” 

While a heavy blow, it was not the wipeout of 2011 when the Green Party lost all six of its deputies.

The party retained an Oireachtas presence, a cohort of councillors and State funding. It hopes for a quicker recovery. But, for now, it is in the wilderness.

But.

So has the new Government abandoned the policies at the heart of the previous administration? 

From that vantage point, new leader Roderic O’Gorman and party colleagues claim – as they meet in Kilkenny this weekend for their annual conference – considerable slippage.

How could it be otherwise?

The Green Party is not in government. It has a TD and a Senator and a number of local councillors. It’s not been wiped out at national level but its influence is hardly much greater than were it wiped out, not leat because it has rivals on its broad political terrain in the shape of the Social Democrats and the Labour Party. Those parties are not invested in in climate crisis politics in quite the same way as the GP. So they’re not simple substitutes, even though they are quite effective in hoovering up parts of the GP vote.

The problem with the idea of government participation being the main legitimation line for a party like the GP, is that out of office gains that were achieved (and it would be churlish to argue that none was made) can be quite easily reversed and indeed are being reversed:

They all refer to recent comments by Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment Darragh O’Brien that the 2030 targets – 51 per cent reductions in emissions – will not be met as an example of a Government either not trying, or simply giving up.

Another recent example, O’Gorman argues, is the Government’s approach to the Climate Action Act. 

“Look at its efforts to bypass obligations by carving out exemptions,” he says.

Sure, not everything will be abandoned or jettisoned, but where are new measures or extended or enlarged ones going to come?

There’s this:

Diarmuid Torney, director of the DCU Institute for Climate and Society, observes the party has “a kind of a kamikaze element to its approach: willing to prioritise climate and go in and do as much as they can – and then bear the consequence”.

To answer the question of whether this is the correct approach, Torney quotes the aphorism of former Progressive Democrats leader Mary Harney: “Your worst day in government is better than your best day in opposition.”

Very good, that’s become quite the cliche in Irish political commentary, but when precisely will the GP re-enter government? 2029? That’s an age away. But it might be 2034 instead. Or 2039. There are plenty of other suitors and no sign that the GP is catching fire in any way at all. Indeed there’s no inevitability that the GP might return its current TD, let alone see new ones be elected. Where would that leave them as a political force in five or ten or fifteen years time?

All that before the damaged to the GP is factored in, the effective loss of its parliamentary cohort, the fact that its remaining TD is overshadowed by the larger battalions on the centre left.

That talk about government, ‘worst days in government’, the need for parties to be ‘serious’, to bend their approaches to Fianna Fáil, and Fine Gael, for that is what is being talked about here, is almost uniquely deceitful. The Progressive Democrats were a different sort of party, one that as was once noted on this site saw them pushing an open door with a well right of centre curious Fianna Fáil. Oddly, the fact that they themselves were unable to sustain themselves as a party in the late 2000s doesn’t seem to be included in the sunny talk of ‘making a difference’. Sure, their DNA was embedded in FF but how likely is it that GP DNA would ever be likewise embedded in that party?

Parties are going to engage in coalition, that’s a given whether we like it or not. But perhaps they might consider what is being gained and what is being lost when they do so and whether this stuff about ‘worst days in government’ is deeply self-serving on the part of some of those repeating it.

Same old Irish conservative story, again and again

The Irish Times politics podcast interviewed Maria Steen last week and on the next podcast offered a defence for doing so. I’ve no particular issue with her being interviewed (it was actually useful to get a sense of her politics, and more on that during the week) but, as is the way, she offered this narrative as described in the responses to the podcast on the next one.

“But I think where Mark [a listener who contacted the IT podcast] says that he was disappointed with the nature of the interview and the key themes. He talks about Maria Steen speaking about how Irish conservatives have no platform. And he pointed out that she was saying this from an Irish platform while saying it.
And that she had a column in the Sunday Times in the last couple of weeks as well. I mean, that’s fair enough, Mark. But I have to say, personally, I do take the point from Maria Steen that these views are underrepresented in terms of what we were talking about, in terms of what opinion polls show, that they’re probably underrepresented across Irish media.
Not to the extreme extent that she said at some points, but definitely are underrepresented. And I thought one of the things we were trying to do in the interview, Ellen, was to explore why that is. And it’s not just about authoritarian liberals shooting people out, it’s about a kind of failure to mount those arguments, I think, from people from that political position as well.”

But hold on a second.

It’s not just that Maria Steen has a platform, occasional newspaper columns, appearances on radio and podcasts. Two other members of the Iona Institute also have columns: David Quinn, whose name was mentioned in the podcast but not in relation to Iona, and Breda O’Brien (who was on the interview one but not in the follow-up), who graces the Irish Times Saturday edition as a columnist. As it happens, I quite like O’Brien’s columns, even if I disagree with them, but there’s no point in sugaring the pill – that is three members of a niche organisation who have national prominence. It would be inconceivable that such a platform might be afforded to left-wing columnists linked to this or that political party. I struggle in fact to think of an equivalent on the left for Iona that might have such a prominence. I can throw in the caveat that in all this left and right and so forth is actually mixed in with liberalism and conservatism, in some instances extreme conservatism, but the point still stands. The day three members of either of the WPs or the SWN or SF or SDs have regular newspaper columns is going to be quite the day.

Moreover, the analysis on the IT podcast ignores another reality, that there’s a halo of similarly inclined columnists – Brenda Power, Eilis O’Hanlon, and so on, who overlap on many or some issues with Quinn and Steen. Ironically Michael McDowell’s much vaunted liberalism seems to have become a bit threadbare in recent times, whatever his falling out with Steen et al and he’s predictably conservative on economic issues. And on it goes.

Again, how many columnists in the Irish media come from a centre-left, let alone a left of centre and left of left of centre perspective?

Yet we are treated to analyses like this from that podcast:

“Yes, and I suppose, so I got the sense that basically the main criticism was that Maria was talking about how she doesn’t get a platform and she was obviously enjoying a platform that hardly anyone gets, which is talking about your views for an hour on Inside Politics. I suppose, I would echo everything that you just said, but the point I would also make, because sometimes I get the sense from people whose politics is anathema to Maria Steen’s or David Quinn’s is that anytime these people get an outing, they kind of perceive it as a threat or a threat to the rights that certain people enjoy. I would just make the point that if you could go back six years and talk to maybe like pro-choice people then and say that, you know, by 2026, you’re going to have a situation where being anti-abortion is not just a minority, it’s nearly a niche or novelty position in Irish politics.”

I don’t regard them as a threat, but I find it strange that political strands who could not even get a Presidential candidate nominated in a right of centre polity with numerous TDs and Senators who were on paper ad idem on many of the issues are presented as being in some sense marginalised when they have multiple media columnists representing this point of view. Consider that this broad point of view was rebuffed almost every time it was presented to the people in this state since 1995.

Anxiety isn’t the issue so much as a dull sense of predictability that yet again people who have so little support command such a slice of the airwaves and that a fairly prominent political podcast would flatter itself that it was somehow encouraging pluralism by yet again airing views that are ably represented by its proponents in the national media on a very very regular basis.

Yet this is the narrative that the IT podcast helps perpetuate, which suggests just how constrained Irish ‘liberalism’ (of a sort) actually is in so many ways.

What you want to say – 4th March 2026

As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.

Apparently there’s the right sort of plumber and the not right sort of plumber

Amazing the lofty disdain displayed ahead of the vote for the winning Green candidate Hannah Spencer as recounted in this piece:

White van man is back. Only this time, it’s a woman. The Green Party’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election is a plumber called Hannah Spencer, and the reaction to the news was unhinged.

Her credentials as a tradie were hysterically questioned by right-wing accounts on that humble forum of the ordinary man, X. After slowly realising she is in fact a plumber, X users instead moved on to accusing her of not being a working-class one because of her mythical multimillionaire husband (she isn’t married) and her council ward of Hale (one of Greater Manchester’s most affluent). Brendan O’Neill over at alt-right site Spiked accepts she’s a plumber, just not stereotypical enough (“She’ll never have a rolled-up copy of the Sun in her arse pocket. She’ll never be caught taking a five-minute break to find out the football scores.”)

O’Neill doesn’t actually know that Spencer won’t take a five-minute break to find out about football scores, or indeed have a rolled up copy of the Sun in her arse pocket – though it’d make for a more than passable substitute when there’s no toilet roll left. O’Neill doesn’t know anything about her, any more than you or I, other than a few broad aspects of her personality and life that come over in interview and appearance and leaflet. But he sure thinks he knows or is willing to pretend in a sort of cod-populist language what she isn’t.

What’s amazing is the condescension about the – let’s call a spade a spade, working class. O’Neill’s stereotype is convenient short hand at delegitimising a candidate but it also speaks to a very contemporary use of the working class in political discourse, particularly on the right and hard right. It’s one that you find particularly evident in the UK (no doubt in part an unspoken, sometimes unconscious but not always, aspect of class hierarchy in all this too) but we see elements of it here as well. By their calculation there’s only one way of ‘doing’ working or any other class. That this is also incredibly childish is notable. It’s a ten year old’s view of the world, stripped of complexity and depth. People are just caricatures with no inner lives or motivations.

That it’s an oppressive social conformity is one aspect of it, but that it isn’t true, that in fact far from being a homogenous mass the working class (and other classes as well) is heterogenous escapes them. The working class is talisman – as in the way that Steve Bannon et al drag it into conversation as a legitimation, though do all they can to undercut any actual approaches that working class people might find useful (Bannon’s hostility to socialised healthcare, education or any measures to mitigate the impacts of class differentiation and privilege of one sort or another being but the most obvious example), but perish the thought that members of it might express views or opinions that veer away from what is ‘expected’ of them. They’re canvasses on which can be projected pretty much anything that one wants upon them. John Waters, when he was good, which seems an age ago – yet he was, and had some useful insights, once wrote in a not dissimilar vein about preconceptions around class and location (in an Irish context) arguing that he’d met dyed in the wool lifers in Ballymun and pro-choice activists in ‘rural’ Ireland. He wasn’t wrong.

This flattening of categories by O’Neill et al is not unexpected. It’s more difficult to deal with a situation where you’ve got vibrant individualism and community in the working class as against an undifferentiated mass that can be dragged onto the political stage and then pushed off it again as quickly as possible.

That’s not all. This report points to how there were sustained efforts online to further delegitimise her. Saw a fraction of that BTL on the Guardian in comments on articles about her were full of stuff about how she couldn’t be a plumber and a plasterer too – but she’s just completed training in the latter. Seems like a sensible move should the political side not pan out but you’d have to suspect it’ll be no bother to her.

Latest Dáil poll

Thanks to Paul Culloty for noting the poll that came out this weekend. This was from the Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks stable and yet again shows a remarkably static picture. As Paul says:

Ireland Thinks figures similar to Red C last week, but FG will be looking over their shoulders:

SF 22% (+2)

FF 18% NC

FG 17% (-1)

SD 11% (+1)

Aontú 6% NC

II 5% (-1)

Green 4% (+1)

Labour 4% NC

PBP-Sol 3% (-1)

Ind 11% (NC)

And:

Overall, 62pc said they disapproved of how the Government is handling its job, while 31pc approved, and 7pc said they did not know.

No great surprise. But as ever the disposition of forces means that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael can, as matters stand, probably cobble together a coalition. Intriguing, isn’t it, the question of how that much larger SD vote will manifest on the day? Kevin Cunningham of Ireland Thinks offers this point.

Just 12pc believe rent reforms will have a positive effect, with 59pc expecting a negative outcome. While the reforms may yet deliver if housebuilding accelerates as a consequence — and some in the poll allow for that possibility — for now, a political dividend has not materialised.

It is against this backdrop of dissatisfaction with the Government that the Social Democrats’ continued rise becomes significant. The party has reached 11pc this month, a record, and the dynamic at play looks increasingly like a bandwagon effect, with voters gravitating toward a party they now perceive as viable.

We know that stronger parties are more influential in government formation, and as that perception takes hold, it tends to become self-reinforcing. The combined vote of the Social Democrats and Sinn Féin now sits at 33pc, just 2pc behind Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael combined.

Granted the composition of other parties and independents is not necessarily promising in terms of offering a path to government for SF, SDs and others. Yet, those marginal changes do sometimes add up over time to considerable and substantial changes.

That in mind have to wonder if Aontú will do particular well come the next election. And why do they remain ahead of Independent Ireland with many fewer TDs? What’s going on there?

That Independent bloc is also curious. No changes. How does that work on the day? Perhaps the truth is that with an election years away there’s no particular reason for polls to shift one way or another. Sure, the SDs are making hay, but mostly the blocs of support we see above are pretty solid. It clearly would take something to shift FF or FG’s support. SF’s seems a bit more mobile.

All that said. Look at those figures, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael sub-20. Isn’t it incredible how diminished they are. The two political titans (granted FG was rarely close to FF but still) brought to this level. Yet this has been the situation for quite some time. And let’s be clear, they’ve been losing speed in polls since the last election. Those lines are descending for both party. Presumably there must be a base below which they would not go. Perhaps they’ve more or less hit it.

With by-elections just three months away, that might inflect narratives going forward, and more importantly, how voters vote. Maybe?