Last year during a break in the local anti-war meeting there was a short disagreement about the transgender issue. The woman could barely conceal her disdain for the idea that men could claim to be women by wearing a dress and lipstick (as she put it). The man thought that it was an important issue that had to be addressed.
The woman was primarily a Palestine solidarity activist but recognised the war in Ukraine as one in which hundreds of thousands of people were being killed and that had the potential to escalate with catastrophic results for the world. The man thought the issue had important implications for women’s rights and should be taken up by socialists.
This brought to mind the passage in ‘What is to be Done’ by Lenin ‘that the Social-Democrat’s ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects…’
So, the questions that naturally arise are about the demands that are raised by the trans activist movement and whether socialists should support them. We can start by looking at the Gender Identity ideology that grounds the politics of the movement and their ‘allies’.
Not all trans people support the same demands or Gender Identity ideology, and this ideology has various features and makes dissimilar claims. What is hardly in dispute however, is that trans people should not be subject to unjustified discrimination or violence, and deserve respect based on our common humanity. The specific claims of Gender Identity ideology are particular to a certain strain of trans political activism and make claims which go beyond this response.
In a series of articles in the British ‘Weekly Worker’ these issues are addressed, and in the fourth part the author writes–‘I use ‘trans people’ for the present purposes to mean people who wish to live permanently in the gender identity polar opposite to that ascribed to the biological sex in which they were born.’
At first reading this can be taken to mean that the issue is men, for example, who wish to live as women. Except, if this were the issue there would hardly be a dispute. Few are going to object to men wearing women’s’ clothes, make-up etc. and presenting themselves as women, in so far as they are able, in their everyday lives.
Gender identity ideology asserts much more than this; it asserts, for example, that men are women if they consider – ‘identify’– as women. As the mantra goes – ‘transwomen are women’. This is stated, not as a metaphor, but as a literal truth.
This is the main problem with the definition as presented in the ‘Weekly Worker’; if we must assume that the word gender in ‘gender identity’ means something other than what it has (until this controversy) been traditionally regarded to mean – as simply another word for sex. Instead, it is a word that is employed to substitute for sex and thereby erase it. In the next few occasional posts I will look at the ideology and the claims of the movement, beginning by asking what ‘gender’ and ‘gender identity’ mean.
The second set of changes to the Constitution proposes deleting the current Articles 41.2.1 and 41.2.2 and inserting a new Article 42B.
Article 41.2.1 states “In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.”
Article 41.2.2 states that “The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.”
These are to be replaced by inserting a new Article 42B:
“The State recognises that the provision of care, by members of a family to one another by reason of the bonds that exist among them, gives to Society a support without which the common good cannot be achieved, and shall strive to support such provision.”
The two existing Articles are said to be sexist and based on Catholic teaching, such as the encyclical from 1891 in which Pope Leo XIII stated that ‘a woman is by nature fitted for homework . . .”, while it is believed that the Article was written by the Catholic archbishop, John McQuaid.
A socialist might note that it is not the role of working class women, or men, to support the State and that the State is not about “the common good” but about what is good for bourgeois private property, something the Irish State’s constitution is well known to be very good at protecting.
The commitment to “ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home” not only assumes that it is women who must carry out domestic labour but also pretends that the state will help them avoid the economic necessity to go out to work. The necessity to go out to work is a requirement of capitalism, otherwise there would be no working class to exploit, and it would not make much sense to effect equality by limiting this to only one sex, if it were possible, which it is not.
The Article had not much success in keeping many women “in the home” because economic necessity compelled them to seek paid employment. In fact, it did not have much success in keeping them in the country, as hundreds of thousands emigrated in search of a better life. This led to agonised concern that there were “moral dangers for young girls in Great Britain”, including that they might get pregnant.
As the Irish economy expanded in later decades more and more women entered the labour force although there is now concern that their presence is still relatively low. Women’s participation in the labour force grew only slowly, from 28 per cent in the early 1970s to 32 per cent in 1990, rising rapidly during the economic boom to over 63 per cent in 2007. In the third quarter of 2023 the participation rate for females was 60.8% compared to 71.1% for males. Nothing of this had anything to do with the words in the constitution and everything to do with the workings of the capitalist economy.
Socialists should welcome the higher participation of women in the workforce both for the position of women in society and for the potential unity of women and men in the struggle to emancipate themselves from the domination of capitalist accumulation. Domestic labour should be shared equally, and as far as possible should be socialised so that individuals of both sexes are able to exercise greater choice over whether, and how much, to work. This, however, recognises that those able to work should work and under capitalism have mostly no choice.
There are some things that cannot be shared equally, but the concern to be ‘progressive’ in the sense of what has been called ‘virtue signalling’ and ‘performative activism’ means that this has been deliberately ignored. The wording of the replacement Article is instructive not only because of what it says but because of what it doesn’t say.
If almost everyone is a member of a family and part of some sort of ‘durable relationship’ then the support given to Society by the care shown to each other by members of a family is simply the support given to all members of a family by Society. It’s a truism that it is people in society who care and support each other. The question is, what is the Irish State, through its Constitution, going to do to help? How will it address the large additional labour carried out by women in paid employment through domestic labour?
The answer, if we look at the Article, is nothing much. It “shall strive to support such provision” of care but commits to nothing, which means its ‘striving’ is meaningless, but rather points to the concept of caring being an individual concern of “members of a family” but of no fundamental responsibility of the state.
The state, however, is supposed to represent the general interest, “the common good”, as it is called here. I suppose socialists should welcome the clear message for anyone that cares to discern it, that the provision of care is a private matter, or perhaps a privatised matter that the state will rely on becoming a wholly commodified service to be produced like all commodities in capitalism–for a profit.
It has been pointed out, and is also referenced above, that the Article drops any refence to women, while the two existing Articles reference them, albeit in reactionary terms. The current Governing parties are not keen on talking about women and their rights because they have decided that women are some sort of thing that men can become if they put their mind to it. I will be posting soon on Gender Identity Ideology but suffice to say here that the Irish State recognises that men can legally change sex by declaration.
The state cannot therefore recognise the role of women in society, and their specific contribution has to be ignored and covered under the general rubric of “care”. Except “care” doesn’t cover it; it doesn’t cover what many women do, and only women can do. Within whatever definition of family that the Governing parties want accepted, if it includes women, the contribution they make not only may include a major share of the care of others, but also the carrying of new humans to birth through pregnancy and breastfeeding thereafter.
This, however, would be to recognise the essentially biological nature of women and the Governing parties have decided to reject this. They are therefore unable to recognise the real role of women in society and so substitute a new form of sexism for the old.
Given all these considerations in this and the previous post it is clear that the changes to the constitution should be rejected. The false promises of extra funding to social services as a result of a yes vote from some, and the ‘unenthusiastic’ support of People before Profit because of its vacuousness are pointers. This, and the previous, post have argued that these are the least of the reasons to vote No.
Liberal regimes usually involve claims about the rule of law, human rights and constitutional government. Marxists believe that it is not the law that rules but people, a ruling class; that human rights are ignored when it suits the state, as British complicity in the genocide in Gaza amply illustrates, and that constitutions don’t determine the nature of society, the state or regime but reflect them. The work of socialists involves disabusing people of their illusions in all of these.
This should be the starting point for consideration of the proposed amendments to the Irish State’s constitution. In a previous post I noted the illusion of expecting changes in the constitution to be any sort of a solution to the housing crisis. Now the government parties are proposing changes relating to the family, and to the care provided within it, while removing some archaic and sexist text based on reactionary Catholic teaching.
It’s all supposed to reflect the new progressive and enlightened Ireland that is no longer bound by such views: “It’s important that our constitution reflects the Ireland of today” says Minister Heather Humphreys. In fact, the wording shows how shallow this is and actually contrasts with the world outside the document. The Church still controls almost all primary schools and will be given ownership of the new national maternity hospital. The state continues to subsidise the Church by paying for the claims arising from its abuse of children, while the Holy Orders drag survivors of abuse through the courts hoping they will get lost. It drags its feet on paying up its much reduced liability, just as it also does with its promised divesting of patronage of schools.
The argument to approve the proposed changes on March 8th thus confirms that constitutions reflect and do not propel society. The wording in the changes is so anaemic even supporters are calling it symbolic, but the symbolism is revealing – symbolic of the emptiness behind the claims.
They are welcomed as a step forward for those in non-marital relationships and for those who provide care within the family. The main argument for voting yes is that the existing provisions are so bad that they discredit the constitution and thus reflect badly on the state and country. In terms of their impact on state welfare payments the Minister responsible, Roderic O’Gorman, has stated that the constitutional changes will have no effect:
“It must be noted that the proposed amendment does not create an express constitutional entitlement to specific measures of support such as grants or allowances. The Government and the Oireachtas retain the power to define both the types and levels of supports, and the criteria in respect of eligibility for those supports.”
Changes to grants or allowances will continue to depend on political decisions partly reliant on economic realities so that changing these are what matter, not words on a page reliant on the good intentions of a state that has no good claim to have them. This makes the argument by People before Profit that it is a “shame that there is no firm commitment to the women, children and men who are the carers” something of a complete delusion about what the capitalist state is willing and able to do.
As to what the existing articles reflect, hypocrisy remains rife, and they remain as a standing reminder of the role of the Irish state that socialists have no reason to see either forgotten or provided with a facelift.
The first involves the insertion of additional text to Article 41.1.1 and the deletion of text in Article 41.3.1. The proposed changes are:
to change Article 41.1.1 to include the text in bold:
Article 41.1.1 “The State recognises the Family, whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships, as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.”
and to change Article 41.3.1 by deleting text shown with line through it:
“The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded, and to protect it against attack.”
In the first change to article 41.1.1 the state promises to recognise ‘durable relationships’ it hasn’t been able to define: a politically correct, right-on gesture that is immediately shoved aside by the wording of the second, Article 41.3.1.
Much criticism arises from what ‘durable’ is supposed to mean: ‘capable of lasting’ is held to not necessarily meaning ‘enduring’ or permanent, while of course nothing is permanent, and enduring is an observation at a point in time. ‘Capable of lasting’ invites interpretation of two other words, as does the word ‘relationships’. In attempting to impose the state on human relationships it is found that its mechanism of the law cannot define and thus delimit the expansive nature of these relationships.
The growth of capitalism means that family production as the basis of society (by peasant holdings or small family farms) has been destroyed or marginalised and the attempt to encompass all the fragments of familial forms that have arisen ignore the worst effects of capitalist wage labour in its freeing workers from their means of production and consumption. Free wage labour is the basis of capitalist society and the myriad forms in which workers attempt to provide love and security to each other in their relationships are subordinated within it.
This is reflected in the care or neglect of children, in their education and protection. It is reflected in the services provided or not provided to workers such as health and social services, housing, child minding, and transport and the jobs and income they can obtain. These all have decisive impacts on how people, including within families, are able to live. Most workers know that what they can do for themselves and those they love depends on their own efforts. It is just a pity many have so little comprehension that this has a class and political dimension and not just an individual one.
The family, in all its forms, thus really is ‘a moral institution’, demonstrating that what is moral is only as virtuous and good as the reality it is based on. Families are often the grounds of domestic abuse, primarily against women and children, and not havens from the big, bad world outside. Their rights are not ‘inalienable and imprescriptible’; they are often subject to state or other social interference, for good or ill, with their presumed prerogatives sometimes taken away, again for good or ill. They are subject to social circumstances and the institutions of the state and its laws.
The hypocrisy of the Irish state’s claims to ‘recognise’ ‘durable relationships’ in their different forms is illustrated by the treatment of those seeking refuge in the State. Demonstrations against the accommodation of international protection claimants have targeted single males, while the government has accepted this by withdrawing the accommodation from them and accommodating women and children instead. But do these men cease of to be members of families because they are separated from them, potentially because of a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’?
The promise to protect the institution of marriage is not provided to the other ‘durable relationships’. Perhaps this doesn’t matter, in which case the absence of such words calls into question the importance of their inclusion and the point of the changes. At the very least it calls into question the claim of the National Women’s Council that a “Yes vote will value all families equally,” whatever valuing means.
When Sinn Fein stewards threw out some Palestinians from a Palestine solidarity meeting in Belfast, they threw out something else – all pretence that it will ever take effective action against the Zionist state’s genocide of the Palestinian people. Specifically, it will do nothing to upset the United States, the sponsor of the Zionist state, its financier, arms supplier, and political attorney. The Zionist state has its main benefactor, and through it Sinn Fein becomes an accomplice to Zionism’s actions by one remove.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has found it plausible that the Israeli state is carrying out genocide, although the vast majority of the world’s population did not have to wait to make this judgement, and does not have to wait the years required to see the ICJ confirm it. There is therefore a political obligation to take now whatever action that can be taken to stop the genocide and Sinn Fein is not taking it. How little this requires is demonstrated by the leader of the SDLP refusing to go to Washington on St Patricks day. Sinn Fein has rejected doing the same. This article has good coverage of the meeting and its background.
What this incident shows is the common nature of the struggle against imperialism across the world and the common character of that struggle. Solidarity movements are supposed to be expressions of that common struggle but have become detached by petty bourgeois politics to be mere expressions of sympathy; appealing to human rights that fail to understand that the violence of imperialism is intrinsic to the capitalist system and that the only alternative is working class socialism. This means that working class leadership of the struggle is needed, not just in Ireland but also in Palestine and all the other countries in the region and beyond where the outcome of the genocide will be determined.
Thus, this meeting illustrates that Sinn Fein, newly reinstalled in the leadership of the imperialist settlement in Ireland, will brook no criticism of the Palestinian Authority (PA) which plays the same, increasingly discredited, role in Palestine. The PA is widely reported to be employed again as the mechanism for imperialist and Israeli pacification once the latter has finished its slaughter.
The message is therefore clear, Sinn Fein is not part of the Palestinian solidarity movement in any meaningful sense. A party that participates in a shindig with those behind the genocide is a fifth column that undermines the solidarity movement by limiting the terms of effective solidarity, with an attempt to blind everyone to what it is doing. What the solidarity movement needs to do, at the very least, is to take effective action to thwart the genocide. A result of this it should be a step forward in the creation of a militant working class movement in Ireland as well.
Refusing to party with Biden is not even a forceful act of solidarity but rejecting it is a statement that Palestinian genocide is not important enough to demonstrate opposition to its main facilitator. The celebration with the British Prime Minister the week before showed Sinn Fein’s partnership with the British Government, second only to the US in its support for the Zionist state and complicity in the genocide.
Effective opposition in Ireland would involve preventing the US using Shannon airport as a transit to the Middle East and refusal to handle Israeli goods. The solidarity campaign involving leaflets, meetings and demonstrations are in themselves protests, but the ruling class everywhere is perfectly happy to ignore protests unless they lead to more radical action.
Instead, protests lead only to more protests which eventually tire the protestors. They often involve naïve beliefs that those in power will listen and take action, as if they did not already know what is happening or are willing to be convinced or shamed into ‘doing the right thing’. This is a view borne of ignorance that they are not actually acting out of their class interests and will change their behaviour only if these are threatened, and only permanently change if their political and social power is destroyed.
This means creation of a working class solidarity movement. Calls for individual boycotts of goods involve calls for individuals or individual companies that are unorganised. The working class has the power to enforce boycotts that don’t require millions of individuals taking individual decisions millions of times not to buy this or that good.
The first place to seek to organise this is in the existing workers’ movement. Any solidarity campaign should seek to achieve this, and the membership of its supporting organisations would have the duty to try. The many Sinn Fein members will never be given this task, yet the purpose of all the leaflets, social media posts, meetings and demonstrations is to build a movement that will take this on and succeed. They are designed to build the support, organisation and confidence of those who can undertake this action. Token attendance on the odd demonstration by the Irish trade union movement is a testament to failure to attempt this.
Some other lessons can be learnt from the Belfast episode. There should be no fear in challenging Sinn Fein because other Irish political parties are doing nothing better. It is not the job of a Palestine solidarity campaign to save Sinn Fein from its own perfidy. The government parties are in office and have demonstrated the limits to their expression of sympathy; they will do nothing much more unless forced – they are not there to be convinced of the justice of any particular action, they know already. Sinn Fein, on the other hand, professes to be part of the solidarity movement.
The common nature of the struggle across the world demonstrated by Sinn Fein’s defence of the Palestinian Authority means that assertions that we cannot criticise any particular Palestinian organisation or movement, as is sometimes stated, is frankly stupid and reactionary. Socialists criticise movements across the world if they think their politics are inadequate, fail the working class, or betray it. The Palestinian Authority has certainly betrayed the cause of Palestinian freedom and it would be a dereliction of duty not to say so. Only belief in the moral superiority of Palestinians as a nation, uniquely undivided by class or blessed by political leadership, could justify such a position. That some Palestinian activists have condemned the PA is to be welcomed and shames those who would keep schtum.
That these activists were thrown out of a Sinn Fein meeting is to their credit as much as it is damning of those who ejected them. A fitting way that Sinn Fein could atone for their disgraceful action would be to protest against Genocide Joe and be thrown out of the White House. What’s the chances?
I remember giving out leaflets at a Sinn Féin demonstration on the Falls Road in about 1993. The demonstration was called to support the Hume-Adams Agreement, hammered out between the leaders of the SDLP and Sinn Féin after several secret meetings. No one knew what was in the Agreement, but thousands of republican supporters came out to show their support for it.
I don’t think my comrades, or I, ever had such a keen and eager crowd as the demonstrators queued up to get a copy. It was clear that they thought they might find out what it was they were demonstrating in support of. That in itself told us an awful lot about the political consciousness of rank and file republicans at the early stages of the peace process – they were going to faithfully follow their leadership, wherever it led them and swallow whatever they were told.
Many, many subsequent leaflets, and meetings through the long peace process changed nothing of their approach, or raised in them any consciousness that they might require a more critical approach, one that involved some scepticism of where their leadership was taking them.
Only a few years before, in 1987, Sinn Féin had published a document called ‘A Scenario For Peace’ in which it set out its proposals for a settlement to end the conflict. It included that Britain should declare its intention to withdraw; the Royal Ulster Constabulary and Ulster Defence Regiment would be disbanded; ‘political’ prisoners should be unconditionally released; and Britain should provide a subvention for an agreed period to facilitate harmonisation of the northern and southern economies. In return, unionists would be offered equal citizenship within the new Ireland.
Well, the Hume-Adams talks were not about this agenda, and neither was the peace process. The British have not gone, the RUC and UDR were indeed disbanded but the former was replaced by the PSNI and the latter were a unit of the British Army, and it certainly hasn’t gone away. Political prisoners were released but not unconditionally, Britain imposed austerity (and Sinn Féin helped implement it).
The peace process in its various guises is now longer than the war it was supposed to end, and the former looks harder to get to the end of than the latter did. When it was announced that the devolved Stormont Assembly was coming back, and a Sinn Féin leader, Michelle O’Neill, would be first minister, it was declared by Mary Lou McDonald that this showed that a united Ireland was “within touching distance”. Of course, the Provisional republican movement has been promising a united Ireland since the early 70s, that is, for over half a century. A unionist commentator noted recently that a recent opinion poll showed no increase in support for a united Ireland in the North over the last couple of decades.
Some columnists have claimed that the real significance of the return of the DUP to the Assembly and Government is this accession to the post of first minister of Sinn Féin, even while they admit that this is symbolic since the unionist deputy first minister has equal power. No decision can be taken by the first minister if not agreed by the deputy and the post cannot be filled in the first place without unionist agreement.
In order to minimise unionist opposition to the deal between the DUP and British government over the ‘Irish Sea border’ the process of getting DUP agreement and all it entails is being rushed through. The DUP Executive thus voted for the deal without seeing it; fittingly appropriate to the return of what passes for democracy in the North of Ireland.
This democracy, in the shape of the Stormont Assembly, has been suspended at least eight times, ranging from a single day to a couple of years. It has been functioning for only sixty per cent of its existence and subject to a number of reviews and changes with yet more changes now widely canvassed. The sectarian, corrupt, incompetent and clueless governance it has provided and the future problems considered inevitable by everyone who thinks about it (and many don’t) means that the rules are not the problem.
Public services, from health to roads, are routinely described as being in crisis, while others such as education and voluntary organisation are subject to open sectarian practices. It has been claimed that these issues can only be put right by local governance, but its track record shows that it is as much responsible for the decay as British rule. The repeated suspension allows the alibi to be sold that were it not for suspension public services would be much better. The previous suspension following the Sinn Féin walk-out, after the DUP-implicated Renewable Heat Incentive scandal, showed levels of incompetence that could more easily be explained as corruption.
The return of Stormont is therefore no step forward, never mind a panacea, and is mainly an unstable framework to accommodate sectarian competition, one that has not proved to be very stable. It stands on its rotten foundations only because there is no outside force to push it over, while those that have knocked it over temporarily have been internal. It is widely accepted among the population and further afield because no alternative seems possible, which is why the DUP have gone back in. This also helps explain why the misgivings of many unionists, and significant opposition, will be unsuccessful in stopping the Assembly’s return.
The opposition has no credible leadership, which would have to come from within the DUP itself, and there is as yet no real sign of this. Further demoralisation of unionism is therefore one (welcome) result.
That this is the case throws light on the claim by the DUP leadership that their new deal is a significant victory. Packaged as a joint British government/DUP initiative, and launched by a joint press conference, there is not the slightest pretence at non-partisanship by the British: ‘Safeguarding the Union’ is the name of Command Paper1021.
Its content in 77 pages could safely be accommodated at one tenth of the length. The measures introduced include proposed legislation to say that Northern Ireland is part of the UK – who would have thought it? It has proposed legislation to ‘future-proof the effective operation of the UK’s internal market by preventing governments from reaching a future agreement with the EU like the Protocol’, which by definition cannot achieve what it claims. It also includes a ‘commitment to remove the legal duties to have regard to the “all-island economy” in section 10(1)(b) of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.’ A bit of red meat for the DUP, and sticking it to Irish nationalism North and South, that will make little or no difference.
It promises that ‘Legislative change to recognise the end of the automatic pipeline of EU law . . . which applies in Northern Ireland is now properly subject to the democratic oversight of the Northern Ireland Assembly through the Stormont Brake and the democratic consent mechanism.’ This implies either future bust-ups with the EU if single market changes are not incorporated into the Northern Ireland market, or a formality to cover regulatory alignment. The Brexiteers in Britain are aghast at this as they no doubt realise it might not be the former.
Media reporting has suggested that the EU Commission has yet to look at the Agreement but that ‘no red lines’ have been crossed; however, it is hard to believe it has not been agreed and only kept quiet in order to help the DUP sell it as an act of undiluted British sovereignty.
The ‘democratic consent mechanism’ that is held to act as a check on unwelcome EU encroachment states that it can be triggered by a majority of local members of the Assembly and not by some ’cross-community consent’ mechanism. It is hard to be optimistic that this whole area will not entail future argument.
Other measures include promises on maintaining trade flows that can’t be honoured and a number of new quangos that will deliver more red tape that Brexit promised to get rid of.
The main gain pointed to by Jeffrey Donaldson is the removal of routine checks on certain exports from Britain to Northern Ireland that were set to reduce anyway but are now declared to be zero. This is on goods, such as retail to consumers for example, that will stay in Northern Ireland and not considered to be at risk of going further into the Irish state and thus the EU single market proper.
Donaldson has, however, claimed too much – that there is unfettered trade between GB and NI and therefore no sea border. The command paper states that ‘there will be no checks when goods move within the UK internal market system save those conducted by UK authorities as part of a risk-based or intelligence-led approach to tackle criminality, abuse of the scheme, smuggling and disease risks.’
‘Abuse of the scheme’ must mean that checks will be made if it is suspected that goods purportedly sent for sale only in Northern Ireland are actually heading further. The acceptance of such controls by the DUP has so far been rather successfully sold by the leadership as simply a common sense measure that ensures that checks are made at the Northern Ireland ports instead of a long and windy North-South border.
This problem arises only because of Brexit, which the DUP supported, and of course the argument makes sense in its own terms; except those terms mean acceptance that there is a trade border on the Irish Sea because there had to be one somewhere, and its not south of Newry and north of Dundalk. The opponents of the Agreement among unionists are therefore right that single market membership means EU law applying in Northern Ireland. They go wrong when they, like the other hard Brexiteers, assume that the British government must pursue widespread non-alignment, without which Brexit makes even less sense that it already does.
In the last few weeks public sector workers in the North have engaged in very large strike action in pursuit of wage demands designed to recover some of their lost real incomes. It has, however been subsumed under the politics of Stormont return, even while the trade unions have demanded that the British Government pay up and not use the lack of an Assembly as an excuse. It was supposedly putting pressure on the DUP to get back so the workers could get payed when the DUP didn’t, and doesn’t, give a toss.
The return of Stormont has not been lauded and celebrated as in previous ‘returns’ and the population is jaded by repeated failure and broken promises of a ‘new approach’. The real new approach required is, unfortunately, a long way off.
Sráid Marx 