Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Not really Britain - but amazing piece on the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement on ceasefire babies' views in the south:

Conflicted memories: How the Good Friday Agreement babies forgot the Troubles
They were supposed to be the 'ceasefire babies' — a new generation that grew up in peace — but a new survey shows that young Irish people in the Republic are forgetting the conflict, while showing more radical republican views


The 30-year standoff between the British Army and republican paramilitaries was brutal but footballers chanting "Up the Ra" and a cartoon of Gerry Adams's image makeover suggest that a different version of history is being written

Rachel Lavin
Sunday April 02 2023, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
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His voice used to be dubbed on UK television in order to, in the words of Margaret Thatcher, "deny him the oxygen of publicity". But today Gerry Adams is a social media sensation.

On TikTok, Generation Z's platform of choice, Adams was the most mentioned politician during the 2020 Irish general election despite not being a candidate.

Now 74, he jokes online about "rubber duckies" and teddies and jumping naked on a trampoline. He posts videos of himself singing, dancing and telling "knock knock" jokes.

In terms of boosting his profile, it appears to have worked. He has more than 300,000 followers across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and some Gen Z supporters on TikTok even refer to him as "#daddy".

This view of Adams as a cutesy Che Guevara-style icon is only one part of Irish Gen Z and millennials' embrace of a new alt-republicanism.

Their meme pages on the internet joke about "Tan bashing", a term used to celebrate anti-British sentiment. Derogatory references are in vogue and include "taking the soup" and "west Brit", terms once used for those seen as traitors to the Irish cause.

Kneecap, a hip-hop trio from Northern Ireland wearing tricolour balaclavas, takes its name from the punishment shootings that were once carried out by paramilitaries. They are popular north and south of the border and their song Get Your Brits Out has had more than two million streams on Spotify.

On TikTok, the hashtag #upthera, a phrase that indicates support of the IRA, is used in comments on videos that have been viewed more than four million times. In October it stirred a national conversation when video emerged of the Irish women's football team using the chant as they celebrated qualifying for the Fifa Women's World Cup.

Is the cavalier republican sloganeering simply the irony of a post-conflict generation toying with the weight of the past, or is it akin to the alt-right's masking of more extreme views by using humour and sarcasm?

Sinn Fein used to be a political outlier but now it is priming itself to take power in next year's general election, promising a cross-border poll on the reunification of North and South within five years.

Some argue that young people in the South are merely trying to "dismantle and decontextualise" a republicanism that others are too out of touch to understand. A new survey suggests that for young Irish people the harms of the Troubles have simply been forgotten while a new more radical interpretation of history is taking its place.

The country is losing its memory

The survey, by Behaviour & Attitudes for The Sunday Times, showed that 26 per cent of young people aged under 35 in the Republic admitted to not knowing key events of the conflict, and 25 per cent did not know the people who played roles in the peace process. Almost 90 per cent did not know how many people died in the 30-year conflict.

The fact that bombs went off in Brighton, Enniskillen and Warrington was known by less than 26 per cent. Less than 15 per cent knew of the massacres at Ballymurphy, Buskhill (the Miami Showband killings) and Kingsmill.

For more than 75 per cent of young people, the stories of key events such as the civil rights movement, internment or the Disappeared were unknown.



The historical amnesia exhibited by the Republic's youth speaks to a wider malaise. All age groups had a problem with putting a figure on the number of people who died in the Troubles. In the South more than 90 per cent could not give a figure with any accuracy.

Records collated by the Lost Lives project indicate that the true death toll over the 30 years was 3,720. Some 80 per cent of young people guessed outside the 3,000 to 4,000 range, with 53 per cent saying fewer than 3,000 victims, and 27 per cent saying more than 4,000. Six per cent said they did not know.

One per cent of respondents believed that up to 100,000 people had died.



The gap in knowledge that has opened up in the space of just one generation is "shocking but not surprising", said Tony Gallagher, a professor of education at Queen's University, Belfast.

An expert on the role of education in divided societies, he pointed to a failure of the Irish government to teach children about the conflict.

"Sometimes dealing with these historical things can be difficult, " he said. "And one of the ways people deal with these things is not to deal with them at all."

According to the survey, young people were more likely to learn about the Troubles on social media than at school. Only 7 per cent said they received most of their information about the Troubles in the classroom.



Ronan, 23, who lives in Dublin, said: "I wasn't taught about the Troubles in school. I remember only one page of material on it in our history book, and the only discussion I remember was about Bill Clinton coming over to help with the peace process. If you asked anyone in the room about what the peace agreement was really about, we couldn't tell you. Thinking back, I wonder why it wasn't given more relevance but there seemed to be an insecurity about it: it's just pushed down, silenced and repressed because it's too controversial. That's how we were made to feel.

"We had no other choice but seek out the information ourselves."

Gallagher warned: "If you don't teach it in schools people will draw on social media and partisan narratives in the local community and political groups. This will often be a relatively shallow version of events but it could draw [young people] into more extreme interpretations of what was going on."

That view was authenticated by the poll when young people were asked who was to blame for deaths in the Troubles. Despite most of them being unable to say the true number killed, 37 per cent said the British Army was behind most killings while 14 per cent assumed it was republican paramilitaries. Official studies attribute only 8 per cent of deaths directly to the British Army and 58 per cent to republican paramilitaries. Data collated by Sutton Index of Deaths linked 3,532 deaths to military and paramilitary groups between 1969 and 2001.




When surveyed in November, young people in the Republic were the least likely to think there was "always an alternative" to the violent resistance to British rule, something that the majority of older generations — those who lived through the period — disagreed with.

The young were also the most likely to think it socially acceptable to chant "up the Ra", with 37 per cent in favour.

"There is always a risk of some people becoming radicalised in a way that is dangerous," Gallagher warned. "But the bigger risk is you have comfortable prejudices that are reintroduced.

"If you don't deal with difficult histories they always lie there potentially dormant and ready to come back."

Matt O'Toole, an SDLP politician, said: "On one level there has to be a balance struck between remembering the really vital bits of history and also wanting people to move on with their lives. But it's hard to build a vision for the future if there's not proper recognition of how difficult the Troubles was and how much hurt was inflicted. We can't risk a romanticisation of the Troubles, it will just make Irish unity harder."

Keeping the Peace

As well as the failure to commemorate the conflict, there is negligence over taking pride in the peace.

While the roles of Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are recognised by most Irish Gen Z and millennials (65 per cent and 58 per cent), other important peace activists have been largely forgotten.

Ninety per cent of over-55s — the generation who lived through the Troubles — gave credit to John Hume, the former SDLP leader who won a Nobel peace prize for his work. Yet 41 per cent of young people did not know he played a part.

The role of Mo Mowlam — the late British Labour MP and Northern Ireland secretary who took part in the talks while suffering from a terminal brain tumour — was acknowledged by 78 per cent of over-55s but only 25 per cent of under-35s.

Some 22 per cent of respondents said they had never heard of Mowlam or the former US senator George Mitchell, while 21 per cent did not know of Seamus Mallon, the former deputy leader of the SDLP.

The roles of the former US president Bill Clinton, the former British prime minister Tony Blair, David Trimble, the late Ulster Unionist Party leader who won the Nobel peace prize, David Ervine, the late leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, and Monica McWilliams, who led the Northern Ireland's Women's Coalition, were recognised by half or fewer than half of people under 35.

Some 25 per cent said they did not know what role any of these people had played in the peace process.



"I'm not surprised," said McWilliams, who gained less than 20 per cent recognition from the youth of the Republic despite her prominent role in the talks leading up to the Good Friday agreement. She said Gerry Adams had come to be seen as a "rock star" after the end of years of censorship.

"There's a kind of dispiriting, disillusioned view of who was making peace," she said. "We know peace is built by small actors day to day and they tend to be a majority of women. But post-conflict, combatants can get romanticised when they feature in movies . . . and when history books are written it is men that are remembered."

Young Irish people said they were no longer sure they supported the agreement that secured the peace in which they grew up. When surveyed in November, 26 per cent of the ceasefire generation said they "did not know" if they supported the Good Friday agreement.

Twenty five years after the conflict ended, 50 per cent said they felt they did not fully understand the history of the Troubles.

 A big silence?

How can a generation forget a bloody conflict in just 25 years, especially in a country that is known the world over for the success of its peace process?

"After the agreement there was sort of a sigh of relief that very quickly gave way to complacency," said Emma DeSouza, 34, a writer and peace campaigner from Northern Ireland.

"The Good Friday agreement is an all-Ireland responsibility to safeguard and save peace and we're not giving the next generation the tools."

Despite young people's lack of understanding of the history of the conflict, there is still a thirst to connect with their northern peers, and 47 per cent said they were interested in the history of the Troubles.

Most in the South wished for a united Ireland, and 59 per cent said they would vote "yes" if there was a vote tomorrow. That proportion has remained steady over recent decades and is reflected consistently across generations.

As for a fear that violence could return to Northern Ireland, 39 per cent of all age groups said it was still a risk.

The vacuum that younger generations are trying to fill, albeit haphazardly, is in part shaped by the gap left by older generations and their inability to talk about the Troubles, DeSouza said.

Talking about the Troubles was almost taboo in the South, particularly for parents and children, she said. Only 21 per cent of young Irish people learnt the most about the Troubles from older generations and/or family members. Younger generations had been left to try to fill the silence for themselves.

"There's almost an expectation that the young generation are born and are perfect and they don't experience any of the problems the older generations had," DeSouza said. "But we are still experiencing high levels of sectarianism. It's there in the Republic, where sectarianism continues to act as a scourge in our society. Our inability to address it and call it out is why it's now being passed down to a new generation. They are expressing these views because nobody is having that conversation.

"There is a significant disconnect that comes down to an inability to address the past. They are still trapped with a generation that hasn't really faced up to what happened."

Forgotten past, uncertain future

If the country cannot deal with its past, how will it deal with its future? This is a potent question, especially if Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Fein becomes taoiseach next year on a promise to hold a referendum on unity within five years.

Jonathan Powell, chief of staff for the Blair government during the peace process, said: "It isn't surprising a generation has forgotten it. Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley [senior] were able to keep the institutions in the North running but the new generation [of politicians] cannot," he said. While the Good Friday agreement was world-renowned as a peace accord, its implementation has fallen behind the progress made in other countries. Powell pointed to Colombia, which, after negotiating a peace process with the Farc guerilla movement, established the Colombian system of truth, justice, reparation and non-repetition. This exposed historical atrocities and advocated for the rights of victims. He said that Germany also provided a model for how the teaching of history could overcome the "big silence" between generations. "After the Second World War, young people were deliberately educated by the German system to remember. It has had a profound effect on German psychology and that is important," Powell said.

"Clearly, when it comes to the Troubles education has fallen down." As a result Ireland was "not ready" to address the difficult questions of a united Ireland. "If you don't know the past it's very hard to guess what the future will be. The risk is that when people forget about it, they repeat it because they don't know the consequences."

I'd love to see similar suveys of the different communities in the north because I suspect there are very different memories there. I've said before but I think Sinn Fein winning in the south and this sort of alt-Republicanism will make a united Ireland more difficult - because it's difficult to see where unionists and their memory and experience would fit in.

I also wonder if this is a legacy of the failure to deal with legacy issues. My understanding is that everyone knew that legacy issues could entirely de-rail the peace process so everyone parked it. I suspect that lack of a truth and reconciliation commission is part of why memories are so in flux. And it's still causing issues. It's probably too late for a truth and reconciliation approach (although maybe not?) but I think not having one is a mistaek - of course it's a mistake that makes wider peace possible so is worth it.

On a personal level I find it slightly devastating that memory of, say, John Hume, Seamus Mallon, the Northern Ireland civil rights movement is fading. They were campaigners committed to peace and non-violence (very inspired by King and Gandhi) who eventually crafted two peace deals - one of which survived. They faced down British troops, the RUC and paramilitaries in their own community to insist on non-violence - with overwhelming support of normal Catholics both north and south (Sinn Fein never got more than 2% of the vote during the Troubles). It's really sad to see their memory dwindling while the men of violence they opposed become memes and the "heroes" of that period

Edit: Also I'm really surprised memories of Mo Mowlam are fading so fast.

[Sheilbh]

Little kerfuffle over this Labour campaign in the last couple of days (which I think they'll be thrilled with because it means lots more people have seen the poster):


The right are complaining about it and alleging it's "sowing the seeds of racism" about Sunak - I can't quite see that. The Labour left are also very angry about it saying there's inherent racism in the poster (again - I'm not sure how?) but also that Labour shouldn't do negative advertising like this or concede Tory premises on crime.

On the complaints about it not being true, a Labour source said "Sunak never condemned Johnson when he accused Keir of letting Jimmy Savile off - so fuck him." It's not strictly true but it is the effect of policies Suank's supported - such as big cuts to the police, justice system and prisons - which seems fair game for me.

I've thought for a while that crime is an area Labour need to talk about (not least because Starmer was former Director of Public Prosecutions so has personal credibility on this). Part of that is attacking the Tories over their dreadful record on a whole range of crimes being effectively decriminalised because of austerity cuts to the police etc and tying the Tories with the failures in criminal justice. This campaign is very aggressive (and now attached with a Twitter context note) - but I'm not sure I really get the allegations of stoking racism . It also seems to me fair enough to say you can believe whatever you want but if it's not consistent with the results of your policies then you should be attacked for that on the basis of your policies not "beliefs".

Labour have also said "their entire 13 year record is up for grabs next year - from the horrors of the NHS to the failures on crime." Which I think is entirely right (although Sunak only became an MP in 2015). It's also important right now - Sunak is quite popular, the Tories aren't. He is going to run a presidential style campaign so it's really important to tie him personally to everything people don't like about the Tories.Apparently Labour have been speaking a lot with the Democrats and Australian Labor Party who've both said they need to be more aggressive - so this is probably a first example. Apparently both Labor and Democrat consultants told them to "ignore the wailings of people who want you to be kind losers" which again I can get behind Not sure about this poster specifically but I think the strategy is right.

[HVC]

I saw the poster and it struck me as British Qanon light. When did tying politicians to kiddie diddling become the big thing?

[Josquius]

The right are complaining about it and alleging it's "sowing the seeds of racism" about Sunak - I can't quite see that. The Labour left are also very angry about it saying there's inherent racism in the poster (again - I'm not sure how?)

....wut? How does this make any sense at all?
Or are they being racist themselves and saying Asians are child abusers?
It was inevitable they'd try and  disingenuously play the race card to defend Sunak but this is a weird place to do it.

but also that Labour shouldn't do negative advertising like this or concede Tory premises on crime.

Fair points that it is populist trash...but the Labour left really shouldn't be throwing stones there.
And sadly thats what works in our system.

[Sheilbh]

I saw the poster and it struck me as British Qanon light. When did tying politicians to kiddie diddling become the big thing?

I think in this particular case Sunak made a big announcement around child sexual abuse earlier this week. I think this is how Labour will respond to any attempt by the Tories to "own" law and order or paint Labour as soft on crime. They will do a poster like this for any of those crimes - because they're in the right in terms of the impact of austerity.

More broadly I think there's always been a thing - I remember Brass Eye's special and the Monkey Dust Paedofinder General.

But the last decade has seen a lot of institutional and group abuse uncovered. Obviously after Savile's death all of the stories about him came out. Following that a lot of victims of historic abuse came forward and many "national treasures" were arrested and are now in prison. There's been independent inquiries into abuse in football club youth teams, the Catholic church and the CofE, the BBC, schools etc. There has also been a national inquiry run by a judge from New Zealand into various allegations which was basically around how state and non-state institutions failed in their duty of care towards children, weren't good at safeguarding and were often more interested in protecting the institution. There's been a similar report in Scotland.

The investigations into celebrity also seemed to do away with a presumption of innocence and the police were colluding with media to get good coverage - including of arrests and searches of men who later had all charges dropped and no evidence, like Paul Gambaccini or Cliff Richards. Similarly while there were examples of MPs who were serial abusers - like Sir Cyril Smith and Clement Freud - there were a lot of allegations that were untrue. There was a big investigation into child sexual abuse by people in positions of power - it ended up collapsing because it all relied on the evidence of one man who came forward as a victim and was later convicted of lying to the police. He made up incredibly lurid stories and no other victims were coming forward - it wasn't, I think, coinciental that many of the people he alleged were involved (Leon Brittan, Harvey Proctor, Ted Heath) were either Jewish or widely believed to be gay.

I also think more broadly there is a slow moving reckoning on sexual abuse more generally. So in relation to kids there were investigations that were very badly handled, there were investigations that never should have started and hysteria - but there were also many genuine institutional failures in showbusiness, politics and the public sector that allowed abusers to get away with it. I think there's also more adult men and women coming forward with their own stories of sexual assault and harassment in different sectors. As I say it's moving slowly but we know there are many allegations around Westminster and police investigations into some MPs, there have been allegations in the union movement, the government has just announced they're going to stop all interactions with the Confederation of British Industry (main business lobby) as they've had many allegations and aren't doing anything.

I think it's basically Weinstein and Epstein except that it wasn't just a moment - it's kept on rolling with new revelations and affected sectors and institutions.

[Sheilbh]

....wut? How does this make any sense at all?
Or are they being racist themselves and saying Asians are child abusers?
It was inevitable they'd try and  disingenuously play the race card to defend Sunak but this is a weird place to do it.

I can't work it out - I'm not sure if I'm missing something really obvious.

Fair points that it is populist trash...but the Labour left really shouldn't be throwing stones there.
And sadly thats what works in our system.

Well also I think it's pointing to the truth. Any time the Tories say they're going to be tough on crime - Labour's response should be how many people convicted of that crime in the last 13 years didn't get properly sentenced, got off early etc.

As I say if your policy is austerity, with huge cuts to policing and criminal justice - you can't then go around pretending your tough on crime if you've not actually resourced the criminal justice system.

It's also another thng that for me just seems like a bit of a 2000s throwback (as well as the focus on asylum/people crossing the channel, anti-social behaviour etc).

Edit: E.g. today's less incendiary poster - again I think it is a fair point:

[Josquius]

I'd love to see similar suveys of the different communities in the north because I suspect there are very different memories there. I've said before but I think Sinn Fein winning in the south and this sort of alt-Republicanism will make a united Ireland more difficult - because it's difficult to see where unionists and their memory and experience would fit in.

I also wonder if this is a legacy of the failure to deal with legacy issues. My understanding is that everyone knew that legacy issues could entirely de-rail the peace process so everyone parked it. I suspect that lack of a truth and reconciliation commission is part of why memories are so in flux. And it's still causing issues. It's probably too late for a truth and reconciliation approach (although maybe not?) but I think not having one is a mistaek - of course it's a mistake that makes wider peace possible so is worth it.

On a personal level I find it slightly devastating that memory of, say, John Hume, Seamus Mallon, the Northern Ireland civil rights movement is fading. They were campaigners committed to peace and non-violence (very inspired by King and Gandhi) who eventually crafted two peace deals - one of which survived. They faced down British troops, the RUC and paramilitaries in their own community to insist on non-violence - with overwhelming support of normal Catholics both north and south (Sinn Fein never got more than 2% of the vote during the Troubles). It's really sad to see their memory dwindling while the men of violence they opposed become memes and the "heroes" of that period

Edit: Also I'm really surprised memories of Mo Mowlam are fading so fast.

I do wonder how much of this is inevitable in a post-colonial society.
I can kind of see parallels in India's descent into insanity. The true and internationally respected story of peaceful resistance and negotiation is being washed away and trashed in favour of fairy tails about glorious Indian freedom fighters.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah I think it's definitely there in post-colonial discourse. It definitely made me think about India and the denigration of Gandhi within India (while his reputation is huge globally), and the growth in Bose as a figure of national liberation. As in India with the BJP, with Sinn Fein in the south it clearly helps politically. But I think you see it more generally in other areas too. So there's the meme about gay rights not being advanced by liberals but by burning police cars.

I think it's a general thing that once you've achieved radical change of some form or other you elide the people who were necessary to achieve it and focus instead on the prophets. I think it's fine as history but is a bad way of thinking about political change particularly, as I say, if it's unfinished. In the case of Ireland when a united Ireland has still not been achieved and I can imagine nothing less likely to help that cause than Gerry Adams becoming a lovable national treasure.

The thing I find really interesting about Ireland is that at the same time there's been this shift to a sort of alt-republicanism in the context of the north and the recent past, there's also been a huge re-evaluation of Ireland's founding. Michael Collins is given a far more central and admired role despite him being on the pro-treaty side in the civil war, while de Valera's reputation has really suffered. There's also been a bit of revisionism which gives John Redmond and the parliamentary nationalist movement more credit. So I also wonder if it's just part of the process of revisionism and swings in interpretation of the past because it seems odd to me that you'd be simultaneously chanting "up the ra" and (rightly) elevating Collins and Redmond.

[Tamas]

The right are complaining about it and alleging it's "sowing the seeds of racism" about Sunak - I can't quite see that. The Labour left are also very angry about it saying there's inherent racism in the poster (again - I'm not sure how?) but also that Labour shouldn't do negative advertising like this or concede Tory premises on crime.

I think stuff like this just reveals the accuser as racist. They see the text with a non-white guy's picture and their thought process jumps to "it's about his race".

Having said that it's a bit of a tasteless ad. But, as we have learned, tasteless clueless masses decide elections and referenda, so there we go.

[Sheilbh]

I don't really like the headline but great reflection on 25 years of the Good Friday Agreement:

Ireland will always be divided
After 25 years, what has the Good Friday Agreement fixed?
BY Tom McTague
Tom McTague is UnHerd's Political Editor. He is the author of Betting The House: The Inside Story of the 2017 Election.

Sitting together in the small hours of Good Friday, David Trimble and John Hume slipped into sentimentalism, harking back to holidays spent in Donegal and, in particular, the rugged, rocky peninsular of Inishowen. Inishowen is in the Republic, but is the most northerly part of the island of Ireland; hills rising from the water on the horizon as you look out from the west Antrim coast. According to someone in the room, the two of them waxed lyrical about the beauty of this fist of land on the other side of the border; bonding over the shared geography of their world. Inishowen, said Hume, was "the most beautiful place in the world". "Aye, a lovely wee place."

Trimble and Hume had grown up in the Northern Ireland that existed before the anarchy. They had known peace and they wanted it back. To get there, each had decided it was time to make the leap together: Hume to jump with Trimble and Trimble to accept only the vaguest promises of IRA decommissioning. Each was placing a bet on the other but also, just as important, on their electorates to reward them for doing so. Only one side of this bet would pay out.

In his essay, "Why I Became A Conservative", Roger Scruton wrote that the romantic core of the creed was the search for the "lost experience of home", the dream of a childhood that cannot ever be fully recaptured, but can be "regained and remodelled, to reward us for all the toil of separation through which we are condemned by our original transgression". At the heart of conservatism, in other words, is love: love for things that exist or existed and must be saved. Twenty-five years ago, as Trimble and Hume approached the moment of their destiny, it is telling that their thoughts returned to this land; the home that existed before the transgression.

That morning, exhausted and perhaps a little jubilant, they were confident that they were on the verge of bringing it back. "I know I've done the right thing," Trimble said: "Aye, it's not everyone's cup of tea and it's not ideal, but it's worthwhile."

Trimble had always tried to be realistic about the peace in Northern Ireland. "It would be a dereliction of duty if I only conjured up good and generous ghosts, and failed to specify the spectres at the feast," he said eight months later, when accepting his Nobel Peace Prize.

Back then, the spectre haunting Northern Ireland was the IRA's failure to decommission its weapons. Today, it is the breakdown of the power-sharing institutions created 25 years ago, and the loss of support for the agreement among unionists. Trimble was clear at the time that the challenge was not just to decommission arms and ammunition, but also to win "hearts and minds". To do so would be key if Northern Ireland were ever to realise Trimble's greatest hope: "What we democratic politicians want in Northern Ireland is not some utopian society but a normal society," he said. This was the goal: a normal society.

This has not happened. While everyday life has returned to some level of normality in Northern Ireland, its politics remain distinctly abnormal. And that, in part, is because of the Good Friday Agreement itself.

For Trimble, parliamentary democracy was the route to normalcy. This is what the struggle against the IRA had been about: democracy over the jackboot of violent imposition. The Good Friday Agreement was the final victory in this fight, a constitutional defeat for terroristic Republicanism; confirmation of Northern Ireland's legitimacy and place in the union with Britain. And yet, democracy in Northern Ireland is not normal. Power, according to the Agreement, is always shared between the two competing tribes. Neither can govern without the other. You cannot easily kick the rascals out, because both sides must always work with the other.

Even in 1998, as Trimble wrestled with this tension in his Nobel speech, he was clear that Northern Ireland's Assembly needed to become more than a mere "congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests". Quoting the great Anglo-Irish philosopher Edmund Burke, Trimble said the assembly needed to become a "deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole." Today, the assembly is not even sitting because the leading party of unionism, the DUP, believes its wishes have been ignored. And so stasis reigns, the ambassadors of hostile interests unable to find common cause.

This is the spectre at the feast that we cannot ignore. While there is little evidence that any other settlement was possible in 1998 — or any other time — the Agreement itself helps to ensure that the hostile interests remain separate. It both reflects Northern Ireland's abnormality and entrenches it, for as long as the basic power-sharing structure remains in place, "normal" politics can't resume. And yet, if the Agreement did not exist, politics in Northern Ireland would be even more abnormal than it is today. This is Northern Ireland's tragedy.

Many of those around both Trimble and Tony Blair did not think this would be the case. The working assumption was that once the heat was drawn from the conflict, normal politics could slowly emerge and eventually replace the sectarian divide. Then a new settlement might naturally come into play. After Trimble lost his grip on power, he even switched his allegiance from the Ulster Unionist Party to the Conservative Party, convinced that this would eventually come about.

Jonathan Powell, who was Blair's chief of staff at the time and played a key role in the negotiations, tells me Trimble had told him soon after the agreement that Northern Irish politics would eventually resolve itself into normal Left-Right politics. "I thought he was right, but that hasn't happened." People were fed up with the two extremes on offer, he says, and that this explained the subsequent rise in support for the Alliance Party. "Power sharing doesn't work in the long run. Normal politics has to break through eventually, but it takes time."

Blair remains optimistic that this could still happen. "One of things I learned about the peace process is, you can create an agreement, and you can create a legal framework, and you can do the reforms and pass the laws, but that's not the same as two communities trusting each other," he said recently. "But at least if there's peace and, if we get back to some form of political stability, I think you've got the right circumstances for that reconciliation."

Yet, if anything, the divide has hardened. The largest parties in Northern Ireland today are no longer Trimble's moderate UUP and Hume's SDLP, but the hardline DUP and Sinn Féin. Meanwhile, the great losers are the Alliance Party, the one major party in Northern Ireland which seeks an end to the unionist-nationalist dichotomy. After decades of treading water, the party has recently seen its popularity jump and many believe we are witnessing the birth of a new normal in which three tribes must be brought together and not just two.

Should the Alliance continue to hoover up support, some of the basic tenets of the peace settlement would start to lose their legitimacy. Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, the votes of Alliance party MLAs at Stormont simply do not count for as much as their DUP and Sinn Fein colleagues. Power has to be shared between nationalists and unionists — not with those who refuse to define as either. This will no longer be tenable if 20-30% of Northern Ireland is voting for parties outside the divide.

This is one of the major reasons — alongside the DUP's continuing refusal to serve — why there are now calls for the Good Friday Agreement to be reformed. But those calling for reform are essentially calling for an entirely new agreement — and usually because they want to bypass the DUP. But you can't ask unionism to share power when it is a majority, and then to give up its veto the moment it becomes a minority. The Good Friday Agreement, as Blair said, can only be changed if both communities agree. And this can't happen until the current crisis has ended, which can only happen if the DUP's concerns are met — or enough voters abandon the party in protest. As Powell puts it: "You can't impose it, or change the rules in the middle of a crisis. It can only happen when the conditions are right."

But what if they never are? Either way, the great irony is that as Northern Ireland becomes more normal, the Good Friday Agreement becomes less workable. This is in large part because it has always meant different things to each side. For many nationalists it was a process. As Gerry Adams said in 1999: "The Agreement is not a peace settlement, nor does it purport to be one." Rather, he claimed, it was "the beginning of a transitional period towards Irish unification". To unionists, it was no such thing. It was a settlement, a reasonable compromise upon which a new Northern Ireland could grow.

Trimble's Peace Prize speech is remembered today largely for his remark that unionists built a solid house in the north after Irish independence, but one that was "a cold house for Catholics". Less well-remembered — but just as important — was his next sentence. "And northern nationalists, although they had a roof over their heads, seemed to us as if they meant to burn the house down."

Many northern nationalists do want the house to burn down — and legitimately so. Seeking Northern Ireland's withdrawal from the UK and absorption into the Republic is just as legitimate and noble a cause as wanting the house to remain standing forever, like some Victorian terrace connected to Great Britain on the other side of the wall. Yet, the reality of Northern Ireland's existential uncertainty means the "assembly of one nation" that Trimble so desperately wanted is an impossible dream. At heart there remain two nations, with two interests each opposed to the other. And while his imperfect and incomplete set of political compromises solved some of the most intractable problems in western Europe, it only replaced them with others.

Northern Ireland is one of the most constitutionally uncertain places on earth — by design. The Good Friday Agreement is ambiguous on how a future border poll will come about, for example, or even what Irish unity looks like. All that is said about a future referendum is that one must be called by the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland "if it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be a part of the United Kingdom". But how this might be determined is not stipulated. Nor what it would mean, should it happen. The Irish government believes all that is required for a referendum to be called is a majority in the Northern Ireland assembly. The British Government has not made its position clear. Adding further uncertainty is the fact that, once a first referendum takes place, subsequent polls can then be called every seven years: a recipe for permanent instability. No nation on earth could create any meaningful unity of purpose should its very existence be put to a public vote every seven years. The stakes to avoid a first one are therefore extraordinarily high for unionism.

But even if the cause of Irish nationalism were to triumph in a poll, it is unclear what would happen then. Once the reality of Irish unity is set out in black and white, some may be less keen — and others more.

Rory Montgomery, a member of the Irish delegation in 1998, told me it was important to remember that while the agreement was a remarkable achievement, it was also the work of imperfect humans negotiated with great haste. "This was not handed down on tablets of stone by great men." Many issues were resolved by the agreement, but many more had to be parked, chief among them how to deal with the legacies of the past and the continuing reality of sectarianism.

One of the problems today, Montgomery told me, was that the politicians in Northern Ireland had become "addicted to the constitutional question and the politics of crisis and intervention". For a small place, it continues to be treated with great solemnity, a source of conversation in London and Washington, Dublin and Brussels. "The politics has remained focused on the constitutional issue and the rivalry of the two communities," he said. "Even if Stormont was sitting for a relatively long period, there hasn't been much focus on usual politics. And you have to be honest: the performance of the institutions has been mediocre at best." It is hard to argue with this conclusion.

Back in 1998, Trimble warned that peace needed magnanimity, but also political prudence, "a willingness at times nor to be too precise or pedantic". It is not for one generation of politicians to future-proof a set of laws and strictures. They must work within the bounds of what exists, not seek to perfect the world. Trimble quotes Amos Oz, who said inconsistency was the basis of coexistence. "The heroes of tragedy driven by consistency and by righteousness, destroy each other. He who seeks total supreme justice seeks death." This is true, and yet nothing can be built on foundations that never settle. The house that Trimble and Hume built is still standing, but the running repairs are racking up.

And a great Twitter thread of the real living normality of Northern Ireland in the regeneration/change of Belfast:
https://twitter.com/mattuthompson/status/1644273675141623808

[Sheilbh]

Latest on the SNP fraud investigation - apparently the party's auditors resigned in October. Humza Yousaf said that he was not aware until he became leader (and presumably none of the other leadership candidates were either). Yousaf has said "it's certainly problemeatic, I won't deny that at all."

Fair to say that's an understatement and an organisation under investigation for fraud and financial mismanagement, then having their auditors resign raises quite a lot of questions. It feels like there's still a lot to come.

Separately a luxury campervan worth up to £100k has been seized by the police from Sturgeon's mother-in-law's home. Not clear why.

[mongers]

Latest on the SNP fraud investigation -
....snip....

Separately a luxury campervan worth up to £100k has been seized by the police from Sturgeon's mother-in-law's home. Not clear why.

Investigating police need a holiday?

[Sheilbh]

Auditor resignation was kept not just from the leadership candidates but from the National Executive Committee - which feels like it should be the body responsible for this. The party needs to file its accounts in July so need to find a new one pretty quickly:

Auditors' departure kept secret from SNP national executive
John Boothman, Marc Horne, Kieran Andrews | Video by Federica De Caria
Tuesday April 11 2023, 8.00pm, The Times

The SNP kept the resignation of the party's financial auditors secret from its own ruling council, it has emerged, leading to claims that the party has been left looking "bankrupt of morality, transparency and accountability".

The accountancy firm Johnston Carmichael stopped handling the party's account last October — while a police investigation into party finances was under way — but the news only became public on Friday.

In a surprising admission, Humza Yousaf said that he had not been informed about the firm's departure until after he won the leadership election that paved the way for him to become first minister on March 27.

It has also now emerged that the withdrawal, which came after a review of its client base, was hidden from the national executive committee (NEC), the ruling body that represents the SNP's 70,000 members.

When the auditors quit, the party was under the direction of Peter Murrell, who was then chief executive and is married to the former first minister Nicola Sturgeon.

Murrell stepped down after nearly 25 years in the post last month amid claims that he had issued misleading information about the size of the party's membership.

Last week he was arrested and questioned by police as part of an investigation into the party's finances, before being released.

The party's headquarters, close to the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh, was also raided by police.

It came after concerns that £600,000 raised by supporters specifically to fund a second independence referendum campaign had "gone missing".

Addressing the failure to inform the NEC about Johnston Carmichael, one member said the prevailing culture of secrecy had left the SNP "looking like a party completely bankrupt of morality, transparency and accountability".

They added: "The 'golden circle' within SNP HQ have scored an own goal once again by failing to relay the resignation of the auditors to the NEC.

"I struggle to see the point in the NEC when all we really are is a talking shop to deflect attention away from those who are actually making the decisions."

Speaking to journalists today in Leith, Edinburgh, Yousaf agreed it was "extraordinary" that the party had since failed to appoint a new set of auditors.

He said it would now be "challenging" for the SNP to file its 2022 accounts by the July deadline and that the party would work hard to do so.

When it was suggested to the first minister that it was "extraordinary" that he and other senior figures were not told about the auditors' resignation, he replied: "I don't disagree with the premise of your question. That's clearly why I've asked the NEC to do a review of governance and transparency."

Pressed on why the firm had removed its services, Yousaf said: "I don't think we can release that information.

"I can see with Johnston Carmichael if we're able to do so. But my job as leader of the SNP is to make sure we get auditors in place as soon as we possibly can."

Asked if the continued absence of auditors indicated party dysfunction, Yousaf said: "It's certainly problematic. I won't deny that at all."

"That is why one of the first things I did as leader on hearing this information was to instruct the party to get on with finding another auditor, and that's what we're doing."

In her first comments since Murrell's arrest, Kate Forbes, the former finance secretary who was narrowly defeated by Yousaf in last month's leadership election, said that party supporters were feeling "shock, confusion and hurt".

"Every few days, a new revelation renews the sense of astonishment," she added.

Referring to the turmoil over party finances, she wrote in The National, "We must see decisive and immediate action on internal matters. That could start with a report into the auditors' resignation, followed by other actions to boost transparency.

"After all, sunlight is the best disinfectant."

In a veiled attack on the previous regime, Forbes said that the foundations of the party had to be built on transparency, integrity and truth.

She added: "We must act impeccably, at every level of governance and every layer of government. There must be nothing with which our opponents can legitimately use to call into question our integrity."

Party insiders claim that Sturgeon had previously tried to quash questions about the party's finances from the NEC.

It is alleged that she told the recorded meeting in August 2021, a month after police launched Operation Branchform, an investigation into possible fundraising fraud: "We don't need to talk about the finances. The finances are absolutely fine."

Craig Hoy, the Scottish Conservative chairman, said that the stench emanating from the SNP's finances was becoming "more toxic by the day".

"It is an extraordinary revelation that the SNP's auditors resigned as far back as October, when senior figures have spent months maintaining that there were no questions over the party's finances," he said.

"The fact that they have apparently not yet found replacements makes this business even murkier."

Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour's deputy leader, said: "The plot continues to thicken. That the SNP did not come clean about this for months stinks to high heavens. It is deeply worrying if they have been unable to replace the auditors in all this time."

Under electoral law, the SNP must prepare annual financial statements and because its income and expenditure exceeds £250,000 a year, it must have them independently audited.

A spokesman for Johnston Carmichael said: "As a regulated organisation, we adhere to our obligations on client confidentiality and do not discuss client business."

I feel like whether it's a political party, charity or business if the board ask questions about the finance and are told by the CEO/leader that they're "absolutely fine and we don't need to go into that", I'd start updating my CV.

[Sheilbh]

Separately - provocative Janan Ganesh piece which I mostly agree with. Although my default response to any political issue is that the party needs a "blood on the carpet" moment where they annoy their base to show the country they've changed

The context for it, still a very big lead but Sunak's strategy is working and he's equal or leading Starmer on leadership ratings (which tend to be a better predictor this far out from an election). Slightly love that Liz Truss is shaded like a lockdown:

Starmer's war on the left is unfinished
The UK Labour leader must confront the soft left, not just the extremists
JANAN GANESH


It wasn't that long ago that Keir Starmer was campaigning to make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister © Charlie Bibby/PA/AFP/Getty Images
Janan Ganesh 8 HOURS AGO

Three Aprils ago, Sir Keir Starmer took over a UK Labour party in the electoral and moral pits. He lost his first 18 months to a pandemic that made the role of opposing the Conservative government seem almost unpatriotic. He has the "help" of a shadow cabinet that, as a gathering of talent in one room, no one would confuse with the Philadelphia Convention.

All criticism of Starmer has to be put in that context. But the criticism isn't frivolous. A shrinking poll lead — it is down from 27 points to around 18 under prime minister Rishi Sunak — is a circular nightmare for Labour. The smaller Starmer's likely majority after the next election, the more Conservatives will warn that leftwing backbenchers will have the casting vote in his government. This puts people off Labour, which tightens the polls further, which in turn strengthens the argument. This is how the Tories won in 2015, with Scottish Nationalist MPs in place of leftist Labour ones as the tail, and Ed Miliband in place of Starmer as the dog being wagged.

Starmer has more or less contained the hard left. But that is the lesser task. Extremists are small in number and so objectionable as to be spotted a mile off. Labour's historic problem, the author of its defeats in 1992, 2015 and too many other years, is the soft left.

Between a Tony Blair and a Jeremy Corbyn is a vast tranche of opinion that is neither extreme nor electable. You will know the type. They have private qualms about new gender norms but don't want to fall out with their children. They had misgivings about Corbyn but went along with him rather than lose the frisson of tribal belonging that politics confers on the rootless. Where the hard left has written doctrine, the soft left has icons: Justin Trudeau, Greta Thunberg and Jacinda Ardern have all filled the slot over the past decade.

The soft leftists are the people that Starmer has to upset. Again and again. And in full view of the public. Only when he is resented by most of his own party will swing voters believe he is a true moderate. This means telling trade unions that structural reform, not just spending restraint, is coming to public services. It means a clearer and more traditional line on the culture wars than anything he has summoned to date.

But it also means a more thorough reckoning with the past. The problem with Corbyn was not, as the soft left has it, that he was unelectable. It was that he was wrong on substance and kept bad company. In fact, had he been electable, Labour MPs would have been more honour-bound to oppose him, not less: to act as citizens, not party members.

Labour under Starmer is disturbingly confused on this point. Consider the reported wording of an internal resolution against Corbyn. "The Labour party's interests, and its political interests at the next general election, are not well served by Mr Corbyn running as a Labour party candidate."

Or this from shadow cabinet member Emily Thornberry, explaining that decision to the New Statesman: "In the end it is all about the movement and getting a Labour victory." The spendthrift economics, the anti-western instincts on foreign policy: none of it was wrong in principle. It just sold badly.

Labour will say two things here. One is that the Tories elected Boris Johnson as their leader, so let's call it even. No, let's not. There is no equivalence between the populist right and the Marxist left. If you find this unfair, please take it up with the electorate, who chose the one over the other by a landslide.

The other line of deflection will be that voters care about the future, not the past. This isn't true either. The two things aren't as extricable as that. The best guide to Starmer in office is Starmer in opposition. He was campaigning to make Corbyn prime minister as recently as December 12 2019. Had voters not done the work of ending the hard-left project on that election night, he would now be serving it in cabinet. Tories will bring this up with sadistic frequency as the election nears.

No one is going to believe that Labour's current leadership is extreme. The line that might stick is that it is too weak and tribal to face down extremists, or to say no to the unions. That is the eternal soft-left vice: an almost physical abhorrence of falling out with one's own. "Are we the bad guys?" is the thought that haunts it.

This explains why the British choose Labour prime ministers from the very right of the party, when they choose them at all. It explains a statistic that gets updated with metronomic predictability every 12 months. Tony Blair is the only Labour leader born in the last 107 years to win a general election.

It's one of my regrets from the Corbyn laws was that my disagreement with Corbyn was primarily on substance - the IRA stuff, the willingness to share a platform with literally anyone at pro-Palestinian events, the "our friends" meeting with Hamas and Hezbullah. He was of a type. But I always positioned it as tactics when arguing with Corbyn supporters which was wrong, but also left me without much to say after 2017 when he did better than expected.

I also see lots of bafflement every time the Tories bring up that Starmer was in Corbyn's shadow cabinet or supported him. Most people think it's obvious that Starmer isn't Corbyn, and I agree. But I think they're lining up a "will the real Keir Starmer step forward" style attack, which the hard left uses a lot - and has the virtue of being true. Starmer was in Corbyn's shadow cabinet, then kicked him out the party; Starmer won the leadership on 10 pledges and has since backed out of all of them etc etc. It's one of the reasons I think Labour really need to work on giving a bit more definition to Starmer.

[The Larch]

So if Starmer has to stiffle the whole left wing of his own party in order to succeed, why should left wing voters give him their vote if he's going to be a middle of the road moderate while claiming to represent them? Is the UK so reactionary that even a whiff of the softest leftism scares the whole voting populace into the warm embrace of the Tories?