It is well known that the London media betrayed an extraordinary confusion when a Conservative government relied on the support of DUP MPs for its majority. Each publication carried short explainers, so that readers might understand how it is that there are Irish MPs when Irish people have been so keen for so long to explain that they are a separate country. They tried to explain how it was that the sophisticated Imperial parliament could possibly have such grotesques as the DUP within it (easy to explain, after all: the colonies are so backwards).

By the time of the following election, the London media still had no interest in informing themselves as to how the people of Occupied Ireland would vote, and this despite the decisive role of Irish MPs in propping up the previous English government, on the one hand, or in not turning up, on the other, reducing the number of MPs required for an overall majority. It was still at this point unthinkable that a London journalist might break down the 18 seats by likely winning party and factor the results into parliamentary arithmetic. This would not only be work in itself, but fruitlessly so, as no editor would include such tedious details in a report for English eyes. It was enough to note only that Northern Ireland would have 18 seats, alongside the estimated total for each of the English parties, as if these seats all belonged to a single party for the Occupied Territories, one that could best be ignored again, now that the awkward period of DUP support had ended.

We might also consider the fact that of the two and a bit parties mandated by the English system, none stand in Occupied Ireland, and that only meagre relations exist between the parties in the Occupied Territories and those of the British Mainland, such as the Alliance Party’s sisterly relations with the Liberal Democrats, parties that are similarly defined only in the negative—not Labour-Conservative; not Nationalist-Unionist—and about which it is therefore difficult to note any other characteristic, aside from the extraordinary political naivety attendant upon being such a non-party. One is reminded of Naomi Long sincerely requesting a no-fly zone over Ukraine, disregarding the fact that this would mean the Nato half of the War Party shooting down planes of the other half, triggering a globalised conflict. Perhaps an addiction to chaos born of living under Occupation is what lies behind such insanity. Or perhaps the parochial hellhole that is the Colony has resulted in this lady having utterly no clue what she is saying at any point. (In fact, her defence would likely be that she only said this catastrophic policy should “not be taken off the table”.)

Its name is perfection, of course: the exemplar of focus-grouped nullity: Alliance. Who can object to an alliance? No matter the level of its actual support, the Liberal Right in Ireland and the neighbouring Jurisdiction crow about the inevitability of its overtaking the nasty divisions of Settler and Native. But which tribe would this crowd of in-betweeners rather be allied with when the time comes for a referendum? Your correspondent notes that they have in fact cheerfully redesignated as settler supremacists when they needed to game the numbers in the utterly corrupt environment of the Occupation Administration. Let us explore further!