Fianna Fail and national government

An Taoiseach, Brian Cowen TD, will deliver his first presidential address to a FIanna Fail Ard Feis tonight. The polls are against him and there can be little doubt that the people are too. The only glimmer appears to be a shift back in favour of the Lisbon Treaty which will have to be put to the people later this year.

Mr Cowen leads the most successful party in Western Europe. Fianna Fail have been in power for longer then any other party in Europe over the past seventy years. It is by its own admission a party of government. Being in power and staying in power is the Fianna Fail way. It has been the great achievement of this extraordinary political group that nothing has ever been allowed get in the way of the pursuit of power.

The Irish people know this. They have trusted Fianna Fail again and again to be opportunist in politics and deliver popular government. This has, at times, led to great government and at others to inner circles and big gains for a favoured few. But never has it been allowed threaten the hegemony of the State’s largest party.

Until now that is. The polls are worse then they have ever been. The public mood is more bitter then even in the dark days of the seventies and the economic reality is as serious as the crisis faced in the early 1960’s. Fianna Fail is loosing in a way it has never lost before. Their unwritten mission to stay in power at all costs is being fundamentally threatened yet there is one option which could keep them their despite their weakness – national government. The commentators have been calling for one for weeks and many on the street appear to favour the idea.

National governments are all party coalitions – a government of rivals – to paraphrase Obama. They are created at times when the future of a state is being threatened because of extraordinary circumstances. At times of war, great economic or political crisis they allow for government with a shared a simple mission – to defeat whatever is threatening the State. Churchill is perhaps the most famous leader of a national government in modern history.

Fianna Fail can fight on and be defeated or it can invite the other major parties to join it in a national government. This would be seen by many as the action of a party willing to put country first and letting the people pass judgement on their performance after this crisis has passed. However, it would also require them to behave in a way which the have not behaved before. At other times of great political challenge for the Republic, Fianna Fail has been happy to oppose on issues which really should have been above politics. That happened around the Anglo Irish Agreement for example.

An Taoiseach is a great fan of Barack Obama. I am told he talks often about the new American President’s style and approach. Obama is a great coalition builder. He dusted down the Lincoln biographies and learnt about national governments.  

Will Cowen turn about to be a coalition builder too?

Does he propose a national government and stay in power (albeit sharing power) or fight on and most probably preside over his party’s greatest defeat?

Tonight’s speech may give us the answer.

Fianna Fail slips – no SF Ard Feis bounce

Brian Cowen heads into this weekend fighting for his party’s future and battling Labour for second place behind a resurgent Fine Gael. Today’s Irish Independent / Millward Brown poll has the parties as follows:

• Fine Gael – 30%
• Fianna Fail 25% – down 17%
• Labour 22% 
• Sinn Fein 7%
• Greens 5% 

The electorate continue to Favour Eamon Gilmore (Labour) above all other leaders with a positive rating of 52%. Bad news for Sinn Fein, the poll shows no bounce for this party or the Green’s after it’s Ard Feis at the weekend.

After Mickey-bo

Yesterday the family of Michael McIlveen got justice. Four young men have been found guilty of this sectarian murder in Balllymena during the summer of 2006. Three others face convictions for lesser charges.

The town responded to his death in an unprecedented way. A series of initiatives between, churches, schools and business have transformed relationships at many levels.  Local politicians have softened their words and there are the first shoots of local community relations policy are now emerging.

There is no doubt doubt that the death of this young Catholic man was a cathartic moment for Ballymena.

What has not changed since Michael’s death is the Executive’s and more particularly the DUP and Sinn Fein’s attitude towards community relations. Neither party believe a strong regional community relations strategy is important and both have rejected the “Shared Future” proposals which had taken six years to develop. There is no indication that the two big parties will take any steps between now and the next Assembly election in 2011 to agree a way forward to tackle this huge elephant in our lives.

When a family is able to express it’s sympathy with the families of those who have been found guilty of the boy’s murder you know society is changing.

It is depressing that on this issue as with so many others the politicians seem still trapped in the past.

Education, again

Groannnnnnn. He’s not going to write about education again. What with all the job losses, the fact that the PM is about to pull the rug from under the DUP-SF coalition’s budget and the Garda refusing to leave the vaults of the Anglo Irish Bank surely there are more important things to write about then education.

Maybe so, but on O’Conall street there is a sense that this issue above all is casting a dark shadow over power sharing and if not tackled will create a more long term and serious crisis then the recession.

It is well accepted that the Minister for Education , Caitriona Ruane, is presiding over a very serious crisis. There is also little debate about the fact that she and her party must bear the lion’s share of responsibility for this situation.

Every day the papers bring us more news of trade union rebellions, ministerial retrenchment and DUP intransigence.

Over on Education for All, a blog I am involved with, people from both sides of the divide have been debating a series of principles which could break the deadlock and map a way forward.  I posted them about two weeks ago wondering if they could form the basis of an informed discussion between the UUP and the SDLP on the way forward.

If the middle ground does want to show some leadership on this issue, now is the time to act.

Old media misses the news

The shifting sands of communications were illustrated yesterday by O’Conall St. Shortly after 8.00am we posted the story that Lance Armstrong was to race in Ireland next summer.

How did we know this? Because he tweeted it!

At the time we put the story up there was only one other online record of this announcement on a Californian cycling site. 

We texted the news into BBC Northern Ireland’s Good Morning Ulster Programme (text 81771) and they reported it before nine am. We also sent an email link to the post to all the news desks and sports editors on the island, as well as posting it on Facebook and on Twitter.

The Press Association, Irish Times, BBC, RTE, Belfast Telegraph and Irish Independent sites ran the story online during the morning. Whilst we can’t say for sure that they got it from O’Conall St or from Twitter (Irish media are not ever inclined to acknowledge a blog as a source – unlike their US counterparts) we do know journalists from all of the above were reading the blog bewteen 9.00am and 11.00am, as it is very easy to track who is reading your stuff online. An Irish cycling blog which did run it acknowledged Twitter as the source.

I am willing to place a small wager that the story in Ireland came from this blog or Twitter. Other bloggers will give you plenty of examples of times when they have broken a story which has then been widely reported in the traditional press.

What is interesting is that we got the ’scoop’ not because we have great contacts in the Armstrong camp – apart from having a drink in his bar in Austin, Texas once, I have never been near anyone who knows the man – but because of the way in which Facebook, Twitter and other social digital media platforms are revolutionising the way we communicate and the way we get our news.

Last night I was able to read Sen Claire McCaskill’s tweets on a major cross party meeting she was attending with President Obama about the economy. Any analyst on Wall St, business or political reporter in New York or DC would be well advised to follow these too. Otherwise, like yesterday the professional press will be playing catch up with ordinary people.   

What a revolution!

Burnside’s replacement will be named under new rules

The UUP MLA for South Antrim, David Burnside, will leave the Assembly before the next election to pursue his business interests. His replacement will not be filled from a substitute list as has been the case to date but by the party.

Under new rules introduced last month the UUP’s nominating officer in the Assembly will name Mr Burnside’sreplacement following his formal resignation, thus making it a leadership decision.

On another very sad note, the death was announced today of former UUP MLA, James Leslie. Mr Leslie was a gentleman. Our sympathies go to his family and friends.

Lance Armstrong to race in Ireland

Lance Armstrong announced late last night that he will be racing in the Tour of Ireland this year. “Lastly, today we announced we’re doing the Tour of Ireland and the LS Global Summit will immediately follow the race. Can’t wait!!” were his own words posted on Twitter just a few hours ago. I am one of the 158,405 people who follow his tweets as he makes one of the greatest sporting comebacks of all time.

Armstrong is back in the saddle to promote his cancer foundation, Livestrong. The foundations global summit will take place in Dublin from the 24th to 29th August. Watch the video below for all the details. The global summit is being supported with the Irish government and the Irish Cancer Society.

So there you go. Twitter and Youtube have the news first!

O’Conall Street’s award winning cousin

Yes people.

There is blogging greatness in my blood, no two ways about it.

I can hear my late grandfather proclaiming aloud his conviction that some day, one of his offspring would master the English language!.

The honour went to my beautiful cousin Fiona McCann who’s blog, pursued by a bear, was named Ireland’s best Arts and Culture blog at the Irish awards in Cork last night.

O’Conall St is going to spend the evening basking in Ms McCann’s reflected glory.

As for Brendan, the grandfather, I strongly suspect the boy from the Falls with a love of Shakespeare was looking down on the ’ little bear’ last night with a wry smile and a glass of something strong.

Big hurrah also to my old Labour Youth comrade, Suzy Byrne, who was crowned queen blogger for her insightful and always entertaining clucking on Maman Poulet.

Gerry Adams big plan. Or is it?

I watched Gerry Adams presidential address earlier and was struck by his latest play for the hearts and votes of the southern electorate. He came to the RDS to call for a realignment of Irish politics on the left to defeat what he described as the corruption of Fianna Fail.

The SF leader’s other big theme was the need to create a global movement in favour of a united Ireland.  SF will host ‘major’ conferences on the issue in the US and Britain over the next year.

What about his appeal to the parties of the left (Irish Labour, the SDLP, the Greens, etc) to support his ‘new politics’?.

He may well find there is very little interest when he knocks on their doors. They will likely remind Mr Adam’s that in the 2003 Assembly election he continuously attached the SDLP’s labour policies and in the last election south of the border made clear his party’s preference to support a Fianna Fail led coalition and his disinterest in the Labour party and labour politics. This is not to mention the fact that Labour has seen its support double in the polls and SF is not getting any bounce from the current political and economic crisis. Would Gerry be happy to play second fiddle to Eamon Gilmore (a former member of the Workers Party) in a future Irish government?

Creating a global coalition in favour of a united Ireland might well keep Mr Adam’s diary full. He does like his international travel and you cannot hope to be taken seriously as a major peacemaker if you are not on the TV couches on at least three continents every year.

The only problem with his plan is that it will not progress the cause of irish unity one inch. He can call for Green Papers in the Dailand the ‘engagement’ of the Bristish government till his beard turns black again but under the Good Friday Agreement the only people who are going to make a united Ireland possible are the people of Ireland and more specifically a majority voting in favour of one in Northern Ireland. This brings the debate right back home. If Sinn Fein are really serious about progressing unity then they need to start working on building relationships in the North. The million or so British citizens who also call the island of Ireland home are the people who need convinced. They are the ‘Irish nationals’ who need brought back into the Irish nation. They are Mr Adam’s neighbours, fellow Ulstermen and women. It is interesting that at no time did he address them during his leaders speech.

This is something he might want to reflect on as he travels the world next year. Meantime the rest of this island’s polticians, North and South, will try and figure out ways of getting Irish people back to work.

Partition(ism)?

A scroll down through my friends the status updates on Facebook illustrates just how irrelevant the border is becoming on this island. Just this morning I woke up to news of a Newry friends night in a Dublin theatre and a Meath residents concert report from Belfast. Look back through the week and its a constant stream of Dublin – Belfast – Cork – Dublin and vice-versa. Not to mention the compulsory migration of Belfast to Donegal every weekend. I had no Dublin trip this week but have two next and at least one the week after.

The BBC’s Jim Fitzpatrick has resisted the temptation to join Facebook. He prefers the weekly email to keep in touch. The Politics show email came bouncing into my inbox last night with news that Jim too would be spending the weekend in Dublin at the Sinn Fein Ard Feis. This had got him thinking about Martin McGuinness’ statement on the evil of partitionism recently. Jim was wondering what partitionsim actually meant?:

Upon consulting the Oxford English Dictionary I found the definition for partition: “division into parts, especially the division of a country into self-governing parts.”  But there is no mention of an “ism”.

Some more flicking and I discovered that “ism” is a suffix deriving from the Greek “ismos” and has several potential ways of adding meaning to a noun:

1 denoting an action or its result: baptism.

2 denoting a state or quality: barbarism.

3 denoting a system, principle, or ideological movement: Anglicanism.

4 denoting a basis for prejudice or discrimination: racism.

5 denoting a peculiarity in language: colloquialism.

6 denoting a pathological condition: alcoholism.

So, is partitionism a pathological condition akin to alcoholism? Hello my name is Martin and I’m a partitionist.  Or is it more of an ideological movement such as Anglicanism or Catholicism?  This border is the one true border; I shall worship no other boundaries.  Or maybe it is a basis for prejudice like racism?  I hate northerners/southerners! (delete as appropriate).

Mr McGuinness used the term in denouncing southern politicians who had criticised citizens of the Republic for shopping in Northern Ireland.  Not only were they wrong, he suggested, but what they were espousing was evil.  In that context, you’d have to say his meaning is essentially a combination of the ideology with the prejudice bit, a nasty and discriminatory belief system.

‘Pernicious’

But how widespread is this pernicious philosophy?  It’s a question Martin McGuinness may want to consider as he heads for Dublin this weekend with party colleagues for Sinn Fein’s Ard Fheis.  Is it confined to the Dublin 4 political class, or do the tentacles of partitionism reach into the four corners of the four provinces?

For what its worth the view on O’Conall St is that way many of our elected representatives North and South spend way too much time worrying about the border on the map without doing anything about the real borders on this island – the ones in peoples minds.