O’Conall Street

The news that the UUP and the Conservative Party are to reignite their old relationship is not I am afraid the minor political earthquake which top Tory blogger Iain Dale is describing it as.

Even after their fallout in the eighties over the Anglo Irish Agreement the parties remained sisters in Europe and soul buddies at Westminster. David Trimble was always a one nation Tory as have been the majority of UUP MPs ever elected to the commons. That Trimble (a Tory peer) is being touted as a prospective member of the shadow cabinet is hardly surprising.

Looking at it from an NI perspective it is hard to see what the UUP gains. It will not affect their Assembly presence nor will it assist in the reorganisation and rejuvenation of the party locally. Fact is the only people who can fix the UUP’s problems in NI are the UUP itself.

Things are different when you consider the implications for the Tories in Westminster. The next election could be a very tight run thing and having any number of UUP MP’s on board and ready to support the government can only be good news for Mr Cameron. He can claim to have a footprint in every corner of the UK, all be it a very small one in Scotland and Wales, becoming a truely one nation party again. What ever that means….

The UK is becoming increasingly regionalised and politics is less London centric than ever and the UK is less united than at any time since the Act of Union. You could argue that integration of political forces across the UK runs against the clear desire of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to enjoy greater autonomy and express their individual identities, social and economic priorities in a more powerful way.

Should the inevitable happen, and I believe their is an air of inevitability about all this, the one thing the UUP is going to have to watch out for are the conflicts of interest which will arise if the Tories are in government in London and the UUP are in the Executive in Belfast.

When an issue of difference arises who will they stand by?

Their Leader and Prime Minister or the people of Northern Ireland?

This is a problem the DUP are unlikely ever to have and all politics is, I am afraid, local.

Blogging councillors. What next?

Belfast’s latest young gun, the SDLP’s Cllr Niall Kelly (Balmoral DEA) has jumped into the blogosphere head first and to date his online musing are proving insightful and entertaining. I understand from Cllr N Kelly (the other being Cllr Bernie Kelly, also SDLP, also Balmoral DEA) that he intends uploading details of council business and regular news for constituents as well as his own general political commentary.

As a communications tool, blogging, digital and social media offer councillors a real opportunity to communicate in a time and cost effective manner with all their target audiences as well as allowing them to campaign on a broader range of issues online then they could ever do through traditional media.  

Check him out at BelfastStoop.com . He posted a fun Youtube video the other day on the US election which I am unashamedley uploading on O’Conall Street.  

I don’t want to moan today about the Power Sharing Executive which never meets or about the French President who came and left.

It may be summer but there is no evidence of the mood lightening in political terms on this island. In fact we are told today that Sinn Fein are willing to negotiate all summer to break the deadlock in the Executive and by Mr Adams that Ireland needs to negotiate all summer with Europe over what he describes and as the ‘dead’ Lisbon treaty. I am sure the government appreciate Mr Adam’s word of advice but am told there are more than a few TD’s believe the Sinn Fein’s priority should be the day job and the bread and butter in the North that need immediate attention.  

On a more summery theme, came across an interesting article last night about that other old chestnut, creationism. Slate.com has a piece by Christopher Hitchens about Salamanders and Creationism. It’s a great read and I have reproduced below for your intellectual enrichment.

It is extremely seldom that one has the opportunity to think a new thought about a familiar subject, let alone an original thought on a contested subject, so when I had a moment of eureka a few nights ago, my very first instinct was to distrust my very first instinct. To phrase it briefly, I was watching the astonishing TV series Planet Earth (which, by the way, contains photography of the natural world of a sort that redefines the art) and had come to the segment that deals with life underground. The subterranean caverns and rivers of our world are one of the last unexplored frontiers, and the sheer extent of the discoveries, in Mexico and Indonesia particularly, is quite enough to stagger the mind. Various creatures were found doing their thing far away from the light, and as they were caught by the camera, I noticed—in particular of the salamanders—that they had typical faces. In other words, they had mouths and muzzles and eyes arranged in the same way as most animals. Except that the eyes were denoted only by little concavities or indentations. Even as I was grasping the implications of this, the fine voice of Sir David Attenborough was telling me how many millions of years it had taken for these denizens of the underworld to lose the eyes they had once possessed.

If you follow the continuing argument between the advocates of Darwin’s natural selection theory and the partisans of creationism or “intelligent design,” you will instantly see what I am driving at. The creationists (to give them their proper name and to deny them their annoying annexation of the word intelligent) invariably speak of the eye in hushed tones. How, they demand to know, can such a sophisticated organ have gone through clumsy evolutionary stages in order to reach its current magnificence and versatility? The problem was best phrased by Darwin himself, in his essay “Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication”:

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.

His defenders, such as Michael Shermer in his excellent book Why Darwin Matters, draw upon post-Darwinian scientific advances. They do not rely on what might be loosely called “blind chance”:

Evolution also posits that modern organisms should show a variety of structures from simple to complex, reflecting an evolutionary history rather than an instantaneous creation. The human eye, for example, is the result of a long and complex pathway that goes back hundreds of millions of years. Initially a simple eyespot with a handful of light-sensitive cells that provided information to the organism about an important source of the light …

Hold it right there, says Ann Coulter in her ridiculous book Godless: The Church of Liberalism. “The interesting question is not: How did a primitive eye become a complex eye? The interesting question is: How did the ‘light-sensitive cells’ come to exist in the first place?”

The salamanders of Planet Earth appear to this layman to furnish a possibly devastating answer to that question. Humans are almost programmed to think in terms of progress and of gradual yet upward curves, even when confronted with evidence that the past includes as many great dyings out of species as it does examples of the burgeoning of them. Thus even Shermer subconsciously talks of a “pathway” that implicitly stretches ahead. But what of the creatures who turned around and headed back in the opposite direction, from complex to primitive in point of eyesight, and ended up losing even the eyes they did have?

Whoever benefits from this inquiry, it cannot possibly be Coulter or her patrons at the creationist Discovery Institute. The most they can do is to intone that “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” Whereas the likelihood that the post-ocular blindness of underground salamanders is another aspect of evolution by natural selection seems, when you think about it at all, so overwhelmingly probable as to constitute a near certainty. I wrote to professor Richard Dawkins to ask if I had stumbled on the outlines of a point, and he replied as follows:

Vestigial eyes, for example, are clear evidence that these cave salamanders must have had ancestors who were different from them—had eyes, in this case. That is evolution. Why on earth would God create a salamander with vestiges of eyes? If he wanted to create blind salamanders, why not just create blind salamanders? Why give them dummy eyes that don’t work and that look as though they were inherited from sighted ancestors? Maybe your point is a little different from this, in which case I don’t think I have seen it written down before.

I recommend for further reading the chapter on eyes and the many different ways in which they are formed that is contained in Dawkins’ Climbing Mount Improbable; also “The Blind Cave Fish’s Tale” in his Chaucerian collection The Ancestor’s Tale. I am not myself able to add anything about the formation of light cells, eyespots, and lenses, but I do think that there is a dialectical usefulness to considering the conventional arguments in reverse, as it were. For example, to the old theistic question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” we can now counterpose the findings of professor Lawrence Krauss and others, about the foreseeable heat death of the universe, the Hubble “red shift” that shows the universe’s rate of explosive expansion actually increasing, and the not-so-far-off collision of our own galaxy with Andromeda, already loomingly visible in the night sky. So, the question can and must be rephrased: “Why will our brief ’something’ so soon be replaced with nothing?” It’s only once we shake our own innate belief in linear progression and consider the many recessions we have undergone and will undergo that we can grasp the gross stupidity of those who repose their faith in divine providence and godly design.

Morton Kondrake has an excellent article on Realclearpolitics today about the numbers game for the popular vote in the democratic primary. Its worth reproducing in full below.
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Unless the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has caused him more damage than is evident, it’s impossible to see how Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) can lose the popular vote, the delegate race or the Democratic nomination to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.).

Specifically, I’ve calculated the possible popular vote in eight of the nine remaining primaries (excluding Guam), giving Clinton the benefit of every doubt, and can’t see how she gains more than 150,000 votes on Obama — not enough to catch him except in the most extreme circumstances.

Of course, it matters how you calculate Obama’s popular vote lead — or whether you give him one at all.

 The RealClearPolitics.com tally of past primaries gives Obama a lead of 501,000, excluding results in party-disqualified Florida and Michigan.

Clinton claims she has garnered more popular votes than Obama because she does count Florida — where she beat Obama by 348,117 votes — and counts her 328,151 votes in Michigan, giving him no credit for any part of the 237,762 ballots cast for “uncommitted.”

That’s patently unfair, especially since Michigan exit polls showed that if all candidates had been listed on the ballot, Clinton would have received 46 percent to Obama’s 35 percent, giving her a lead of just 65,323 votes, not 328,151.

Moreover, Clinton gives Obama no credit for any turnout in caucus states like Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington, where he led overall by an estimated 110,000. And Texas party officials report that 1 million people turned out in that state’s caucuses (separate from the primary, which she won, 51 percent to 47 percent) and supported Obama, 56 percent to 43 percent.

So, it’s complicated. Let’s summarize: To catch Obama in the popular vote, Clinton needs to gain more than 501,000 votes in the remaining nine events, or 611,000 counting Iowa, Maine Nevada and Washington.

It’s 206,700, counting Florida, but not Michigan or any caucuses; or 317,000 counting Florida and the caucuses but not Michigan. She needs only 141,377 counting Florida and Michigan (apportioned according the exit polls) but not the caucuses, or 251,600 counting Florida, Michigan and the four caucuses, but not Texas.

Can she make up any of those gaps by the end of the primaries on June 3?

Here’s how I calculated. Turnout in Democratic primaries this year has been stupendous — averaging 76 percent of Sen. John Kerry’s (Mass.) 2004 general election turnout in most states (an astounding 99 percent in Texas).

So, using that average — 76 percent of Kerry — turnout in Indiana next Tuesday should be 736,000. If Clinton wins by 52 percent to 48 percent — right now, polls show her with a 2-point lead — her vote is 383,000 to Obama’s 353,300 and she gains 29,700. If she wins Indiana by 10 points, she gains 73,600.

In North Carolina, turnout should be 1,160,000. If Obama wins by 10 points — his current lead—he gets 638,000 votes, she gets 522,000 and he wins by 116,000 votes. If he wins by just five points, it’s 58,000.

In West Virginia on May 13, turnout should be about 250,000. If Clinton wins a huge victory — 60-40 — she wins by 50,000.

In Kentucky on May 20, a 10-point Clinton victory with a 541,000-vote turnout would give her an edge of 54,100. If Oregon’s turnout is 717,000 the same day and Obama wins by just 52 percent to 48 percent, he wins by 28,700.

If turnout in Puerto Rico on June 1 is 760,000 and Clinton wins by 10 points, she gains 76,000. And if Obama wins in Montana and South Dakota on June 3 by only 52 percent to 48 percent, he gains 5,300 and 4,600, respectively.

Bottom line, if turnout in these eight races averages 76 percent of its last general election Democratic level, Clinton should garner 2,232,300 votes to Obama’s 2,176,700 and gain 55,600 on him — far, far less than she needs by any fair calculation.

If she scores a huge 10-point victory in Indiana, her vote total goes up — and his goes down — by 21,800 votes, giving her a 99,200 gain for the remaining contests. And if he wins North Carolina by just 5 points instead of 10, he loses — and she gains — 26,100 votes, so her total gain would be 151,400.

If Clinton wins in Indiana by 10 and loses North Carolina by just 5 and other results turn out as I forecast, she can catch Obama in the popular vote — barely — only if the standard counts Florida, Michigan (exit-poll- apportioned) and not any of his caucus performances.

However, if Clinton does that well next Tuesday, it might change the whole dynamic of the race — indicating that Wright’s “rants” and Clinton’s vigorous recent performances had bitten deep.

So far, though, with Obama picking up five new superdelegates Wednesday to Clinton’s one, there is no indication that Obama is cratering.

Clinton is 430 delegates short of the 2025 needed to nominate and has to capture 62 percent of the 408 pledged delegates yet to be selected and the 286 superdelegates yet to commit, while Obama needs just 295 delegates.

Consciously or unconsciously, Obama’s pastor of 20 years did his best to torpedo his parishioner’s candidacy this week. Next Tuesday, we’ll know whether the beneficiary — Clinton — has a prayer

Dr Paddy Hillery died today at the age of 84. He was the last of the old style presidents. Fair but never to inspiring and always men with a long track record in government. Things changed utterly when Mary Robinson succeeded him in 1991. The momentum for change has continued under Mary McAleese.

He will be mourned by the State as every late president should. RTE have a decent biography which is worth a read.

I was debating Bertie Ahern’s legacy on the BBC Hearts and Minds programme last Thursday with Stephen Collins and Fionnuala O’Connor when she described Bertie Ahern as the first ‘post nationalist’ Taoiseach. I parked the thought at the time partly to placate my nerves at being on TV with two highly respected journalists, partly because I found the concept genuinely thought provoking. Mick Fealty of Slugger O’Toole dropped by O’Conall Street today for a coffee and a chat (more about that later in the week) and the topic came up again. Then I saw Stephen King, Trimble’s former adviser on a similar line in the Sunday Business Post.

So where did all this ‘post nationalist’ stuff come from? As far as I remember the term first entered the political lexicon during a Hearts and Minds interview John Hume gave as SDLP Leader during the 1999 European election a year after the Good Friday Agreement. It was followed by an article which SDLP MLA John Dallat wrote in the Irish News about the same time.  John Hume used the term to illustrate the need for politics on this island to move beyond the narrow nationalisms which have dominated for too long. At the time Sinn Fein seized on the comment and tried to turn it on the SDLP claiming it meant the SDLP was no longer a ‘nationalist’ party. That their argument held no water was incidental. The North was not ready to move beyond the rhetoric of conflict and they tried to punish the SDLP for seeking to do so. For the record Hume defended his seat comfortably.

Is Bertie a ‘post nationalist’ then? Those who would argue yes say he has moved beyond the rhetoric of nationalism to canvass votes - he lead the dropping of articles two and three. That he is confident enough in his identity not to be a hostage to it. That he proved capable of engaging with other nationalisms, taking the inherent differences as a given and creating space for common ground a mutual respect to emerge. And that he put people first - jobs, education and prosperity, before narrow arguments about identity. On those grounds, they argue, definitely a postnationalist.

Bertie Ahern is a true blue Dubliner. For that matter so am I. He is a working class boy made good. Ditto here too (although he mas made much much better then me!). He is a proud republican and a committed Irish nationalist who believes in the principle of consent. So are the majority of people across this island.  As Taoiseach he claimed to be a social democrat (viva el socialismo) and was undoubtedly an internationalist. He seemed happy to explore his role as the leader of a new Ireland, prosperous, diverse and in an ever deepening dialogue with the very many people on this island who consider themselves British. Ahern, like Hume left his prejudices at the door. He appeared as interested in jobs as in policing. By design or deliberately Fianna Fail today, thanks to him, is more ‘new republican’ then ‘old republican’.

Why is this interesting then? The word on O’Conall Street is that we will not see a referendum on a united Ireland this side of 2020. Just as well, because if it is ever to succeed one thing is certain. Irish nationalists will need to have convinced a significant part of the unionist community that a yes vote is not such a bad thing and that their identity, rights and economic status will not be affected by a unitary state. In other words unity will only be true when it unites people and their representatives have a lot of talking to do before they can claim to be united. The divisions are not just in Northern Ireland. There is a fault line between North and South built on seventy years of jurisdictional disparity. In the South church and state coexist in a way which has worked well for the 26 counties but would be unsustainable in a united Ireland and several generations have ignored the North, wishing it away with the coarse remark that ‘you are all the same up there’. Southerners do not understand northern nationalists and despite a constitutional claim over the territory which lasted until ‘98, bizarrely see unionists as foreigners.

Stephen King tells the story of when Bertie Ahern apologised to the UUP delgation after they were asked to remove their poppies before a meeting with him. That was back in the run up to the agreement. Ahern was right. The poppy is precious to very many people on this island and that is something we simply need to accept. It is also means something to tens of thousends of Irish nationalists who lost their ancestors in the First World War.  To describe it as offensive is to stand there waiting to be offended. There are very many symbols, British and Irish, which will not survive in the new Ireland. I think the poppy will and so it should. But poppies won’t put money in your pocket no more than you can eat a flag.

When communities prosper they have the opportunity move on. When people’s standard of living goes up their insecurities go down. The south maybe be more postnationalist today then twenty years ago and that is partly down to its prosperity. The north can prosper too and with increased wealth, spread across the whole community, attitudes will change and priorities will shift. A stakeholder society will replace and dependency one.  Ahern saw it all happen in the South. I am sure he believes it can happen here too. Maybe that’s what Fionnuala meant when she described him as ‘post nationalist’.

The Chief Constable of Merseyside police regularly posts a webcast on topical matters. This week’s, on guns, has captured the news agenda. You can view it here.

Bernard Hogan-Howe, Chief Constable of Merseyside, said the mandatory five-year minimum sentence for possession of a firearm was being ignored by some judges.

According to the Times online:

Mr Hogan-Howe, whose force is investigating the murder last year of 11-year-old Rhys Jones, said “very heavy sentences” were essential to deter criminals and teenage gang members from carrying weapons. It was, he said, “simply wrong” for judges to overlook the legal requirement to hand down a five-year sentence.

“The big issue for me is getting the guns out of society,” Mr Hogan-Howe told The Times.

“There will always be gangs and criminals but today it is the fact that they carry guns which makes them truly intimidating. If we can get the guns out of their hands then we will make our society safer.

“The message the criminal justice system sends out about the serious consequences that flow from possessing a firearm is an important part of deterring people from carrying guns.”

The Home Office confirmed that the five-year sentence for possession of a firearm, introduced in 2004, was not being uniformly imposed around the country.

The average sentence handed down for the offence in 2005 was 47 months and only 40 per cent of offenders were given the mandatory minimum sentence that year.

So what does this tell us about the evolution of public relations?

Using a webcast cuts out the middle man (media) and gives Merseyside police total control over their message. It forces the media to report that the comments have been made on a webcast, driving traffic to their website and gives the public access to the full story not just the bits the press want to publish.

It has an added benefit in that it that the webcast remain online for a long time and can be shared. It will be interesting to see if others follow in the coming months. This is a good example of how digital media is impacting on how we communicate and disseminate our messages.

The other night I was sitting out on the patio under the crisp winter sky with a mug of Spanish hot chocolate. A perfect end to a long day on O’Conall Street.  I drifted back to an dinner I attended recently in the company of twenty or so other business people.  We enjoyed a lively and extremely constructive debate with Nigel Dodds, the Minister for Enterprise Trade and Investment. I have always recognised Dodd’s ability and to see him able to dedicate himself to the furtherance of the Northern economy was heartening. He talked extensively about the challenges facing our small region and was very open minded about how we might effect a step change in economic terms over the next five years. He was lobbied hard on the issue of corporation tax and was strongly supportive of the need to achieve a significant reduction from the British Government. He also addressed the skills challenge facing ever changing manufacturing and services sectors.

Last week at the gigis I had a number of conversations with senior business figures about the past few months. Optimistic is the only word to describe them. To a woman, and man, they are up for the new North. They are increasingly crossing the border, building deal by deal, an island economy which threatens nobody. They are also looking to the Executive for leadership and vision. They want to be incentivised to invest, encouraged to hire and to be able to profit from their own risk. That seems to be to be a fair deal. In a month when some of our traditional industries surrendered to global pressures knowing there is a new breed of manufacturing are service sector entrepreneurs in our small region determined to make a go of their businesses, right here right now, is an indication that after a lost generation the time has come to start trading.

John Simpson, the elder statesman of Northern economists was commenting just the other week that our public sector although big is no bigger percapita than Scotland’s. Whilst efficiencies are needed and their is certainly scope for a reduction in the number of public servants North of the border, the real answer is to grow the private sector allowing it to become the genuine driver in this region, making us better able to maintain the public services we hold so dear. I left that dinner pretty sure this is one thing Nigel Dodds and I can agree on.  

I  am lucky to have some great friends. The lads with whom I will travel to the Somme in February are a true band of camaraderie. In the North one man has been with me through the ups and downs of life in the ‘other Ireland’. Peter Coll and I have a Christmas tradition. We gift each other drink, good drink. Good whiskey and good wine have been exchanged over a decade and more. Peter has also gifted me a good few books. Fair deal in my mind as he is a learned barrister of some standing and I am in need of intellectual nourishment and enrichment. This year was no different and a collection of great Irish Speeches appeared under the tree on Christmas. Compiled by Richard Aldous and with a foreword by the brilliant Colm Toibin it has been delighting me for three days now.

 The compendium spans Irish politics from the late eighteenth century to date. The first words go to Henry Grattan, addressing the soon to be abolished Irish Parliament on College Green in April 1782: ‘I am now to address a free people…..’the last to An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, delivered to both houses of Parliament on the 15th of May this year:  ‘Ireland’s hour has come: a time for peace, of prosperity, of old values and new beginnings. This is the great lesson and the great gift of Irish history. This is what Ireland can give to the world.’

In between these words are the past twenty two decades of fractured politics and unfinished projects. Of blood and tears and the division of our people. Hume is there, as is Paisley (the man of peace). Adams, Carson, Yeats, deValera, Lemass, Browne, Davitt, Craig and Davis stand out. ‘I stand by the Republic’, Des O’Malley’s defining speech also catches the eye for its sheer quality as does David Trimble’s Nobel acceptance speech which so famously acknowledged that the North was for a long time ‘a cold house for Catholics’.

In 2008 many new speeches will be made. As a PR man they are the ultimate expression of ideas and for me the strongest. They may attempt to chart the next decade or simply deal with the issue of the day. All will be delivered with conviction but only one or two, if that, will become historic. 

I hope 2008 sees some historic speeches. I hope a major figure rises to challenge the elephant in the room on this island. Scanning through the two centuries in this book it is a constant theme. We achieve great things, we do great deeds but still we live with the bogeyman of sectarianism at the very table at which we dine.

It will be a brave leader that stand’s up and says it is time to stop the sectarian imperative. An even braver one that challenges the existence of the problem in the Republic as well as the North. But that politician, if it is a politician, will have done the island a great service and will have earned his or her right to sit between the covers of great books. The speech will be the start. Tackling the problem will be the revolution. Abraham Lincolon noted wisely in his Gettysburg address: ‘The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they have done here..’

That’s my big lesson from this wonderful gift. We have talked the talk. Wolftone and Hume have been vindicated in words, Paisley has found peace in his rhetoric and an Irish Prime Minister can address the mother of all Parliaments as an equal. Hope and history in the great poet’s words are beginning to rhyme on paper at least. But words without action are hollow. Great speeches are just inspirational collections of words. History remembers events. Let 2008 be the beginning of the era of fulfillment. An era which as well as witnessing great speeches sees real change. An era in which the challenges of a new Island are seen as opportunities not threats. In which the light is shone on the white elephant of sectarianism. In which our people are empowered and in which fear leaves our speeches, our politics and our lives. 

My pledge for the new year : to do my bit to point at the elephant and call it what it is, a cancer that needs treated aggressively and a cure found.

There is simply not greater gift than a book. Happy new year. 

I have been following the Irish Labour Party Conference in Wexford this weekend with interest. I owe my political training to the oldest party on this island and still have many many friends amongst its members.

Conference took a wise decision to establish a commission on potential organisation in NI. I am told the speeches were passionate and none more so then from the long term campaigner for Labour organisation north of the border, Mark Langhammer. But this is not a matter of the heart. It is as Eamon Gilmore rightly stated on RTE radio this lunchtime, a duty of all progressive parties (including Labour)  to think not just about tomorrow but about the next decade and the decade after that. The political sands of our small island are shifting and with the shift there will be an inevitable realignment of the political parties of this island. The SDLP analysis as adopted at its conference two weeks ago is that alignment will take place along the left - right divide and I agree. There is therefore a huge opportunity for progressives across this island to begin exploring common ground.

A number of Labour delegates commented in a vox-pop for RTE radio today that the left - right divide in Ireland has been blurred since the twenties. Why? because Fianna Fail captured the traditional left in Ireland during the early year’s of the State and built the most successful political movement in Europe on it. Gilmore was right when he said DeValera would be well unimpressed at some of the actions of modern FF and that Lemass would not have let the health system get to the state it is in. But in politics, as in life, possession is 9/10’s of the law and the soldiers of destiny still have the support of the natural Labour voter.

When Ronan Farren, a delegate at the Labour conference, said any splintering of the nationalist or unionist votes to accommodate another party would only benefit the two party’s most entrenched in the sectarian divisions of this region, Sinn Fein and the DUP, he was right. As no major southern party, not Labour, not FG, not FF are suggesting an abandonment of the Good Friday Agreement then the outcome of discussions about realignment will have to be about much more than simple organisation.

As the SDLP working party members, the Labour Party commission and Fianna Fail’s northern committee sit down to begin their respective deliberations, the question facing them is not simply to organise or not. They need to consider the impact of debates about unity, the challenges presented by two jurisdictions, the opportunities of greater economic and social integration and the fact that no matter what they may believe, anything coming from the south will be perceived as nationalist by the one million or so British people who live on this island. Gilmore hit the nail on the head when he said its not just about tomorrow, its about the next generation.

Real Irish republicanism and Irish labour share common roots, they look back to 1798 and have shared political platforms since. They could ignore each other as they look into the glare of twenty first century Ireland alone but I think that would be short sighted indeed.

The issue is not simply that we keep the red flag flying but that we recast Irish politics and Irish republicanism in language and polices that really can take us to a new Ireland.