Tag: Ireland

Government’s budget spending shows priorities of President now mainstream On the face of it, these are halcyon days for the people in Irish politics whom their opponents call the “liberal left”. In Ireland Michael D co-opted them into his project to bring culture to the centre of politics, and vice versa. Talk left, vote right, as people have often observed of Irish politics. At the beginning of this Government’s term of office it was agreed between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and its Independent pals that where additional cash was available to be spent in budgets, it would be allocated on a 2:1 ratio between spending increases and tax cuts. But he raised other taxes by about €715 million – and he introduced spending increases of about €1.4 billion. In fact, what Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have done is what they have always done – they have accommodated themselves to the winds of change He had already signalled public spending increases of more than €2.5 billion in next year’s spending estimates. The centre of gravity of Irish politics has moved substantially to the left. Last weekend, editorialising approvingly of Peter Casey’s quixotic quest, the Sunday Times – early cheerleaders for Varadkar – washed its hands of him as just “another social democrat”. Varadkar has not turned into a social democrat; he just has a keen sense of where the public is. Over the weekend, as with all political gatherings, the veterans will tell war stories from the old day.

In current plans, the backstop, under which the whole of the UK would stay in a customs union while Northern Ireland alone effectively stayed in the single market, would be enacted in December 2020 if a bespoke technological solution or trade deal could not be reached by then. Foster has insisted she will not accept any Brexit deal under which Northern Ireland is treated differently to the rest of the UK. There was alarm about the language used by Downing Street on Friday that Theresa May “would never agree to a deal that would trap the UK in a backstop permanently”. The plan to include an extension clause in the withdrawal agreement would be a way to assuage concerns. A senior EU diplomat said that the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, could arrive at the European commission on Monday, should a deal be agreed during intensive talks over the weekend. “Mr Raab has stated he might come to Brussels on Monday,” the diplomat said. The negotiating teams are back in their offices today discussing outcome of talks over the last few days.” May asked in September last year for a transition period, which she optimistically described in her Florence speech at the time as a period of implementation of aspects of the future trade deal, including migration controls. The prime minister’s spokeswoman said on Friday: “When we published our plans in June on a UK-wide customs backstop, we were absolutely clear that the arrangement would be temporary, and only in place until our future economic relationship is ready.” Mujtaba Rahman, a former Treasury and European commission official, and now head of Europe for the Eurasia Group risk consultancy, said an extra six months would be needed if only for a trade deal to be negotiated and ratified by all the member states’ parliaments. “The UK has no choice but to ask for a mechanism to extend the transition, not least to further mollify the DUP,” Rahman said. “But doing so is also a recognition of reality: both the UK and the EU’s political leadership will change next year, meaning substantive trade negotiations are unlikely to begin until September 2019 at the earliest.” Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chair of the European Research Group, said extending the transition “would not necessarily make the backstop redundant and would be very expensive” because of the expected additional contributions to the EU budget.