We could be left all at sea without our oldest allies

THE kerfuffle over social welfare cards has highlighted our growing identity crisis as an independent nation: who are we and where we are going?

In the years following independence, Britain and the US were like wealthy relatives underpinning our hard-won freedom from a distance. But recent political upheavals leave us exposed and vulnerable.

In a diplomatic double whammy, Brexit and President Trump’s latest pitch for 15% corporation tax have removed our security blanket.

It gets worse: German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s approval of French President Emmanuel Macron’s EU reforms challenges our 12.5% corporation tax base.

Low corporate tax is the unique selling point that lured high-tech employers to Ireland and any change would threaten not only our current relative prosperity but also our future economic viability.

Once upon a time, Uncle Sam promised hope for our tired, poor and huddled masses yearning to be free. For generations our young people crowded overnight mail boats to England before Ryanair ferried them there in less than hour. Then Europe beckoned to more adventurous unemployed when their homeland failed them.

Emigrants forced to seek work overseas were very sentimental about home and often used the orphaned waif in the corny old country dirge, Nobody’s Child, as metaphor. They’d sing along with the chorus: ‘No mammy’s kisses, no daddy’s smile – nobody wants me, I’m nobody’s child’ in dance halls from Kilburn to Boston.

Back then the Brits and the Yanks gave jobs and hope to the Irish diaspora – but now the destitute arriving in Europe are from Africa and Asia.

Brexit threatens to brand Britain a foreign country and Trump’s ‘America First’ policy makes both traditional boltholes colder houses for any new Irish immigrant.

With the EU’s solidarity threatened by nationalists in central Europe and the continuing economic squeeze in Mediterranean countries, the future is uncertain.

Sterling is diving and our government is ducking as global uncertainty flits from North Korea through the Middle East while an unpredictable US President tweets in Washington.

Facing into all that global uncertainty, we need intelligent and steadfast leadership to steer this Republic through the crises.

We have a Taoiseach in Government Buildings who has not been tested in adversity and a Government that has failed to pass necessary legislation.

Leo Varadkar still has to prove he has the right stuff to lead this country through these dangerous times. After all the criticism about the communications failures and lack of sophistication in various previous taoisigh, Varadkar has employed communications specialist, John Concannon on a salary of well over €100,000.

A big part of Mr Concannon’s, job will be to tell us we are lucky to have Leo Varadkar as Taoiseach.

But it is much more important for Varadkar to give his public relations team a reason to make their bragging about him credible.

The Taoiseach needs a state-ofthe-nation speech to tell us who he is, what his non-negotiable principles are, and where we are going.

Maybe he will deliver his magnum opus next week at the Kennedy Summer School; or perhaps he has another occasion or venue in mind.

But we need to know – and he needs to tell us. Soon.

GERRY ADAMS says the prosecution of the Provos who murdered farmer Tom Oliver in Co. Louth in 1991 would be ‘absolutely counterproductive’.

The Sinn Féin president is TD for Louth and therefore the Oliver family are his constituents – but it is a safe bet that Adams also represents at least some of the gang that killed him.

Adams’s opinion as TD for Louth is that denying justice to the Oliver family is in the public interest – in other words, what is convenient for Gerry Adams and Sinn Féin is best the Irish people.

In 1991 the Provos said they killed Tom Oliver because he was an informer – and Adams continues to justify the murder by saying its perpetrators should not be prosecuted. That is as good a reason as any not to trust the political beneficiaries of Tom Oliver’s murder, Sinn Féin.

We have yet to hear Mary Lou McDonald, Adams’s chosen successor as leader of Sinn Féin, on prosecuting the killers. We have a right to know by what moral principals Sinn Féin would govern the Irish people.

REGINA DOHERTY seemed very pleased with her Jesuitical explanation of the social services card as ‘mandatory but not

compulsory’. I think it means that claimants must have the card to collect money from the State – but it is not a criminal offence not to have one. Perhaps Ms Doherty’s advisers think their latest verbal efforts will become a classic phrase like ‘advise and consent’ used by the US Senate to approve presidential decisions. Or as pointless as Irish election campaign slogans like, ‘Forward to the future’ or, ‘A lot done, more to do’.

I WAS an admirer of Sir David Tang, the Hong Kong-born wit, bon viveur and name-dropper. He asked an elderly member of his London club if he had ever been to Papua New Guinea and if he could recommend anywhere to stay. ‘Sorry,’ said the old codger. ‘The only time I visited Papua I stayed with Philip on Britannia,’ a reference to the royal yacht.

Sir David died last week but his phone had a recorded message where the voice of a butler said: ‘Excuse me, sir, but I’m afraid there is someone endeavouring to contact your telephone. Shall I tell them to f*** off?’

I AM indebted to a friend who texted the following message last week about President Trump and the floods in Texas: ‘Donald could have a moat instead of a wall.’