The comedy of choice for the Partitionist elite is a niche publication known as the Irish Times. This outlet has courageously been describing ever smaller numbers as a majority when it comes to the issue of the Occupation. We should not expect it to be deterred by its own recent daring in describing the 50% support for the continuing failed state as a majority; there is no doubt that it can describe even lower numbers than this as constituting a robust majority as needs be (and needs will be, soon enough…). Its editors rest safe in the knowledge that its tiny readership will accept any irrationality as the price for not having to think about, or describe, the situation in the far north, a place so distant that the Mourne Mountains are not even visible in bad weather from Killiney Hill! 

The permanent level of high support for Unification in the 26-county state is explained away easily: when the people of the State realise that Unification might actually happen, they will suddenly just change their minds. It is simply not possible that the people could hold onto a position so much at odds with that of the Partitionist Party and its cretinous retainers in the media! With regard to the current high level of support for Sinn Féin, the Irish Times finds it unfair that that party often runs educated young candidates with no military background; it similarly complains that Sinn Féin adopts the standard liberal-left line on various social and economic issues, which is, of course, only a Ploy in order to gain Support; of its extraordinary vote management, especially in the Occupied Territories, the paper raises the intriguing suggestion that it is somehow undemocratic for a party to function in this way, intriguing inasmuch as it begs the question as to how exactly the Irish Times expects electioneering to be conducted in a polity in which every party wishes to maximise the number of candidates returned. Let us bracket for now the fact that the candidates in the north-east of the country are returned to an empty house, the perfect colonial set-up: elections, certainly, a building—a big one—and a chamber, but no debates, no votes, no need for those elected to speak.

In truth there is no secret as to how the Irish Times expects elections to be won. The key is to register a single party as several separate parties: witness the notional divide between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, with two handmaiden parties—brands believed to appeal to specific demographics—in the Green and Labour Parties (there have been others in the past that have been retired when they are no longer of Use). The recourse to the Irish language is useful for the two historic parties of government (who have recently played at being in government together, and without whom no government has ever yet been formed): having names in Irish obviates the need to define themselves by a political philosophy in the manner of parties elsewhere; this approach also means that they do not have to have a name that might come to seem humorous, or dishonest, in the way of the Green and Labour Parties. The Fianna of Fál (where the fianna are roving warrior-bands, and Fál is a name for Ireland) and Race of the Gael are names, in any case, best kept as Gaeilge.

Those north of the Border have not been kept up to date, have revealed in fact a provincial Naivety that in other circumstances might even be appealing, in openly expressing support for multiple of these separately registered parties, thereby recognising them as a single bloc: the SDLP has managed to find itself as the sister party simultaneously of both Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party, while also providing candidates to run for Fine Gael, and benefitting from the Green Party refusing to run against them. Claire Hanna, for example, taking time away from her busy contribution to England’s parliament, not to mention her Thursday night bridge club in Pimlico, to comment on Irish affairs, has expressed support for both Fine Gael and the Labour Party (and has welcomed the support of the Greens). 

In a recent byelection, serial non-TD Ivana Bacik was elected in the only plausible constituency left for her, through the decision of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party to each nominate a comedy candidate to run against her, thus allowing the Irish Times to share its assumption that the Labour branch of the Partionist Party would achieve a similar result across the country if a General Election were to be held the next day, an assertion that we might most politely call untested.