Category Archives: Articles
Abstractions of reality
We are becoming used to claims that the UK might have to pay a very hefty bill in order to leave the EU.
In contrast, one and a half years ago a consultancy report (K Hubner and KLC Consulting August 2015, “Modelling Irish Unification”) claimed that Irish unity could be something of a money-making exercise – one consequence of unity would be that incomes would rise in both Irish economies in the 5-10 years after unification.
Hubner’s were conditional forecasts – KLC made certain assumptions and then forecast how the economy might respond. As the report itself concedes, “The models are abstractions of reality, embodying many assumptions”.
The sensible thing to do, therefore, is review KLC’s assumptions. Four in particular are problematic:
Keep your head on
In his excellent study of Ideology and the Irish Question, Paul Bew quoted a Ballymoney Free Press editorial of May 1912 at the height of the Irish Home Rule crisis. ‘The statement of Unionist Ulster’, it announced, ‘is that it merely wants to be let alone’. Unfortunately, ‘since Satan entered the Garden of Eden good people will not be let alone’. Unionists want to be ‘let alone’: unfortunately ‘good people will not be let alone.’
We are again at one of those moments which echoes that Ballymoney Free Press editorial. What has changed today is the sense of urgency and opportunity. Republicans are determined not to let Unionists alone on the matter of Irish unity.
EU offers instability to North, or South, or both.
Indications from the EU leaders’ summit (now not including the UK) suggest they are minded to allow a post-Brexit Northern Ireland a seamless transition back into the EU if that Northern Ireland were part of a united Ireland.
At first sight this might appear radical.
Corbyn has betrayed Labour’s noble history of liberal internationalism
A noble tradition of liberal internationalism has pumped blood to the heart of the Labour Party since its foundation. It is an essential part of the Labour story.
As a biographer of Clement Attlee, I can testify to that skein running through Labour history like an arterial vein. It was the British Labour Party that was most enthused by Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points of January 1918, which aimed to put progressive, democratic and ethical aims at the heart of international affairs. At its pinnacle, socialist internationalism even went so far to envisage a “world state” that would eradicate war and want.