Eire of sorrows

It doesn’t matter who wins the Irish elections – the country will remain an outpost of Brussels

Dublin


There is something tragically irrelevant about the elections taking place this weekend in Ireland. In recent months, Ireland has felt less like a country and more like the first acquisition of the Reborn Frankish Empire, after the Central European Bank and the IMF in effect took over day-to-day management of Irish affairs. The effect of this is to so reduce the significance of the general election that it’s more like appointing the staff of a small post office, in which the Taoiseach is actually just a shop steward negotiating tea breaks. The incoming Irish government will be merely administering the country as a satrapy of Brussels and the European Bank.

The timing could hardly have been more exquisite. Over recent weeks, local groups across Ireland have been celebrating the anniversary of various IRA ambushes of British forces in 1921.