Theresa May, the right-wing prime minister of the United Kingdom and a politician who couldn’t find her country’s legacy colony on the island of Ireland if you handed her a map with the occupied territory marked in red marker and a hectoring sat-nav screaming at her to look to the north-west, has announced a general election for the 8th of June. By all accounts the leader of the Tories is hoping to exploit her high polling numbers over the Labour Party opposition led by Jeremy Corbyn, the socialist bête noire of the metropolitan classes, to win a decisive majority in the House of Commons. With the Conservative Party exercising unfettered control at Westminster the premier will be able to ride rough-shod over the remaining resistance to Britain’s crash-and-burn exit from the European Union.
The option of a so-called “soft Brexit” solution for UK-EU (and UK-Ireland) relations can now be regarded as the dying dream of the last rational voices in British politics as the right-leaning hegemony of Greater England drags the Welsh and Scots kicking and screaming towards the pink-globed vision of Empire 2.0. Well, Scotland at least. Wales seems to be well along the road of ideological assimilation, language and culture notwithstanding. UKIP, Britain’s equivalent of the Democratic Unionist Party (or France’s Front national), has seven seats in the National Assembly for Wales, the highest electoral profile for the party in Britain outside of its (soon to be ended) membership of the European Parliament.
And what of Ireland? Or more specifically, what of the British Occupied North where delicate negotiations to restore the peace-borne regional assembly and power-sharing executive are in crisis mode? Well, fuck you, Paddy. England’s green and pleasant land weighs considerably heavier on the scales of political judgement than stability in the United Kingdom’s inherently unstable parastate of “Ulster”. So a general election in the UK means one for our own sundered Fourth Field as well, fresh on the heels of the recent Stormont poll where Sinn Féin, and to a lesser extent the SDLP, gave Irish citizens in the north-east of the country ample opportunity to demonstrate their anger and frustration with British and unionist duplicity. Will a Westminster vote in the Six Counties swing on anti- or pro-Brexit campaigning and sentiment? Will the mainstream pro-union parties, the DUP and UUP, cobble together a pan-unionist axis to thwart the rising tide of nationalist and progressive opinion? Will journalists and opinion writers in London take to Google to once again type in the words “What is Stormont?”.
A counter-Brexit election, a pro-EU plebiscite, a border poll by proxy. The 8th of June may be all of these things and more. One thing is for sure. The final liberation and reunification of our island nation has never been so close. And we have the xenophobic, empire-nostalgic establishment and press in Britain to thank for that. Cheers, mate!
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.jsHate it when sinners call it “occupied Ireland” – that’s what is called democracy. You’ll never be happy until we’re ruled by left wing Sinn Fein nitters who know nothing whatsoever about running a country. Anyhow May is following the will of Brit people and rightly so – she was a remainer afterall. Every party was calling for A GE they’ve got what they wanted – now look at the hypocrisy. You’ll never be able to please everyone – that phenomenon has showed itself to be true once again.
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Couple of points Pol, T.May was a remainder, true. So was the leadership at the time. There was an unseemly bun fight in Tory leadership, remember Gove knifing Johnston, Ledsom appearing more out of her depth than she did during the Brexit debates. I felt she was there as they needed somebody that was genuinely for Brexit. When she dropped out the podium was vacant. T.May just picked up the microphone, no vote.
T. May and B. Johnson would have displayed any principle (they both have pockets fair bursting with a variety) that would allow them to hold the shitty end of any stick that had power attached to the other end. Look how she flipped and flopped over single market, different types of Brexit. Not until 19th June did she come down solidly on a Brexit type, “no deal better than a bad deal”. I took that as a power shift in the ideologues that prop her up. Watch the wording of the manifesto and words over Brexit. Any mention again of soft brexit or single market and we know she was got at, making a snap election her only chance of maintaining power. Disgruntlers in the background Hunt, Johnson, Gove, Davis.
The main thing most parties wanted was not a GE but a vote in parliament on the deal gained with the EU. Mz May wanted to skip that by using some wheeze Henry VIII used, this was before the union of crowns and the union of parliaments. So I do not see this as democracy. It makes a joke out of the fixed term parliament, that she wholeheartedly supported, to boot. This has nothing to do with the benefit of the countries in the Union and everything to do with Theresa May. Just my opinion.
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+1 Alan. Particularly when one factors in that she and her spokespeople up to the weekend adamantly ruled out the option of an election (and as you say the gutting of the fixed term parliaments act is particularly striking).
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Another big plus from the snap election is that it takes the new fixed term election beyond brexit and perhaps allow the government to try and mitigate some of the brexit fallout. Perhaps another round of QE, a feel good factor, a further weakening of the pound and good for exports. But I’ve given up trying to second guess (nearly).
We in Scotland still have hope and can see a different horizon, surely enough of us see it now. The people in England that voted remain have a dismal outlook, especially the young who were denied a vote. I wonder what a long hot summer will bring.
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Sorry 19th January
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Occupation by a foreign power is democracy? Sorry?
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A UK program I saw this afternoon after TM’s announcement, featured in order of appearance, 1. TM, 2. Corbyn, 3. Nicola Sturgeon, 4. the LibDem fellow whatever he’s called. Nothing regarding N.Ireland or Wales.
I conclude that from a British (read ‘English’ or maybe ‘London Media’) POV, Wales is (sadly!) irrelevant, as you say, well down the road to assimilation, while N.I. is simply beyond the Pale now, a ‘foreign place’ they can’t be bothered with anymore. Gibraltar is probably closer to their hearts …
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Macronatrix, you’re right Wales, N Ireland and Scotland are irrelevant regions to Westminster and most of the press. The LibDem guy is called Tim Fallon btw. Nicola Sturgeon would only have been included to see her wrong footed by today’s events. Scotland used to have relevance, when Scotland returned London parties. As soon as SNP were returned we were an irrelevance.
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Yep, it’s amazing how peripheral Scotland and NI are – there’s not even the cosmetic mention of them. They just don’t figure.
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Wales is in an odd situation. Linguistically the strongest of the Celtic nations, politically just ahead of Cornwall and Brittany and a long way behind Scotland and Ireland. Or even Mann. I cannot really explain it though I have read plenty of political and cultural treatises on it.
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I would like to see the Brexit vote across Wales. Wales carries a large input of people from over the border, Birmingham, Midlands, Cheshire etc did this have an influence on the Brexit result? My own personal experience of non Scottish born voters preference is one of overwhelming independence support and pro EU.
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I too find Wales a puzzle, and I read several Welsh blogs fairly regularly (including some in Welsh which I can read fairly well). I’m not aware of any serious ‘indy’ politics in Kernow these days, but then I’m a bit out of the loop now.
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Short of Mebyon Kernow there’s not much, and even they don’t “officially” campaign for independence. Cornish nationalism is an odd thing, it’s loud but has little political clout behind it
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As I said, in a recent post on here: “Our Day will come”. It has almost arrived. The utmost care must now be taken with the Republican politics of the Northern situation. A single, simple mistake, could nullify, as it has done before, all that might be achievable. In particular, the Republican factions, outwith SF, in the North, have got to exercise restraint, until it is very clear which way the wind is blowing. Nothing would suit the London Government more than a breakdown of the peace agreement and a resumption of armed struggle. This time around, the Ballot box is a lot mightier than the Armalite. We are now so tantalisingly close, to a final outcome. Brains, not guns, are paramount. The Unionist factions are now staring history in the face, and history will not be kind to them. The danger is that they will lash out, preferring suicide to “Surrender”. If the peace breaks down, it should not be from the Republican side. Everyone needs to understand that we are now into the end game, the “Downfall”, and that we have almost won. Much thinking is now needed. It is a time of great danger, but also of great hope. Remember the 30,000 Irish resistants who passed through the jails during the long war, the injured, the maimed, and the dead. Cemeteries full of them. They suffered, to get things this far. let it not be in vain. let it not be a false dawn. let it be “Our day will Come”. Steadfastness, determination, and strong and correct politics, will see Republicanism through this. It is now simply a matter of time.
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I agree. One “Omagh”, one “Enniskillen” would undo everything achieved so far and set us back years or decades. Quite aside from the cost in human life and suffering.
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Brexit will be the undoing of the UK. Scotland and 6 counties will be gone by 2030 I predict.
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Fingers crossed.
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Labour will get slaughtered. Jeremy Corbyn will have to resign this time. He will have no excuse. UKIP is done having achieved their purpose and are now rudderless. Interesting to see SNPs performance and appetite for indyref2.
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Hopefully the SNP will do the same again or better. The Tories might be able to exploit the pro-union vote in Scotland with Labour in trouble and UKIP sidelined. They could gain back a few seats but hopefully not. Tory leader Ruth Davidson’s dithering on the “rape clause” in the recent social welfare reform rules is hemorrhaging support and sympathy. The Scots loathe the measure. Labour in Scotland seems to be in electoral freefall.
I wonder will Plaid Cymru do any better? The party seems stuck, assailed by Labour, Tories, Lib Dems and UKIP, unable to make electoral space for itself.
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Things are well under way for the upcoming council elections. The Tories have made it a litmus test for a indyref2. If the main union parties can be given a gubbing in this election we expect more pro independence Labour and Conservative to break ranks for the general election. Mundell, the Tory sec. of state has less than a 800 votes keeping him there. Carmichael, LibDem, is only held there with just over 800 votes. These must be taken.
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If the SNP lose seats (and I think they will) it will be used by Tories as an excise to push an indyref further away.
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Yes, I would be surprised if Carmichael holds his seat. I’m not sure about Murray 2600 majority might be enough. The Greens and SNP are working together. The Greens are not going to field any candidate in Dumfries, David Mundell, leaving it a straight SNP v Tory. I think, hope, he is toast. He is also under investigation over election expenses which may also get rid of him.
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In Tom Stoppard’s great play “Jumpers”, a characters says (paraphrasing Stalin), “Democracy is in the counting, not the voting”. There are ample grounds for doubting the integrity of western elections and referendums. For example, in the 2009 Irish European Parliament election in Connacht Ulster, the media reported that a recount revealed that three thousand votes had been “misallocated”, i.e. taken from one candidate and given to another. Apart from the scandal itself, the really disturbing thing about this episode was the blase attitude of the media. They didn’t make this a headline story- merely mentioned it in passing, as if it were just one of those things. And the candidate from whom the votes were stolen says the Garda made no atttempt to seriously investigate the matter.
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And it’s not just in Ireland that the system is far from watertight. A British high court judge stated that the postal voting system makes vote fraud a cinch in Britain So I’m afraid I’ve rather given up on analysing elections outcomes on the basis of what the people desire.
The real motive for this election, it seems to me, is to kill off Corbyn for once and for all. People tend to forget that the leader of the opposition, even if he or she never wins an election, plays a pivotal role in the British system. General elections, after all, usually only happen once every four or five years. A lot happens in parliament in between. What the British Neocon establishment wants is an opposition leader who will be an obedient little poodle – and create an artificial parliamentary consensus for military interventions abroad. Ed Miliband did this over Libya in 2011 – hence the chaos there now. A few years later he baulked at supporting intervention in Syria and that’s when the British media, on both left and right, decided to consign him to the shredder. They were gunning for Corbyn from the moment he won, because, unlike Miliband, he always opposed Neocon wars. His stance on the Irish question didn’t help his cause either – the Neocons being avid Unionists and Hibernophobes to a man and woman.
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We on the UK side don’t hear anything, on the mms about Ireland. What’s happening with the DUP and SF stand off? Any words or actions from Mr. Brokenshire?
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On the unionist side it looks like a DUP-UUP electoral pact is gaining favour from both parties and the pro-union press. SF has reached out to the SDLP and Alliance for a progressive/pro-Europe pact but looks unlikely. At least as far as the Alliance is concerned which remains a liberal pro-union party. Some in the SDLP rural hinterlands would like an agreement with SF but most of the leadership and the most active core is rabidly anti-SF.
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With a looming Brexit focusing minds, perhaps the co authority proposal of 1985? will have its moment to be aired again. Let’s the ultra Unionist in London keep face and deals with the immediate problem of borders and EU. Ireland the island can move forward again.
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Yep, I have that referenced here. An idea whose time has come?
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I followed your link and read you piece. Solid as usual.
Thank you.
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Thanks 🙂
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