A bit nicer to the Brits but a bit nastier to Israel

LAST week, we got some clarity on Brexit and the Presidency and saw the Seanad at work. Gavan Reilly on TV3 earned our gratitude by lucidly gutting Theresa May’s 100-page White Paper for The Tonight Show, standing in front of a big billboard graphic large enough to explain all the elements.

In the discussion that followed, only Lisa Chambers, Fianna Fail’s Brexit spokesperson, seemed to have read the whole document. Given that Brexit is not his brief, Senator Kieran O’Donnell did well to keep up.

But while FF and FG spokespersons had to tread carefully so as not to rock May’s fragile craft, Tom McGurk was free to tell us some hard truths.

Cutting the complex fat away with a sharp scalpel, McGurk warned that if the EU rejected May’s proposals she would be turfed out and we would be dealing with Boris Johnson, with a hard Brexit not far behind.

This was a refreshing reality check after the phoney war of the past two years when the Irish Government could safely wave the green flag.

The Department of Foreign Affairs doubtless told the Taoiseach and Tanaiste we could push Northern Ireland into a customs union with some French and German cover.

But there is no precedent for carving a region out of a sovereign state and doing a different trading deal with that region. Be like Kerry getting its own currency.

Spain would never allow Northern Ireland to be yanked out of the UK economy because the Basques and the Catalans would want the same deal. Ditto some Italian regions.

The days of delusion are over. So is blithe back-seat driving, like the Taoiseach calling on Theresa May to face down her critics.

The resignation of Boris Johnson showed the risks she ran — which could still end in a car crash with only Johnson stepping safely from the wreckage.

Time for the Taoiseach and Tanaiste to dump the DFA fantasies and encourage the EU to take an emollient view of May’s White Paper.

At the same time, they should follow Lisa Chambers’s advice and also prepare for a hard Brexit.

****** Finally, everybody else has caught up with the position Patsy McGarry and myself took on the Presidency last February. Back then I wrote as follows:

“Let’s hope President Higgins decides to seek a second term — and that Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have the sense to stand clear.”

Micheal Martin moved as decisively on Higgins as he did on abortion. After lagging a bit, Leo Varadkar followed suit last week.

Having been caught on the hop — as he was on abortion — the Taoiseach is compensating too much by offering campaign cash.

But at least Leo Varadkar did not repeat the mistake made by Alan Dukes and Fine Gael about the 1990 presidential election.

As media adviser to Mary Robinson, I told the shrewd Jim O’Keefe that Fine Gael should back her and he took that message back.

But party spirit prevailed and Fine Gael decided to run Austin Currie, an articulate and legendary leader of the Northern Civil Rights Campaign.

This showed they were suffering from the delusion that doing the right thing in Northern Ireland cuts any mustard down here.

Bertie Ahern provides further proof that working for peace in Northern Ireland gets you no kudos.

Michael D Higgins suits us perfectly as a secondterm president on his track record. He has proven he can both speak to us locally and speak for us globally.

But I am baffled by the moaning about him dragging out his nomination and the nonsense about democracy demanding presidential challengers.

First, let’s not forget that Michael D Higgins is a professional politician, not a plaster saint, and has no obligation to make things easy for possible opponents.

Second, how is Irish democracy helped by a cosmetic election given that Higgins would hammer any hapless opponent?

Finally, let me dispel any mutterings about his age by pointing out the precedents for older presidents doing the right thing.

At 80, Douglas Hyde referred an Offences Against the State Bill to the Supreme Court to check it wasn’t too punitive.

At 83, Hyde referred a School Attendance Bill that treated home schooling parents arbitrarily and had it stopped.

In 1961, a sprightly 79-year-old President De Valera referred a dicey bill amending the number of TDs just to ensure Lemass wasn’t pulling a fast one.

In 1970, the 88-yearold Dev told Peter Berry, secretary-general of the Department of Justice, to take his security concerns about Charles Haughey directly to Jack Lynch.

Higgins can do as much, even from a wheelchair, between now and 2025.

****** Last week the Seanad showed its teeth twice: by delaying Shane Ross’s bill on judicial appointments, and by supporting Frances Black’s bill to boycott goods from Israeli settlements.

Let me start with the latter. Like most people in Ireland, I am strongly against the expansion of Israeli settlements into Palestinian land.

But I am also against the policy of targeting Israel for punitive measures while not taking the same trouble over much more serious repressions such as Assad’s appalling atrocities against his own Syrian people.

The singling out of Israel must strike any fair-minded person as strange, to say the least. Surely this targeting calls for honest reflection on whether some kind of antiJewish prejudice is playing a part?

The senators who spoke eloquently for the Palestinians would deny any hint of such an agenda.

But their speeches struck me as lacking any sense of historical proportion, especially calling Israeli settlements a “war crime”.

How can they indulge in such ridiculous rhetoric given that Israel exists because of the greatest war crime in history?

Claude Lanzmann, the director of Shoah, died last week. Those who have seen the nine-and-a-half hours of his film are never the same.

Certainly they could never equate the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto with the situation in Gaza.

Frances Black’s bill is an exercise in virtue-signalling that will not do anything for peace and reconciliation — not that Hamas wants peace and reconciliation.

Fianna Fail was wrong to support the Black bill without also taking a hard line against Hamas and condemning the hypocrisy of its Sinn Fein supporters.

****** Earlier in the week, Charlie Flanagan sat stoically in the sweltering heat as the Seanad showed its better side by delaying Shane Ross’s bill on the appointment of judges.

We can be sure he privately agreed more with Ivana Bacik’s cool dissection of its drawbacks than he did with Jerry Buttimer shouting loutishly to show his loyalty to Leo Varadkar.

Flanagan could take some consolation from the fact that his appointment of Aidan O’Driscoll, as secretary-general of the Department of Justice, attracted only muted criticism and rightly so.

The job requires two things: personal probity and proven competence in controlling a State department. Aidan O’Driscoll has both.

As a bonus he is no Peter Berry. On his first day, Des O’Malley apparently asked to see Berry — who greeted him by saying, “You’re the seventh Minister for Justice who’s worked for me since Mr O’Higgins.” He meant Kevin O’Higgins.

They don’t make civil servants like Peter Berry any more. Thank God.

‘The singling out of Israel should strike fair-minded people as strange’