Tag: EU

Imperialism Ireland

Is Sinn Féin’s vision for a united Ireland just a blind alley?

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Sinn Fein published their discussion document “Economic Benefits of a United Ireland”1 in November 2020; and, seeing that it’s a discussion paper for “contributing to the ongoing and exciting debate around a United Ireland,” it’s a worthwhile exercise to analyse and to critically engage with Sinn Féin’s vision for a united Ireland.

Two significant factors, Brexit and covid-19, have really accelerated the debate on reunification; and now, as stated in the document, “it is not a question about whether we can afford Irish Unity the fact is that we

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Political Economy

Economic update: July

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We are in the first moments of an economic crisis more serious than anything experienced in living memory. The World Bank’s “baseline forecast” envisages a “5.2 percent contraction in global GDP in 2020—the deepest global recession in eight decades.”[1] Even that assumes we are living through the most optimistic scenario. […]

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Current Affairs Housing Ireland Narrated

“Government of the willing” to hammer workers

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The efforts to form a “government of the willing” following the general election earlier this year rumble on. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have had to pretend to dance and engage in a courting ritual to give the impression that there are significant ideological and political differences between them, thereby requiring such a long period to produce a draft programme for government. Fianna Fáil are desperate to get into government at any cost in order to re-establish a presence in urban areas.

But what drives the state and these two main parties of the establishment is the need to thwart the desire of working people for real, meaningful change, as

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International

Leaving the EU is just the beginning

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THE BRITISH State left the European Union on the 31st of January, after nearly three years of political theatre, manoeuvring, backstabbing, and manipulation. How the ruling class now manage this process will depend very much on what the working class does. Many on the left have adopted a wait-and-see approach, thereby allowing the ruling

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International

Debt, austerity, and the European Union

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Towards the end of November the Irish media published reports of comments made by Prof. Christian Kastrop, a former associate of the German minister of finance, Wolfgang Schäuble, one of the architects of the debt crisis. Kastrop now works for the Bertelsmann Foundation, a think tank sponsored by the Bertelsmann Group, one of the principal German transnational
corporations.

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International Ireland

Seize the time

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The Brexit storm-clouds are gathering, and the political class in Dublin is in a tizzy. Having placed almost all its emphasis on the mantra of the “hard, militarised border and return to violence,” they will be deprived of any coherent argument when this fails to materialise. The problem for the […]

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International

The EU tightens its grip

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Over the course of the many referendums fought on the various EU treaties, the Irish establishment always sold the idea that neutrality and foreign-policy decisions would remain with the Irish state. But, as time progressed, those forces that strongly opposed these treaties and argued that there was only one direction […]

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