O’Conall Street

Thank’s to the efforts of the ICAI, ERINI and the Industrial Task Force the campaign for a lower rate of corporation tax in NI has now been reduced to a political one. It is up to the northern executive with Dublin’s support to persuade the British government that a reduced rate should be granted. There are no other policy or economic arguments left, just political intransigence.

Dr Garrett Fitzgerald has an excellent article in today’s Irish Times(subs needed) in which he argues that Unionists have squandered several good political opportunities to kick start the Northern Economy. I don’t disagree with him although I would add that Sinn Fein has shown no interest what so ever over the past decade in economic policy. All through the negotiations leading up to the Good Friday Agreement it was the SDLP which sought to put the economy on the agenda.

That said with the Ian Paisley’s resignation announcement this week it is very unlikely that May deadline for the devolution of policing and justice powers will be met. This creates an opportunity to bargain again with the British. Peter Robinson as First Minister would be well advised to test his bargaining power with London to it’s limits in the course of the final negotiations around this issue.

Irrespective of the above London has a major role to play in ensuring the investment conference in Belfast at the beginning of May is a success. This is unlikely to be the case unless they show some movement on a decent package of fiscal incentives for NI. The ICAI floated the idea of attractive R&D tax credits at the Assembly’s Finance and Personnel Committee last week. Such a move would be a clear sign to potential investors that the UK Government is serious about supporting economic development in the North and that they are willing to concede the principle of variable rates of business tax within the UK.

 A couple of Irish boys entered the PR pantheon of the greats for a campaign which was described by the Guardian Media Awards  judges as showing “bold disregard for conventional marketing techniques”

The creative PR brains behind Kentucky Fried Chicken’s ‘Face From Space’ are Nick Woods and James Kelly, both colleagues of mine at Weber Shandwick. James is half Ballymena and Nick hails from Holywood, Co Down. Weber Shadwick shunned the competition with a stunt designed to capture a global audience. “It enabled the brand to gain worldwide attention without the complication of language” the judges said.

The giant 87,500 square foot KFC logo was assembled in the Nevada desert last year and claimed to be the first brand logo visible from space.

The Weber Shandwick team faced huge operational difficulties which started with trying to find a supplier who could build the thing and getting right materials in the right colours. The original build site flooded two weeks before launch and the whole thing had to be shifted from Utah to Nevada. The team hired a commercial satellite to take images from space and worked very hard to keep a lid on the idea until they were ready to launch one story around the world at one moment in time.

They worked up two stories, worlds biggest logo and first logo visible from space. The trick was they could both only be told by showing the image. The story being the image meant cultural and language barriers were instantly overcome.

The story was launched out of New York via the international wires, in London via UK/Euro wires and out of Shanghai for Asia and got picked up everywhere. And I mean everywhere - every country you can think of, TV, print, radio, online, media sites, social network sites and consumer blogs. Google the image and its still there. Go onto Youtube and you can watch it being built as the clip above demonstrates.

The end result was huge opportunities to see (literally billions globally), an enormous return on investment, a number of awards in Europe the US and a very happy client.

On Tuesday it was all about Paisley, his dark years, ageing body and a final conversion to the politics of cooperation. Last night he turned up at the official opening of Victoria Square alongside the Deputy First Minister, the Minister for Social Development, the Lord Mayor and a very long line of dignitaries to do the honours and let the trading begin. The place was heaving with the who’s who of Belfast. It took political leadership to allow the Victoria Street scheme to proceed and to his credit, Nigel Dodds, then Minister for Social Development took the right decision when he gave it the go ahead at the turn of the Millennium against the advice of Planning Service. However when the speeches started but nobody seemed to interested in what the politicians had to say. Even Ian Paisley was ignored. The lure of the largest House of Frazer in these islands was much stronger.

One of our MLAs commented to me that consumerism is driving this city and capitalism is the ideology that draws the crowd. It is hard to disagree. As the war generation bows out without too many people caring, the younger politicos in our midst can see the need to work with business, creating jobs and providing choice. The politics of protest and redundant ideology are engaging nobody. Even the politics of peace are taken for granted. In today’s Belfast young people in particular want to know what you are going to do tomorrow and how that is going to make them better off.

The Belfast Telegraph today leads with the story that Victoria Square may open on the 12th of July this year. Yesterday Paisley’s wide back donned the front page, today news is of the commercialisation of his sacred day. Lads, Yasmin Le Bon is even better in the flesh and the House of Frazer has Creme de la Mer, which is very important I am told.   

Belfast’s new brand will be unveiled later this spring. Change is everywhere and a day is very long time in this vibrant city of ours.

The guys at Real Clear Politics have some great analysis on yesterday’s Clinton comeback. In essence they argue that the pendulum of momentum has swung back to her in the key demographic groups.  

To begin Clinton has won back her core support, some of which she had hemorrhaged since Wisconsin. Meanwhile Obama returned to his pre Super Tuesday demographics and failed to hold his recent converts. It is unclear from the commentary why this has happened. The consensus remains that Obama is out campaigning Clinton and still ahead in the communications war. He does also remain ahead on delegates. Maybe the Chicago scandal brewing all week impacted on his ratings in key Ohio groups although most suggest this is itself would not enough. Jack Nicholas’ late intervention gave the Clinton campaign their first coup in digital and social media. His celebrity value increased his advocacy quotient enough to ensure his Youtube clip got massive broadcast coverage also. O’Conall Street has been arguing that this is a key campaign battleground and it may well be that the Clinton campaign are now finally coming to terms with advocate centered campaigning.  

For those of you interested in the stats. Here is how Jay Cost from Real Clear Politics sees it:

Typical for a southern contest - Clinton won white men (here Obama did better among white men than he has in other southern contests) and white Protestants. She did enjoy notable improvement in her standing among wealthier voters and Independents - two groups that Obama typically wins in the North or the South.

What of minority voters, namely Hispanics and African Americans? They performed largely as we have come to expect. In Texas, Obama won African Americans 83-16, which is about what he has done time and again. In Ohio, he won them 87-13. Clinton won Hispanics 67-31 in Texas - again consistent with how she has performed to date.

What can we conclude from all of this? It should be clear that Texas and Ohio performed in a manner roughly consistent with the states prior to Wisconsin. From this, we might infer that any momentum that Obama developed after the Potomac Primary was not carried through yesterday. Wisconsin did not help him in Texas and Ohio - as Virginia, Maryland, and DC seemed to help him in Wisconsin. The states voting yesterday seemed to vote “normally.” Over the next few days, I’ll explore this in a bit more depth - making use of the vote totals as they become finalized.

Another point. Last night Clinton made only modest gains among the pledged delegates. As of this writing, no estimate for the delegate allocation in Texas was available, but through the other three states Clinton only netted 26 pledged delegates. This bodes well for Obama, and it is consistent with what we had expected.

However, with some votes left to be counted in all four states, Clinton netted about 330,000 votes on Obama. Those RCP popular vote counts have shifted. Clinton cut Obama’s lead that excludes Florida and Michigan by more than 30%; she cut the lead that includes Florida by more than 50%; and (as of this writing) she seems to have erased Obama’s lead in the count that includes Florida and Michigan.

This definitely puts her in striking distance of the popular vote lead that includes Florida. She has to win the remaining vote by about 6 points to draw even with him on that count. While it is far from assured that she will do this, it is quite plausible. [She'll have to win by about 10 points to draw even in the count that excludes Florida and Michigan - so that remains more difficult for her to achieve. I'll offer more precise estimates on all these figures after the votes have been fully tabulated.] If she does eliminate it, I think she will have an argument to take to the super delegates. That’s not to say it is the more compelling argument; Obama will have a good one of his own. The point is that if she catches him in the vote count that includes Florida, she will have an angle on victory. She took a big step toward catching him last night.

Final point. The Obama campaign is proclaiming they won the Texas caucus by double digits. Indeed, that seems to be the case. Nevertheless, they need to be careful not to proclaim this too loudly. How will it look if Clinton wins a majority of the more than 2.5 million Texans who voted in the primary, but Obama wins the caucus in which about 100,000 people participated? That might help Clinton because it is evidence that the caucuses are not a good gauge of voter preferences. Obama needs to talk up his pledged delegate lead, without reminding people of how it is heavily dependent upon the caucuses. The Clinton camp is going to start attacking these caucuses.

The end has come.

After a lifetime in public life Northern Ireland’s First Minister and DUP Leader Ian Paisley is to retire this May. In the end he saw the light and put a sometimes dark past behind him. I guess that’s all that matters.

I first met him over a decade ago. Dr No was the man who promised to smash the Good Friday Agreement and everything it stood for yet within four years he was working responsibly with Brid Rodgers the new Northern Minister for Agriculture. Publicly he was prickly but professional, a good chairperson of Agriculture Commitee who knew where to draw the line between his oppositionist politics and his role in the new legislature. In private, and the were many meetings, he was cooperative and often charming. A few years later, like Caesar, he reached his Rubicon and like the great roman general crossed it. Things would never be the same.

Paisley is probably the finest orator I have ever witnessed.  He has a transformational personality and the ability to carry an audience like few others. In the past year he used his God given talent for good, for decades his messages were different. His people trusted him and will miss him greatly. No other man could have led them into government with Sinn Fein or turned his rhetorical sword into a plougshare and kept face. At times he sounded like he had fallen out of a 19th century history book. Soon he will be the subject of 21st century ones.  

The autumn will bring a Northern Ireland without any of the lead protagonists of the war years in power. The lieutenants are now at the helm, McGuinness, Durkan, Empey and probably Robinson will shape a new North on the legacy of Hume, Mallon, Paisley, Adams and Trimble. Snapping close at their heals is a generation which played no part in starting the conflict. When things change, they change utterly.

For what it’s worth I think the region will progress much as it has since the dye was cast a decade ago on Good Friday.  Now that the symbolism is giving way to the substance I would like to see real leadership from our executive and the two major parties at its helm. Our children don’t know what will happen in 2009 when the eleven plus is gone. Our divided communities are still looking for a road map out of the divisions that are so ingrained and the prejudices which are so pervasive. The Business community want a signal that it is time to invest and everyone is looking for some real return on the trust we all place in our elected representatives.

Whether a super unionist party is now inevitable is tomorrow’s question. Tonight I am happy to leave Paisley and his people to reflect on a full life.

Great article in today’s Washington Post which can be viewed on Real Clear Politics  about the democratic endgame. E.J. Dionne from the Brookings Institute takes a look at the dynamic which is driving Obama and how Clinton could have been guaranteed the nomination against anyone else.

According to E.J., if Obama prevails, historians will see him as the first Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt to bring a whole new constituency into the system. That, the political scientists tell us, is how realignments happen.

The article goes on: Obama changed the dynamic in another way: As my Brookings Institution colleague (and Clinton supporter) William Galston says, Clinton ran the last campaign of the 20th century while Obama ran the first campaign of the 21st century. Galston argues that Clinton ran a first-rate version of the last century’s campaign — her fundraising by past standards was impressive.

But Obama one-upped her by understanding the new possibilities of modern communications. It wasn’t just that he outperformed Clinton by raising so much money online, he also exploited the social networking sites (and built one of his own), and understood the interaction between virtual communities and real communities.

Obama reached out to bloggers without pandering to them. In 2005, the blogosphere went after Sen. Pat Leahy for supporting the nomination of John Roberts as chief justice. Although Obama opposed Roberts, he defended Leahy against criticisms he called “knee-jerk,” “unfair,” and “dogmatic.”

But Obama took an additional step, as Matt Bai reports in his essential book on the new Democratic politics, “The Argument.” Obama offered a long post of his own on Markos Moulitsas’ Daily Kos site declaring that Americans are “suspicious of labels and suspicious of jargon” and that Democrats should stand for “thoughtfulness and openness.”

At a stroke (as it were), Obama did two things at once. He established himself as a unifier capable of, as he likes to say, “disagreeing without being disagreeable.” And he demonstrated his respect for the blogosphere by arguing with its members in their own space.

Because the Clinton campaign failed to anticipate the imperatives of a race against Obama, it is only in the last two weeks that she has managed to move to offense. Her campaign has gone back to its basic argument that, love her or not, Clinton is the experienced fighter who can be trusted to deal with a nasty world and a decaying economy. She’s trying to turn Obama’s newness into inexperience, his eloquence into slickness, and his conciliatory nature into a form of softness. It is no accident that her “red phone” ad about her readiness to be president was created by a veteran of Mondale’s campaign who had made a similar ad against Gary Hart in 1984.

This is not the campaign Clinton hoped to run, but it’s the one approach she has left, and it’s had the effect of forcing Obama to respond to her. You wonder what would have happened if she had adjusted earlier.

El Alamo is nestled in the heart of Texas. The famous last stand of a band of brothers and this week Hillary’s own. Very late in the day some eminent advocates for the former first lady have piled in with their own Black Eyed Peas appeal to the wavering Democrats in Ohio and Texas.

Big Stephen at Weber Shandwick had this one ready for me on my return from the Western Front. The lad’s (Feraghal O’Boyle, Ronan O’Brien, David Leach, Fiachra O’Brien, Michael McLoughlin, Aidan Culhane and myself) are back at the day job with a weekend full of memories. Somehow youth has never seemed more precious and war more tragic. This is not the time to take a position on any particular conflict but it is worth remembering that for every 100 soldiers in an army today less then five will fight on the front line. Back in 1916 90 would have experienced the sharp end of close quarter fighting.

At the Menin Gate last night at 8.00pm the local fire brigade sounded the last post as they have done every night since Nov 11th 1918. Only Hitler interrupted them for a brief few years, but the day the Nazi’s left the firemen returned. They will be there tonight and tomorrow night again remembering those who gave their tomorrow’s so we can have our today’s.

The drive from Flanders to the Somme takes you along the western front’s most famous sites. Arriving in the Somme valley, seeing the 74,000 names at Thiepval and acknowledging the epic achievements of the 36th Ulster Division, remembered at the Ulster Tower is thought provoking and utterly sobering. The blood sacrifice of the huge international army is everywhere. I counted 83 cemeteries just and forty seven nationalities.

Irishmen are everywhere. In the 16th Irish Division the fallen from ‘nationalist’ Ireland lie side by side with comrades from the UK, India, South Africa, Morrocco, France, Belgium, Canada and many more. Many of the states have since decided to erect their own memorials to the soldiers of the Great War. The finest is undoubtedly in Vimy where Canada built the most wonderful monument to its war dead. We arrived there from the living memorial that is the National South African monument at Devilles Wood. A wonderful circular building it makes no bones about South Africa’s own difficult history since the first world war. It’s a monument to everyone who went to war for the African state. From the Afrikaners in the Somme trenches to the ANC activists who fought for democracy, the building quite literally squares the circle and allows the modern republic to remember without undermining itself in any way.

The South African visit was a welcome boost after our pilgrimage to the only monument to the 16th Irish Division in the Somme. Nestled in the church grounds in Guilemont is a celtic cross. Do cum gloire Dé agus onora na hEireann (for the glory of god and the honour of Ireland) is the epitaph to the thousands who fell between the 3rd and 9th of September 1916 on the green fields of France. It is in stark contrast with the Ulster tower built within two years of the establishment of Northern Ireland and opened by the embodiment of the new jurisdiction, Edward Carson. They were quick to remember, it seems the ‘Free State’ was in a hurry to forget.

The flags of so many nations still fly today in France and Belgium. Some are still in the commonwealth although many are not. The empire is gone, Europe is at peace and still the flag that is missing is that of Ireland. Nowhere is the Republic of Ireland remembering its dead as a sovereign and independent state. The peace tower at Messine is wonderful and a fitting tribute to the first battle in which the two traditions fought side by side but it is ultimately a monument to peace and reconciliation on the island of Ireland. It is surely time the Republic of Ireland, free, confident and proud take its place amongst the modern states to honour its sons who went to war for Ireland and who made the ultimate sacrifice.

We sat down beside young Willie McBride yesterday. He lies on the banks of the river Aucre in Authille Cemetery alongside Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindis and a lone German soldier.

Fearghal has us off to the Messine battlefield this morning. Ronan O’Brien has been looking forward to retracing William Redmond’s last hours. Like his fellow nationalist MP Tom Kettle who fell at the Somme his loss was a huge blow to the  16th Irish and the 36th Ulster. Yet another great Irishman down in a war some prefer to forget.