Hi everyone, and welcome back to my bumper New Year edition of the Weekly Digest! My weekly roundup of noteworthy events in the world of politics in NI, UK and the good ole US of A! Okay, brace yourselves, strap in your seatbelts and hold on tight because this going to be one hell of a ride! I take some time off for a well deserved bit of Christmas r&r, thinking that things will be reasonably uneventful over the holiday and early New Year period, apart from the Brexit deadline thing, of course. However, not only has it not been uneventful, instead, all hell has actually broken loose! That’s why I said this was a ‘bumper edition’, as it may take some time to wade through the chaos and make some sense of it all, so bear with me! I mean, where do I even start? Well, you know where – Stormont, that’s where we always begin! In good ole Norn Iron! We’ll get to the other ‘good ole’ patch of turf later!
Some of you may have noticed that things were not quite as they should be when getting your weekly grocery shop over the last week or two. There were widespread reports of empty shelves in some aisles at the likes of Sainsbury’s and Tesco’s. There were even reports that Sainsbury’s had attempted to plug the gaps with products from rival local retailer, Spar! What is going on, you may well ask?
While the UK has left the EU, Northern Ireland has remained in the EU single market for goods and is still subject to the EU’s customs rules under the NI protocol agreed between the UK and the EU. All movements of goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland now require a customs declaration and some products need additional certification. This is significantly increasing the administrative burden on retailers and hauliers, as well as increasing costs. We would have to assume that these costs will inevitably be passed on to consumers in NI. In the first week or two of the new arrangements this has caused some delays for goods entering NI ports which has, in turn, led to shortages of some products on supermarket shelves here. It is hoped that this is a temporary problem while everyone adjusts to the new arrangements. Nevertheless, this is a worrying development! The danger in the long term is that some of the big retailers may decide we’re not worth the extra hassle and simply pull out of the NI market altogether, thus reducing healthy competition and driving up prices even further.
The DUP’s Ian Paisley observed that just a week in the Northern Ireland Protocol had been an “unmitigated disaster”. He then suggested the problems could be eliminated by the unilateral abandoning of the protocol under Article 16 of the agreement. This, of course, would jeopardise the entire trade deal with the EU and so is highly improbable! As with all prominent DUP figures this week, there wasn’t the slightest hint of acknowledgement that their Party’s fervent support for a hard Brexit and misplaced faith and trust in Boris Johnston, had in any way contributed to the current situation. Indeed, DUP leader, Arlene Foster had stated her firm belief that it was all the fault of SF, the SDLP and Alliance parties for insisting on the NI Protocol in order to protect the open border with RoI. As I recall, however, this was also an EU red line in negotiations in order to protect the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement! Ultimately, the reality is, it is the imposition of a hard Brexit that has led us to this point! The following Twitter thread between Edwin Poots and Colum Eastwood summed up the terse exchanges between the parties here in recent days. The blame game is in full flow, unlike our imported goods!
One person who appears to be blissfully unaware of our current trading difficulties is Brandon Lewis, the NI Secretary. Apparently, according to Mr Lewis, there is no Irish Sea border to speak of and our current difficulties have merely been as a result of the knock on effect from the well publicised logjam at Dover just before Christmas. Mr Lewis’ determination to continually deny the blatant reality of the situation for NI, has caused some consternation here, among traders, hauliers and consumers, as well as in some political quarters. His credibility hangs by a thread!
As I write, we are in the midst of a dreaded third wave of the Coronavirus pandemic. To some extent, a surge had been expected in the aftermath of the Christmas period, in part due the NI Executive’s controversial decision, after much internal division and wrangling as per, to relax the anti-Covid restrictions in the run up to and during Christmas. On 22 November, a UK-wide plan, which was also backed in NI, allowed for some household mixing “for a small number of days” over Christmas. Then, the news that a new coronavirus variant was spreading more rapidly throughout the UK changed everything. However, unlike in the Republic of Ireland, the NI Executive did not enforce a travel ban on those coming in from GB at that point. The NI executive did, eventually, agree to cut the “bubble” to just one day over Christmas.
The upshot of all of this is we are in a potentially dire situation now regarding surging positive cases, hospital admissions, ICU intake and, ultimately, deaths! Which is why, on 26th December, Northern Ireland went into a six-week lockdown, with a plan to review it after four weeks. The question remains; to what extent was any of this avoidable? Could the often ineffective NI Executive have made better and earlier decisions? How much has the constant internecine in-fighting between Executive Ministers and parties hampered progress on tackling the virus? And just like the Conservative government in Westminster, were they guilty of sending mixed messages to the public, leading to a dangerous complacency and unacceptable levels of non-compliance with the Covid restrictions? I’ll leave you to answer those questions!
The six week lockdown has implications for society which are very far reaching and some aspects remain very controversial, such as closing schools, which perhaps explains why this decision was dragged out the most! The respective Education Ministers in NI and at UK level have both come under intense criticism and even pressure to resign over their handling of the crisis, or should I say, mishandling! Both Ministers are like peas in a pod when it comes to education policy. Indeed, some would say that Peter Weir, the NI Education Minister, quite consistently only introduces changes after his GB counterpart, Gavin Williamson, has done so first. This is not a great decision making model to follow because, apart from the differences in the education systems, school population etc, the hapless Gavin Williamson has just been entirely hopeless at his job from the get go! They both bungled the awarding of grades using an ill fated algorithm last year during the first lockdown, forcing them into embarrassing u-turns. Then, they both maintained that schools would stay open and exams would remain in place until a day or so before we were locked down again and exams had to be shelved, again! Williamson was also embroiled in the extension of free school meals into the holidays controversy, where he was shamed into another embarrassing u-turn by Manchester United footballer, Marcus Rashford.
Mr Weir’s central preoccupation this time around appeared to be the sanctity of the p7 Transfer tests. He was determined that they would go ahead at all costs, come what may! Mr Weir and his DUP party are staunch defenders of the transfer procedure and he refused to countenance calls by other parties to cancel the tests this year in favour of other means of selection. The Minister has dismissed these calls and accused other parties of following an anti-academic selection agenda. This may be true for some, but certainly not for all of those who were opposing him, I might add. In the event, the GL testing body cancelled their transfer test for this year. The other private provider, AQE, somewhat bizarrely and confusingly cancelled the forthcoming January tests (they had already been postponed from the Autumn!), before announcing that a single test would then be reconvened for the end of February instead!
In the middle of all of this manoeuvring is a cohort of stressed and confused 11 year olds, who just want to go the local ‘big school’ of their choice! Whatever your views on academic selection, and mine are very clear, this whole, sorry episode has been dragged out unnecessarily, to the detriment of these young children and their equally stressed parents! Arguably, decisions could and should have been made earlier, more decisively and with more clarity than was the case! In my view, these are exceptional circumstances and that should have been recognised much sooner. If the Minister put as much effort into the other areas of his job as he does into protecting the interests of an unregulated, private selective testing body, our education system would be much the better for it! The rights and wrongs of academic selection can be debated another time, but this year, of all years, it would arguably have been more unfair than ever on children from lower socio-economic groups! You are entirely free to politely disagree, of course!
In the end, the closing of schools was a decision which was beyond the respective education Ministers’ control, thankfully! No one wants to see the closure of schools but, again, these are exceptional circumstances which require drastic measures! Amid an alarming rise in Covid cases and the prominence of a new and more virulent variant, the case for closure became overwhelming. This still didn’t stop both Ministers from refusing to accept this reality until they were effectively forced into it! Just before Christmas, Gavin Williamson had even threatened to sue anyone who refused to send their child back in to school after the holidays! Oh dear! 🤦🏻♂️
So, I’ve been overlapping somewhat between NI and the wider UK, rather appropriately, as much discussion has been had over the festive period about the impact of Brexit not just on the future economic prospects for NI but also in relation to its political position within the UK! It has been said that the DUP, and Unionism in general, weren’t so much stabbed in the back as blatantly and brazenly in the front by Boris Johnston and his Brexiteer ERG backers within the Tory right wing. The harsh reality is, there is now a customs border down the Irish Sea, forcing an economic realignment on the island of Ireland. Whether that leads to a political realignment is very open to question, but the ever more realistic prospect of Scottish independence will undoubtedly throw another hefty spanner in those works. On the 100th anniversary of the creation of the state of Northern Ireland, its future has never been more uncertain. Many within Unionism may be comforted, perhaps for the first time, by the constitutional protections afforded by the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement! They may also be wary of trusting the Tories again for the foreseeable future!
The two items dominating the news agenda and Boris Johnston’s in-tray over the festive period and New Year have been the Covid-19 third wave, fuelled by the new variant and Brexit, fuelled by the same old variant! I think it’s fair to say, neither are going particularly well for Boris et al.
In relation to Covid-19, there have been more than 1000 deaths per day for numerous consecutive days now and this figure is unlikely to reduce significantly over the next fortnight because of the lag between infections and fatalities. It is almost certain the UK will soon pass the grim milestone of more than 100,000 deaths. In this respect, alone, the government’s response to the pandemic can be described as “world beating” – Britain now has the highest number of infections per capita in the world and the fifth highest death rate. Yes, you read that correctly! Yes, this is the government that has presided over the deaths of over 20,000 people in Care Homes, spent billions of pounds on a failed test and trace system, excluded three million people from financial support, bunged contracts to their cronies, bungled the reopening of schools, and left frontline workers without sufficient kit, introduced a flawed tier system for applying different Covid restrictions in different regions/areas, and only this week did they introduce test and isolate controls at airports. This week!
The one thing the government are hoping to get right in this whole Coronavirus catastrophe is the vaccine roll out! Bold claims have been made about so many millions being vaccinated by the end of February etc. The army have been engaged to help with the massive upscaling of the vaccination programme and ‘super centres’ are being readied, where thousands can be vaccinated every day! All well and good, but we’ve been here with the big promises before with this government – track and trace? PPE? So, forgive me if I remain a little sceptical! And so it was with this grand plan in mind, that Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, decided to visit a London GP surgery during the week to highlight the efficient roll out of the big vaccination push. It didn’t go well! In the full glare of an invited press pack, poor old Matt was told by a GP that they had run out of vaccines and were patiently waiting for more to arrive! Matt put on his best concerned face and promised to look into it forthwith, then engaged in a pointless tour of the surgery, inspecting the booths were people would receive the vaccination, if they had any! He then had to address the media outside, desperately trying to reassure them that the government’s vaccination roll out was firmly on track and some gaps in supply initially were just teething problems and would be ironed out etc. You have our complete confidence, Matt! 😳
Do I have to cover Brexit again? Well, yes, now that the UK has actually, finally left the EU and embarked on a bright new dawn as a sovereign, free trading nation, blah, blah, blah. Boris even managed to cobble together a last ditch trade deal with the EU, as predicted. So, has it all been plain sailing so far? Well, no it hasn’t, predictably! We’ve had the entirely predictable chaos at southern English seaports, for a start. The best that can be said about the 1,246-page deal is that it prevents tariffs and quotas being slapped on the £668bn-a-year of UK-EU trade after Brexit, as would have been the case under a no deal scenario.
However, the deal was certainly not universally welcomed by everyone. National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations chairman, Andrew Locker, said the industry had been “betrayed” by the Prime Minister. Maybe he should form a support group with Arlene Foster and the DUP? Other unhappy people include haulage firms, whose cross channel journeys have become infinitely more bureaucratic and complicated. Wait, wasn’t that one of the reasons for leaving in the first place? Then there’s the farmers who will soon lose their generous subsidies, or the students who wanted to study abroad under the Erasmus Programme which is no longer available, or human rights activists who will bemoan the removal of the European Court of Justice’s role as final arbiter in deciding UK legal cases. Several £billion in EU shares left the city of London the very day after the deal was signed. That may only be the beginning of the worries for the financial sector, which is the powerhouse of the UK economy. No one has actually been able to show how this deal is demonstrably better than the deal that Theresa May had brokered. Arguably, it’s demonstrably worse than both her softer Brexit or simply remaining within the EU! Time will tell, I suppose, but I fear a lot of irreparable damage may done by the time the penny drops!
Okay, I think I’ve definitely saved the best for last now, as I had head across the Atlantic to check out what’s been happening in the good ole US of A! Just WOW! Donald J Trump is both the recurring nightmare that won’t go away and the gift that just keeps on giving in terms of hitting the politics headlines! The tangerine POTUS was always destined to go out with a bang and he’s not disappointing!
I actually thought that the biggest Trump related news story of the New Year would be the fall out from his infamous recorded phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, where he practically threatened him while asking him to commit electoral fraud by finding 11,780 votes from nowhere to allow Trump to claim victory in the state. Or, the fact that two Democrat Senators have just been returned in the Georgia election run off, allowing Joe Biden to have control of both Houses in Congress.
Raffensperger is a Republican who has become a hate figure for Trump supporters for repeatedly saying Biden’s win in his state was fair and legitimate. In one damning put down, he said: “Well, Mr President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.” Trump had implored him: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”
The Washington Post obtained a tape of the “extraordinary” conversation, which Trump later acknowledged on Twitter. Amid widespread outrage, including calls for a second impeachment, Bob Bauer, a senior Biden adviser, said: “We now have irrefutable proof of a president pressuring and threatening an official of his own party to get him to rescind a state’s lawful, certified vote count and fabricate another in its place.” This was clearly an impeachable offence! There was no ambiguity about it and it was all there for everyone to hear on the verified audio recording! This is sensational stuff, I thought. The Teflon Don has finally done something that was so brazenly corrupt and obviously criminal that he would be banged to rights! What I, and I’m sure many others, weren’t expecting, was for him to up the stakes further and go completely rogue, like a desperate, cornered animal!
The scene was then set for Trump’s last throw of the dice, the Senate ratification of the Electoral College votes, scheduled for Jan 6th in Congress. Normally a formality, this would now be the focus for one last, desperate attempt to overturn the US Presidential Election result. A group of Republican senators, led by Ted Cruz, had said they would reject the Electoral College votes of several states unless Congress appointed a commission to audit the election results. Trump was also of the mistaken belief that Vice President Pence would use his power as Senate Speaker to intervene and stop the ratification process. When it became clear that this was never going to happen, Trump turned on his long term ally and the cries of traitor went up!
What eventually unfolded in Washington on January 06, 2021 was to be way worse than anyone could have foreseen! Or was it, though? Although shocking, was it really such a surprise, given the stoking and fomenting of dissent in recent weeks by an increasingly irrational Trump and his enablers? Those same enablers, and there have been many of them, who decided to overlook the fact that he paid hush money to former sexual partners, that he mocked the disabled, urged violence against journalists, gave encouragement and validation to far-right extremists, who praised the virtues of a racist in front of thousands of boy scouts, used his office to enrich his family and personal business interests, told minority ethnic congresswomen to go back home, who stoked racial hatred at every opportunity in his many rallies, and lied a thousand lies.
So, was it really any surprise that at a typically highly charged rally earlier that day, Donald Trump and other speakers rabble roused and incited his aggrieved followers to march on the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington DC? Congress was holding a joint session to ratify President-elect Joe Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College win which had not yet been completed. In truly shocking, chaotic and violent scenes, protesters, many of whom were armed, then forcibly entered the U.S. Capitol Building, causing Congress to be suspended and cowering Senators to be evacuated for their own safety.
So, who were these insurgents storming the Capitol building in their thousands? Were they just a lot of deeply misguided and gullible ordinary Joe’s who have been duped into placing their trust in a maniac and believing his lies? Undoubtedly many of them do fit that description, but there were also much more sinister elements there, too. There were disparate groups from Qanon conspiracy theory nuts, to dedicated far right extremists. Some of the most prominent antagonists pictured inside the Capitol building have already been identified and arrested. The list of shame makes for very interesting reading!
Richard Barnett was pictured with his feet on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk. Barnett leads a pro-gun rights group in Arkansas and is a self confessed white nationalist. He was arrested on Friday, according to law enforcement officials.
Jacob Anthony Chansley, also known as Jake Angeli, from Arizona, was one of the most prominent rioters in the Capitol. Chansley can be seen in several photos shirtless, wearing a horned helmet and holding a confederate flag. He is a well known QAnon conspiracy advocate and activist! He has also since been arrested and charged!
Nicholas Ochs, a Hawaii leader of the right wing, racist group, Proud Boys, is also under arrest for unlawful entry of the U.S. Capitol.
Trump really does keep some charming company! He may find, however, that he has unleashed some very unpleasant forces that he cannot control! We have learned that democracies, even one as powerful as the USA, can be fragile and that the principles they uphold must be defended, but we have also learned that sinister anti-democratic forces must be confronted before they spread and are emboldened to take action. While some politicians and certain media organisations reflect on their own culpability for Trump’s behaviour and that of his cult following, they should also reflect on how we prevent the spread of lies and disinformation. The belated decision by Facebook and Twitter to indefinitely suspend Trump’s social media accounts is a positive step in the right direction, but shouldn’t this have been done way earlier? How did you get to the situation where a sizeable percentage of US citizens have been indoctrinated into believing the election was a total fraud? We can blame Trump for exploiting their gullibility, their paranoia and their delusions, but shouldn’t more have been done to counter the false information and to educate people on the truth?
So, what happens next? Well, I think we can probably rule out invoking the 25th Amendment to forcibly remove Trump from office, as this will require the coalescence of VP, Mike Pence, plus 8 Cabinet Officers. Some have already resigned, I suspect to avoid being into that position and I’m not sure Pence has the stomach for it, anyway, given that he’s already public enemy number 1 with the baying Trump mob! Donald Trump’s second impeachment is certainly on the cards with House Democrats indicating they will introduce the relevant articles following the riots at the US Capitol. Congresswoman Omar was said to be drawing up the articles of impeachment for submission to Nanci Pelosi.
Impeachment starts with a vote in the House of Representatives on the articles of impeachment – basically a list of charges against the president. If the vote passes with a simple majority (50% + 1), then the president has been impeached and is then subject to a trial in the Senate. After the trial, the Senate votes on whether to convict and remove the president from office. This vote requires a two-thirds majority to strip the impeached of the presidency. Given the Republicans controlled the Senate at the time of Mr Trump’s first impeachment, he comfortably managed to stay in power. However, since the Georgia state run off and the election of two Democrat Senators there, they now control both houses of Congress. It just depends how many Republicans are prepared to go against Trump now to achieve the two thirds required.
Democrat representative Ilhan Omar says the process is important to set a precedent. “It’s important to impeach & convict this president even if he has a few days left in office,” she tweeted…. “It will set a precedent. We must make it clear that no president can lead an insurrection against the US government.” …”What we do today will matter for the rest of this nation’s history.” Well, indeed! The world is watching, America!
Thank you for reading and sharing! Sorry for the slight delay this week, but this was a bit of a tome to write and I was afraid of missing any last minute developments, such is the nature of this politics beast! Until next week, then, stayed tuned in, stay informed and stay safe! 👋🤓👍
The Weekly Politics Digest! 