Wanted now more than ever: politicians who can lead
THAT glorious window of hope opened by the victory in Lille on Wednesday night was slammed shut on Friday morning with the news of Brexit prevailing in the UK. And nobody knows, really knows, what will happen next. The uncertainty in the wake of the referendum result is like the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster.
It will take days to even take stock of the immediate damage done and then weeks come up with a plan for the transition to a post-Brexit EU.
Meanwhile the weaker Irish banks will need intensive care and nursing from the big EU countries – and that means Germany honouring its obligations.
Remember the last time Irish banks faced trouble and the EU backed the bondholders leaving the Irish people to pick up the bill?
Tumbling markets are another risk that will further undermine the stability of the banks and the potential to make 2008’s recession appear like a trailer for the crash of 2016.
A government with no authority will negotiate our fate in a parliament where the left-wing opposition has nothing to offer but tired old clichés and pious platitudes.
Now, more than at any time in the past two generations, we need leadership.
Wanted: politicians who we can trust with our life savings because our future prosperity is in danger at a time when there are grave concerns about security right across the EU.
Men in dark suits will appear on television trying to reassurance a very concerned Irish public that they have everything under control.
They will ooze empathy like a trusted family doctor dealing with a family at the bedside of a very sick child but for all their honeyed words there is not much they can do.
Because it will not be an Irish government that will agree whatever cross-border arrangements are made over trade and people.
Our future relations with Northern Ireland and Britain will be decided by EU negotiators, some of whom have threatened to make the UK pay dearly for the Brexit vote.
That is a major cause of concern: it has taken decades of bloodshed and chaos
for our current harmonious relations with the UK to evolve.
And who wants a team of Eurocrats, some of them wanting revenge on the UK, deciding what is in Ireland’s interest?
Britain’s leaving after 43 years of existing agreements and legal obligations will encourage the anti-EU parties across Europe. Over the next year or so, there are elections scheduled for the Netherlands, France and Germany and each of those EU states has growing numbers of citizens opposed to the EU. Holland has been consistently sceptical over recent years and pundits see them as the member most likely to be first to exit the UK after Britain.
France’s National Front leader Marine Le Pen has already called for a referendum and hostility is not confined the far right; the government in Paris is deeply concerned at the growth of the anti-EU movement.
Germany has its homegrown doubters too and Britain’s leaving will encourage anti-EU groups in many of the 27 member countries.
A supernatural victory in France today may temporarily anaesthetise the Irish from the shocking news emanating from London on Friday.
But the Brexit story has only just begun.