Your correspondent hesitates to comment on current events, preferring to write by the candlelight of Retrospect. Nevertheless recent developments in both parts of the country seem to require better commentary than Macdara has seen from the zombie media, so here are his thoughts.

Of the permanent Partionist Party in the twenty-six county state, three wings are currently sharing Government, without, of course, even the ceremony of disagreeing with each other on any policy issues: the fourth wing still has a few lifeless TDs and should stop existing after the next election. The Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael-(Labour)-Green Party might regard each of its representatives as being replaceable by any other, that is to say, as fungible entities embodying elite non-politics, but the State presupposes that the office of An Taoiseach is to be held by a named individual promoted on the basis of their ability to service the requirements of the Office. 

Whereas it seems that President Higgins found out about Varadkar’s resignation five minutes before An Taoiseach announced it and seems to have cheered him on, Macdara might have thought that the correct approach would be for Higgins to have told Varadkar that three taoisigh in under sixteen months speaks to a weakness in Government that requires the people to have a say on whom they would prefer to return to Power and which individual thereby should occupy the Office. Instead the President appears to have acquiesced in the idea that the Partionist Party can draw lots to name the Head of Government, since one Partionist is as good as any other: one wonders how they make a decision these days: thumb wars, hopscotch, rock paper scissors? Now Macdara is of the Revolutionary Left, but he has quite a good understanding of how Capitalo-Democracy is meant to work: is there a problem with his Reasoning in this instance? Exactly how many taoisigh in a single Government is too many?

Looking to the north-east of our country, we can comment that at least all of the taoisigh of the current Dublin Government have been elected to their seats. The Deputy First Minister of the Occupation, Emma Little-Pengelly, who had been hanging around waiting since she lost her seat in the Imperial Parliament to Claire Hanna, and who did not even run for election to the Colonial Assembly in 2022, was nevertheless awarded Jeffrey Donaldson’s seat, as he had inexplicably run for election to Stormont despite wanting to remain as an Irish representative at Westminster. It took one week for him to admit to the electorate that he had no intention of taking up the seat to which he had just been elected: no, London needed him far too much. Little-Pengelly, unelected at that point to any office, was gifted his seat. 

If the allegations against Donaldson proceed, it is to be expected that he will vacate his Westminster seat and his Stormont seat. If he fails to do so, action should be taken in both cases. Little-Pengelly must, out of respect for those who have made the allegations against Donaldson, out of respect for all those who have been made victims, vacate Donaldson’s seat. She may then stand for election, and demonstrate that she was not aware of the allegations against Donaldson in the years that she worked closely with him. But it is to be expected that—in the name of Peace and Stability, that is, in the name of the miserable Compulsory Coalition that obtains in the north-east—Little-Pengelly will be allowed to keep Donaldson’s seat. To insist on her removal, which is to say to make something happen, would be too much like Politics.

So, as the Partionist elites in the Dublin Government play musical chairs, their distorted reflection in the north-east continue their absurd game whereby everyone gets a seat…even those who have not been elected to one.