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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » A Nation once again? – Part 3 lessons from abroad
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » A Nation once again? – Part 3 lessons from abroad
There are numerous examples of states being put together in modern times. The closest and probably most studied is Germany. It is almost at 30 years since the wall came down so there is quite a period to look at. The situation is also not that dissimilar to Ireland – a larger more prosperous neighbour takes over its sizeable but smaller struggling neighbour. How has Germany fared?
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Varadkar and Coveney have been disasters for Irish relations with the British communities.
And Anglo-Irish relations in general. Revenge is a dish best served cold, and while long term Britain will want good relations with Ireland, the inevitable bumps in the road ahead will be bumpier than they need have been.
Related to edmund's question - reunification is a process, not an event - and the young (who have no direct memory of the divided Germany) are further along the road than their elders:
https://www.thelocal.de/20171109/how-united-is-germany-28-years-after-the-berlin-walls-fall
The obvious missing issue is the currency question. Reunification means northerners joining the euro ( though a period of de facto sterlingisation along side it for a few years may ease transition ). On the one hand that kills stone dead the question that plagued YES in #indyref. Which currency would we use ? And there would be no costs associated with set up or central banks etc as they already exist.
On the other hand the euro kills stone dead the YES campaigns big trick on currency. That you can vote for radical change without any change on something important.
Northern Irish voters would be being asked to vote in favour of salaries, benefits and pensions currently paid in pounds to be paid in euros. That's quite a psychological barrier and makes any unity referendim campaign vulnerable to turbulence in the eurozone.
For instance it would be difficult to see how the " Irish, British or both " formulation of the GFA wouldn't continue in the north just with the default setting changing from British to Irish citizenship. Doubtless all sorts of safeguards would need to be built into any agreement including symbols, citizenship, the Crown etc before a final deal could be put to a vote on both sides of the border.
Still it's a fascinating trio of articles from @alanbrooke which of course we wouldn't be discussing without the Brexit fiasco in general or I suspect the DUPs huge strategic error on Brexit in particular.
This is all speculation, an instinct, but based on my view Brexit is a fundamental rupture of the ancien regime that the British state won't easily recover from and that the DUP have made an historic strategic error.
But there are many variables still in play. How soft/hard Brexit is is one. How the DUP respond to Westminster ramming Gay Marriage and Abortion reform down their throats as revenge for Brexit shenanigans is another. But for me it all has a handover of Hong Kong feel to it now - and the colonial reference isn't one I'd even have considered making before Brexit.
Worth noting that Eastern German incomes and unemployment levels are better than EU averages now, so hard to agree that it has only benefited the West.
Thank you.
This article is from 2009 but quite illuminating - 49% of East Germans then felt that life in the GDR was more good than bad, and 8% feel it was better than the current situation.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-dictatorship-majority-of-eastern-germans-feel-life-better-under-communism-a-634122.html
That doesn't mean that 57% would like to recreate it, obviously. My impression from various sources is that East Germans acknowledge that life has become materially better, but many feel second-class citizens, whereas before they felt they were an equal part of a difficult but shared life with a degree of social support that is largely absent now - the same kind of sentiment that you hear in the former coalfield areas in Britain.
Edit: found a Reddit overview from last year showing similar sentiments throughout Eastern Europe. The Romanian findings are particularly startling - nostalgia for Ceaucescu!
https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/649fe1/25_years_later_polls_in_eastern_europe_show/
Edit - who set up this epic blockquote shambles?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5bpijVgZWhg#
Foreshadowing the later national programme?
Heart versus head issues are always immensely dangerous, as we shouldn't need telling by now.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-dictatorship-majority-of-eastern-germans-feel-life-better-under-communism-a-634122.html
That doesn't mean that 57% would like to recreate it, obviously. My impression from various sources is that East Germans acknowledge that life has become materially better, but many feel second-class citizens, whereas before they felt they were an equal part of a difficult but shared life with a degree of social support that is largely absent now - the same kind of sentiment that you hear in the former coalfield areas in Britain.
Edit: found a Reddit overview from last year showing similar sentiments throughout Eastern Europe. The Romanian findings are particularly startling - nostalgia for Ceaucescu!
https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/649fe1/25_years_later_polls_in_eastern_europe_show/
thanks Nick
for statistics freaks ( though all in German ) the German Finance |Ministry publishes a comprehensive annual revew of Unity and the issues around it.
https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Publikationen/Neue-Laender/jahresbericht-zum-stand-der-deutschen-einheit-2018.html
you can download it FOC
When I first read them I felt it important that they run sequentially dominating the site for a day or more. Good stuff.
Of course the west is now trying to rid our oceans of this great symbol of freedom.
Isn’t also true that the vast majority of the Communist votes in Russian elections are those of older people?
The Romanian figures are extraordinary. Ceausescu's Romania was the saddest place I have ever travelled.
'Nicolae Ceaucescu was knighted in 1979.'
I assumed it was another joke.
It wasn't.
The Romanian figures are extraordinary. Ceausescu's Romania was the saddest place I have ever travelled.
It’s what happened in the Referendum isn’t it? “Life was better ‘once upon a time”, is a common position as Dr Ydoethur points out.
In 10 years time there’ll be a great yearning for lots of things we had, or could do, when we were part of the EU and that’ll be the moment for us Remainers.
Edit; don’t know why the block quote didn’t work. The comment about Romania came from IanB2.
Can we keep ours; wife and I are staunch Remainers!
I think there is a 'not' missing from " Germans over all think unity has been a good thing, but they are without reservations on how it has played out."?
I will always remember the old woman in a remote carpathian farming village who went indoors and came out and offered us a crate of potatoes. At the time it seemed a bizarre experience and as already over-loaded backpackers we had to refuse. The priceless nature of what she was offering only really dawned on me later.
I have disagreed with very little in @Alanbrooke’s excellent series but I fear his own antipathy to the current Irish government stance on Brexit has led him astray: hardcore Leavers are far more upset with it than ordinary unionists. Indeed, such polling as there has been suggests that messing up Brexit is worse for the union.
I think that the differences between the Protestant majority in NI and Eire are just too wide to bridge in the current generation and possibly even in the next. I completely agree with @Alanbrooke that the current leadership in Eire have driven this process backwards instead of forwards. It therefore seems to me that any unification is some way off.
The problem NI has is that they increasingly don't fit into the UK either. I remember an incident on R5 some years ago now where there had been protests about the attempted integration of a school. This had involved adults turning up and, unbelievably, throwing stones at catholic children sent to attend the school. One of the mothers was interviewed on R5 live and explained that they were protecting their British heritage. The interviewer was incandescent. "How dare you suggest it is British to throw stones at school children, how dare you."
It was good radio but it was also illustrative of a mutual incomprehension that I have often thought about. The Protestant community in NI feels under siege, tolerated at best by the mainland, their majority status increasingly under threat, their traditional abuse of the Catholic community no longer tolerated with consequential loss of public sector jobs etc, They remind me in many ways of the poor whites described in one of Bob Dylan's most brilliant songs, Only a Pawn in the Game, and like those poor whites of the south they have been used by their politicians in a most disgraceful way.
What I think is increasingly clear is that the status quo is no longer viable. We need to bring NI into the current century, whether as part of the UK or Eire or even some form of compromise. We need to help rebuild their economy and their outlook on the world. It is not enough for them to dig in and survive as a threatened community increasingly dependent on subsidy. Many thanks once again to @Alanbrooke for his thought provoking series.
While Brexit is no way the fault of the irish government, to me the correct approach was to set a working party to one side from both governments and sort the border issue away from the headlines, Varadkar has made an issue of something he would have been best advised to leave alone. Its a personal view of course, but in playing the issue he is now bit by bit getting in to a fight with the Northern Neanderthals. SF are now telling him he cant back off, DUP he cant go forward. If he keeps going on like this theyll be in control of events not him.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/ryanair-passenger-in-racist-tirade-may-get-away-with-it-due-to-aviation-laws-mp-warns-a3967601.html
Another interesting article, Mr. Brooke.
F1: bet didn't come off but the race was rather good. We shall shortly conduct a small experiment to see how much a slightly sleepy Yorkshireman can recall about a sporting event the previous evening.
Mr. B2, on Bottas, that's fair enough. I'm still peeved by the Raikkonen pole bet. 0.07s off a straight 14 winner, 0.009s off an each way winner, and it was red.
Honestly. I haven't been that miffed by a pole bet since Kubica failed to get it in Monaco by 0.002s.
http://chronicle.gi/2018/10/on-the-cusp-of-a-deal/
My weekend activities preventing me seeing some great stuff on PB.
Right now we have a government that is neither reaching out to the ERG or to those who voted Remain but believe we should respect the referendum. They have become utterly disconnected from those who elected them.
File under foreseeable consequences.
From one who voted for it and now no longer lives in "our society".
I hope you were being ironic Robert.
One though on the capacity for cultural change, is not Ireland a comparatively young country, with a median age significantly below the European average ?
That is not inconsistent with rapid change, as Iceland perhaps recently demonstrates:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/17/viking-language-invasion-english-iceland-icelandic
I am not talking with any statistical backing but I would not be at all shocked if the increase in societal divisions wasn't equally virulent in many advanced (if that is the right word) nations.
France, Italy, Greece, USA, Netherlands and many more are in periods of turmoil
Is the cause more likely to be the speed and ease with which we can communicate? Brexit is probably a function of communications revolution.
Indeed. 3 excellent articles and I'm sure to many of us a little known subject.
For your next one how about 'Ludlow. Can it really sustain 4 Conservative clubs?'
Although only 9% of Irish voters do not want Irish Unity, the position of the majority of Irish voters, 56%, including a majority of both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail voters is that they do want Irish Unity but not in the next few years as it would not be practical or affordable.
https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2018/06/brexit-the-border-and-the-union/
May is still trying to respect the referendum result and get a deal with the EU
The Dublin/Brussels attempt on the other hand to shoehorn something from the 'Future relationship" into a Withdrawal Agreement that does not address the Future Relationship could bring about the one thing its designed to avoid.
Bit annoyed, as I thought I'd finished writing the post-race ramble. *sighs*
It’s in her nature.
Most evidence from the modern world shows that ethnic and religious conflicts inspire many people to fanaticism, and are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to resolve. On the bright side, if a Greater Ireland in a single state can work, maybe a one-state solution can work for Israel too?
Although, again, it's very difficult to read across from one conflict to the other.
If you only read these occasionally, make this one of those occasions. Race was great and the result interesting both at the sharp end and the competitive midfield.
One thing I forgot to mention is that early on (first five races or so) Raikkonen had drifted to about 51 or 61 to win. I think that still had fifth the odds for top 3 available. It's going to be him or Bottas, probably (Verstappen's fairly close but probably still too distant).
Since the EU have given up all hope of rational conversation with May on trade, they have focussed just on getting the WA signed, which gives the EU all the things it wants but gives the UK next to nothing.
So, instead of refocussing on the political declaration, May just goes along with what the EU want, ready to declare a ‘deal’ when the most important part has not been agreed.
She really is an idiot.