Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[The Larch]

From the North Norfolk Police's Twitter - and, I suspect, the most complex protest policing operation they've had to deal with in years.

[Barrister]

I hadn't realized there was an election going on in Northern Ireland until today, but I now am reading that Sinn Fein is projected to be the biggest party.  Apparently they're running on a more practical platform, and hardly mentioning reunification.

Does that mean they'd actually take their seats if they win?

[The Larch]

I hadn't realized there was an election going on in Northern Ireland until today, but I now am reading that Sinn Fein is projected to be the biggest party.  Apparently they're running on a more practical platform, and hardly mentioning reunification.

Does that mean they'd actually take their seats if they win?

They only refuse to take their seats in London, they've always participated in Northern Irish politics.

[Sheilbh]

I hadn't realized there was an election going on in Northern Ireland until today, but I now am reading that Sinn Fein is projected to be the biggest party.  Apparently they're running on a more practical platform, and hardly mentioning reunification.

Does that mean they'd actually take their seats if they win?

Yes.

Sinn Fein do not take their seats in Westminster. They historically did not take their seats in the Dail or any Northern Irish assembly, because that would acknowledge partition. Since the Good Friday Agreement Sinn Fein participate in the Stormont Assembly (and have taken their seats in the Dail for years too). Obviously there are also complicated rules around power-sharing.

The reason Sinn Fein might come first is that they are the dominant party of the nationalist community, and have been for a while now, and the unionists have split. The DUP has - in the polls - lost votes to Traditional Unionist Voice whose position is that the DUP are too soft on the Protocol and unionists should pull out of Stormont and withdraw their support for the Good Friday Agreement. The DUP have also lost votes to moderate unionists so the Ulster Unionist Party has been polling well on an anti-Protocol but not fully withdrawing line and said the DUP have gone too far and what started as anti-Protocol politics has become anti-Good Friday. But the risk of Sinn Fein coming first and choosing the First Minister is pretty severe, so it looks like the unionist vote is starting to consolidate behind the DUP again - though probably not enough to win. That consolidation, just like the nationalist vote consolidating behind Sinn Fein is ultimately the logic of community based power-sharing. Of course the other weirdness of power-sharing is that Sinn Fein are campaigning as the party of "real change" when they've been in power for the last 20 years and Deputy First Minister throughout (a position with the same constitutional powers as the First Minister)

I wouldn't say that Sinn Fein have played down unification. Their slogan is "Equality, Rights, Irish Unity". There's also been an article just today that Sinn Fein's chair has been in communications with Saoradh which is the political wing of the New IRA, a dissident Republican paramilitary group responsible for the murder of the journalist Lyra McKee. Worth noting the McKee family consider that Sinn Fein are trying to get those paramilitaries onto the peace process and that the contact has being politicised in this elelction, but that Saoradh ad the New IRA are cowards who need to accept the war is over and not "hide behind" their motto of the "unfinished revolution". The family quoted Lyra's take: "I don't want a united Ireland or a stronger union, I just want a better life."

It is also always worth noting that Sinn Fein may present a more reasonable face than it used to, but it is still the assessment of the Gardai in the south, the Police Service of Northern Ireland and MI5 that it is not a democratic political party and its political leadership is subject to decisions made by the IRA Army Council. Having said all that, as I say, Sinn Fein have been in government in Northern Ireland for the last 20 years - they have occasionally collapsed Stormont just as the DUP have and they have also had responsibility for political decisions in that time, just like the DUP. They're normal in Northern Ireland - I think if they win the next election in the south that will cause far more panic/concern among unionists than even the psychological shock of a non-unionist party coming first in this election.

[Sheilbh]

Sounds like Johnson had an absolute car-crash interview on GMB with Susanna Reid this morning, probably explaining why Cummings never let him do long interviews on TV

Separately does not look good for the government when they only have a lead over the opposition on one issue - from Lord Ashcroft's huge 8,000 people survey


Edit: I also think the marks on national security/foreign policy is basically fair - though a lot of it has now got Labour support/pushing for more. But I think one of the weird things about this government is that on foreign policy I think it's very much above average - change of approach to China, response to Hong Kong, response to Ukraine, AUKUS (and re-invigorating British-Japanese relationship). All quite big issues which I think it's got substantially right and often fairly significantly so, as in the case of arming Ukraine since January - so Johnson is going to be the first foreign leader to address the Rada today I think, almost certainly, because his government was one of if not the first to start sending weapons to Ukraine.

[mongers]

I joined the UK Green Party today. 

[Tamas]

I joined the UK Green Party today. 

[mongers]

I joined the UK Green Party today. 

...
snip
....

Why not?

Plus it'll probably annoy Shelf. 

[Sheilbh]

No of course not. I know to fight the real enemy - the Lib Dems

Although - Green Party of England and Wales

[Josquius]

Flicked on channel 4 news today. Had some political debate in Southampton. The Tory woman (former lawyer I got, no idea who) was painful, so transparent what she was going to say before she said it, at one point said "I'm not going to talk about beers for Keir..." then went on about it for a long while. They're really determined to try and drag Labour down into the mud with that.
And interesting Rayner seems to have become so hated by them now.
Also outright lying about council tax rates.
Sigh.

In other news I continue to wish people knew just how powerless the local council was. Seeing a lot of local comments about how labour is bad and we need a change.

[Sheilbh]

They are trying to make the Keir thing a story, as are the right wing press. But it's just not taking off with normal voters who aren't already partisan, because voters aren't stupid.

It did, though, produce this evergreen text from someone at a Labour Party event

A great text re Keir/Curry: "it wasn't a social gathering because I hate them all".

[Zanza]

Re. why I look at the German Greens with so much envy

Hugo Gye
@HugoGye
Green party co-leader Adrian Ramsay confirms that the party would like the UK to leave Nato, but not until the Ukraine war is over

Our Greens held a party conference and supported heavy weapons for Ukraine, 100bn onetime invest into German armed forces, but did not commit on the 2% NATO spending target, but rather kept their 3% target for "international action" which is supposed to cover our development aid, diplomacy and NATO commitments.

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally on Northern Ireland - the news will be if Sinn Fein come first. The focus will be on unionist splits/collapse apathy. But the real story (based on the polls) is the continued rise of non-sectarian parties who are projected to reach 20% in the election tomorrow. They basically don't participate in actually governing thing because the way politics is structured around parties representing the unionist and nationalist communities (a bit like in Bosnia or other countries with formal power sharing). Interesting piece from Mick Fealty on whether the ultimate success of the peace process is that Northern Ireland is, maybe, starting to move away from peace process politics:

Whoever wears the FM 'crown' a rising middle may prize us off NI's hamster wheel politics
Mick Fealty on May 3, 2022, 10:11 am

Brian O'Neill (I like to think of him as Slugger's tabloid editor) has written a sharp and direct piece about how he  thinks this has been a boring election. He's far from the only one.

The sociologist, Alfred North Whitehead once wrote that "those societies which cannot combine reverence to their symbols with freedom of revision, must ultimately decay either from anarchy, or from the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows."

Useless shadows, indeed.  I cannot think of any election since the "fuss at the bus" when the DUP parked a battle bus outside UUP HQ and harangued them for the TV cameras in 2003. Elections back then were anything but boring.

There's a couple of reasons for this. One is that once the DUP and SF acquired top tribal dog status in their own communities, they turned down the election drama down to zero and used their scale to snuff out or silence opposition (who had little of their talent for drama).

That was until 2017 when Sinn Fun Féin split up the band and turned the volume up on a crocodiles theme got nationalist blood up and bumped Sinn Féin's vote total to within one seat of the DUP's. It was effective, but three years later they went back into the same duopoly.

Neither the UUP nor the SDLP can bring itself to play such raw, and ultimately when it comes to the core issue of deciding how Northern Ireland is to be run, hollow populist game playing.

And yet, as Professor Pete Shirlow notes today in his overview of the results of his survey (which took about a week to collate since it asked questions about a lot more than just which way people are voting):

In comparing electoral styles, the DUP is scrambling while Sinn Féin play it ultra-cool. The former rallying, literally, against unionist apathy and the latter applying a 'steady as she goes' policy to not provoke voting elsewhere. All of this is above the surface, predictable and anticipated.

    For it's part, Sinn Fein is running the opposite of the 2017 campaign, with their northern leader Michelle O'Neill initially being replaced by Mary Lou McDonald and John Finucane, but latterly replacing local candidates on posters in many of its weaker constituencies.

When you are this close to the prize it makes sense not to frighten the opposition unionist horses for fear of helping your opponents take the prize by stirring the fear pot enough to thwart your own ambitions.

The media story is the "historic" moment an historic SF over takes as top dog has been trailed endlessly, which may explain the unusual amount of foreign press that have landed in Belfast this week.

Very little of the actual boring stuff of democracy is in evidence. Policy, is largely missing, so there's been little discussion around the practical way in which any party plans to change the future for the better.

As my friend David Hoey and others point out, the leaders' debates merely provides the rest of us with a snapshot of the tensions within the Executive, and a glimpse at its sheer lack of cohesion.

Given this is the retiring cabinet principals arguing hotly with the future cabinet principals, it must beg a case for the reform of a system that bars 20% of the electorate from deciding the FM or DFM?

Without the dynamism of an official opposition (ie one that is capable of of 'kicking the bums out' ), much of what we're seeing is either an act for the camera or a proposal to negotiate in some extra parliamentary way.

It's not the case (as is often asserted) that Northern Ireland is a basket case (though in some parts the levels of poverty are little short of catastrophic. Nor is everyone at everyone else's throats. Shirlow again:

    How people vote does not mean they are divided beyond resolution, proven by the post Good Friday Agreement period in which the economy has grown, sectarian crime fallen and people are more likely to mix and form relationships across the identity divide.

    Politics, above the surface, does not recognise this and plays in an opposite direction. It does not avail of the opportunity to speak for a people, unified on much, but presents them as perpetually irritated and aggravated with each other.

Foreign journalists in Belfast this week expecting to find turmoil and conflict before the election are likely to to be disappointed. Beyond the core territories of the old paramilitaries it is a newly prosperous space.

The Liverpool surveys suggests that people are converging on a number of important issues. Regarding legacy, no one believes that truth will emerge from their own communities never mind anyone else's.

A majority support seeking mitigations and easements from the EU regarding the protocol: an issue which pretty much all but the unionist parties have ignored and which is adding to the cost of living crisis.

As Shirlow observes:

Similar levels of support found that 60 per cent of all MLAs voting in agreement was sufficient to demonstrate cross-community support, with an even higher share stating that politics is too sectarian.

    In a sense devolution has worked in terms of an underground silent revolution in which collective interest are fusing a people who seek, to paraphrase Seamus Heaney, hope and society rhyming.

The criminologist Matthew Williams notes how our personal histories of conflict, anxiety, loss and trauma shape how we interact with others. We need to recognise false alarms, that take a non threat as a real one.

The question is can we deal with the future of Northern Ireland without someone repeatedly banging on the alarm klaxon over border poll fantasies which have no real anchor in reality, or the top dog delusion?

Nearly twenty years ago in A Long Peace we wrote:

Inside the system, the logic of cooperation is strong and will tend to overwhelm and regulate destructive elements. Hunger striker Bobby Sands ran in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election to intensify conflict and foment unrest. But his actions only served to draw Sinn Féin into 'normal' politics with unforeseen speed. Importantly, it is not friendly contact that is important, but any contact.

With contact sustained, Northern Ireland has become more peaceful and more at peace with itself. Meanwhile, unionism and nationalism have both declined (albeit at different rates) over those twenty years.

Whatever happens on Thursday it will not result in an end of history. If the DUP take most seats, I'd expect an early return to business. If Sinn Féin do, then expect a longer delay but with a useful shift in perspective.

In either case, we ought to see is some class of parity emerge between nationalism and unionism that has been coming for a long time, but well below the 50/50 levels that might initiate systemic instability.

Unionism hasn't recovered from the shock of 2017, but nor has it lost to "the other side", merely to those who are convinced either that: one, the union is not under threat; or two they've better things to be doing.

The trend in the 'neither' share is consistently upwards regardlessly of whether unionism or nationalism prospers. In spite of the much vaunted demographic argument, nationalism hasn't grown in 20 years.]

As Shirlow notes:

    Unionism let these people, largely the socially liberal, slip away to non-voting or voting otherwise. It chose to chase those more determined to maintain traditional ways that included opposing marriage equality and the right of women to control their bodies. Pursuing those out of sync with the majority pro-union community who campaign for and support such rights.

    Such a process of change is beginning within republicanism and nationalism. Both should be growing due to demographic changes but here we find a quarter of nationalists who will vote Alliance, Green and People Before Profit.

If do things shift it's because not enough unionists care to vote to keep someone else from becoming First Minister in an office which is every sense power sharing central. It's a refusal to heed a false alarm.

More and more voters are looking for a purpose and a vision for an evolving future for their kids and grandkids that looks better than the one many my generation were dragged through backwards.

It may not yet be time to get off the hamster wheel of Peace Process™ politics, but the re-assertion of power and voice in the middle ground will continue to rise regardless of whatever is happening elsewhere.

The question facing the SDLP and UUP is whether they want a piece of that action. That will depend on a willingness to put real options in front of the electorate, and not just a vague wish for something better.

On Friday afternoon (I'll be in studio for RTÉ) these are exactly the sort of early themes I'll be looking to see if they emerge, or not. That will tell us much about those parties' future, and for Northern Ireland at large.

One of the most interesting things David Cameron did - and it was too soon - was propose running Tory candidates in Northern Irish elections. His argument was that Northern Ireland needed normal ideological politics and was at a point when it would be receptive to that, instead of the identity-based sectarian politics.

It was far too soon and I don't think the solution will come from GB parties. In any event Labour supports a united Ireland in principle and its sister party, the SDLP, is a moderate sectarian party for the nationalists; the Lib Dems are historically associated with the non-sectarian Alliance Party; and the Tories are traditionally linked with (and have merged at points) with the moderate sectarian Ulster Unionist Party. So I wonder if, as he suggests, that might be shape of a future for Northern Ireland - with the SDLP and UUP stepping down their sectarian status to become the left and right of a broad centre that is more interested in what the future of Northern Ireland looks like than winning/defending the fights of the past?

[Sheilbh]

Our Greens held a party conference and supported heavy weapons for Ukraine, 100bn onetime invest into German armed forces, but did not commit on the 2% NATO spending target, but rather kept their 3% target for "international action" which is supposed to cover our development aid, diplomacy and NATO commitments.

All of which makes sense. And I think that's a great start from where Germany has been under the other parties.

I want us to go back ASAP to the 0.7% GDP target for aid (and it should be a separate department again). I'd also support us being comfortably above 2% on defence for NATO commitments. My assumption is that the Foreign Office is relatively cheap so probably not much as a % of GDP. So that may well be around 3% - maybe a little higher. But I think it's right for those to all be bracketed together and talk to each other because they should all support each other and multiply the effects.

I also think rich countries need to start thinking specifically about climate aid and funding energy transition in the global south, which should probably be in the same "international action" section.

[Sheilbh]

Interesting piece - written before the Roe leak and mainly about the UK - about the issues with the left's increasing reliance on law. After the Roe leak it is particularly pertinent.

I think there's particularly something to the fact that professionals, such as lawyers, are an increasing part of the base of left-liberal parties in the UK (I think The Lawyer did a survey and found that the largest support among lawyers was for the Lib Dems ):

The Tories' biggest trick is making their opponents fight post-Brexit policies in the courts
Anton Jäger
While progressives see the courts as a way to achieve justice, the government sees long legal battles as a way to galvanise support
Tue 3 May 2022 12.16 BST
Last modified on Tue 3 May 2022 16.41 BST

It seems like every few months brings news of another defeat for the UK government in the courts. And there may well be more to come – the latest policy in the sights of lawyers and activists is the plan to process certain asylum seekers who've arrived on Britain's shores in Rwanda in east Africa.

The policy was met with justified outrage from progressives and the left. Specialists also predicted that it would run afoul of international law and human rights legislation. But what if this was part of the plan all along? The Times columnist Clare Foges, writing under the headline "Rwanda won't work: but it will for Boris Johnson", wondered if the real purpose of the plan was not to actually reduce perilous journeys across the Channel, as the government claimed, but to draw progressives into extended court battles and lawsuits. This would force them to act as an explicit blockade on post-Brexit migration policies, frustrating the "people's will" ratified by the 2019 election, and thereby galvanising Tory activists and potential voters.

This poses an uncomfortable question for the left: what if its increasing embrace of the justice system is not just a sign of political weakness, but rather a gift to the right?

Johnson is hardly alone with this tactic. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro's term as president has been marked by a recognisable pattern of improbable initiatives followed by protracted leftwing resistance in courts. In Belgium, Flemish nationalists such as Theo Francken, the former secretary of state for asylum, have repeatedly attacked judges who have thwarted plans to deport asylum seekers. By forcing opponents to lawyer up instead of building movements and pursuing state power, the right can pose as the defenders of an assailed, disfranchised majority.

This leftwing embracing of the courts makes sense on one level. In the face of rightwing attempts to restrict basic human rights, the justice system has some of the more powerful tools. Immigration policy is not unique in this regard. Over the past decade, green activists have begun pressing claims against a variety of state actors to hold them accountable for climate inaction. Given the issue's urgency, it is understandable that ecologists would examine a wide repertoire of tactics.

Context matters, however. Historically, courts were usually the left's last resort. They offered a pivot when all other routes had been exhausted or political circumstances were simply too hostile. The left relied on a densely organised civil society of unions, parties and councils which could fight opponents on their own terrain. These parties and unions could run in elections, strike or rewrite constitutions. Yet they were always sceptical of the idea that progress could be achieved through the courts alone, or that judges were the most reliable guardians of popular power.

In the past 40 years, as these bastions of worker power have atrophied or died out, the left has become isolated and weak, populated by a small caste of professionals – many of them lawyers and academics – who only have a tenuous connection to an organised constituency.

In this sense, the embrace of judicial power is itself the expression of political weakness. In the 1990s, the "third democratic wave" elevated the ideal of independent courts, together with market economics, to a sacred criterion for membership in the global democratic community. In the 2010s, however, disillusionment with courts became endemic across young and old democracies, from the Polish government's decision to handpick judges to the controversies around the German constitutional court and its queasiness about looser EU budgetary rules.

The US provides a helpful example of the drawbacks with trying to secure progressive gains through the courts. The country is somewhat unique in that its abortion rights were achieved through supreme court action rather than directly elected majorities. In several European countries, parties that supported abortion rights had to run in elections across the 1970s and 1980s, thereby facing a direct, democratic test from voters. Once these parties won office, it was easier to get anti-abortion activists to acquiesce to the new regime. There had been a fair contest, and the losers had to accept the result. In the US, by contrast, conservatives repeatedly felt as if abortion rights were imposed by judicial coup. This encouraged political backlash, and allowed anti-abortion activists to claim a fresh democratic mandate.

This does not imply that conservatives are strangers to the opportunistic usage of courts. Many of the authoritarian threats of the 2010s came from ideologically driven judges. The right in Latin American is especially keen on "lawfare".

A variety of trends may well decrease the vote share of rightwing parties in the near and distant future. In Britain, persistently low wages and a cost of living crisis do not make for great electoral prospects. Faced with these demographic and economic trends, the Conservative party (and other rightwing outfits) could increasingly prefer its opponents to fight them on the terrain of courts and judges. This is an easy option: it allows rightwing parties to pose as the representatives of a frustrated majority, while camouflaging their own anti-democratic plans – to gerrymander voting districts, for instance, or even to introduce tests at the voting booth.

Scepticism about judicial power should not make progressives cynical about what can be achieved through the law. There are important battles that should be fought in courts. Yet if progressives are serious about offering a real political alternative, they will be better off focusing on the (re)building of durable institutions, rather than appealing to the moral conscience of high judges. Courts will not always be their best friend – sometimes, they might even be an enemy.

    Anton Jäger is a researcher at the Higher Institute for Philosophy at KU Leuven, Belgium