I

Wonderful new New York City Mayor Mamdani is not perfect. It sinks the heart that he turned up to a St Patrick’s Day celebration in sash—ready with references to James Connolly and the anti-apartheid activists at Dunnes Stores—but had not prepared a response to the obvious question he would be asked, a natural follow-on to his dipping into Irish Revolutionary history. Now if Mamdani was to be asked about the forthcoming By-elections, for example, one would expect him to dodge the question. But the single answer on Irish matters that he must be prepared to give, is on whether he approves of Reunification, and the present writer is less impressed than others appear to be for Mamdani to have said that he had not thought enough about it.

Settler Colonisation does not need to be met in the first instance with quiet reflection. Mamdani is against it; everyone knows as much. Who is he trying to keep happy with his non-answer? Not the Sassenachs, presumably? Perhaps it is tricky for a person in a Colonial glasshouse to throw Anti-Colonial stones, but he does not let that stop him from taking the right position on Palestine. And while his smiling demeanour is generally welcome, there is a time for seriousness, and laughing at the question, as he did, is the most characteristic behaviour of the Liberal Right. As the rising Far Right jeers and threatens, we should not lose our sense of how disgusting it is for those who prepared the way for them, their comrades of the Liberal Right, to laugh whenever challenged on their despicable politics. Ah, you are like an undergrad, they communicate with their little chuckles and shakes of the head, maybe a sideways glance at their handlers: you are a utopian who doesn’t understand that my burden is to promote the injustice that I decry even as it makes me rich. Mamdani should keep his smiles, and use them widely, but not when asked a serious question.

This is some friendly advice. Of course there is the option for him to avoid the St Patrick’s Day affair entirely; Macdara would not criticise him if he chose to do so. But turning up unprepared was a mistake; then again he seemed to realise as much and improved his messaging the following day. A reference to the Hunger Strikers? Nice work, Mr Mayor.

II

No such comradely criticism for the man who must be taoiseach this week, since he was the one sent to the Oval Office. The highlight of Micheál smoke-free Martin’s year is sitting with his feet to the fire at the White House—gilded marble fireplace and all. Let us not detain ourselves in pointing out that Martin has not commented on Trump’s dementia: watching the Pravda-like behaviour of the compliant Capitalist media on this matter is one of the most darkly fascinating hobbies one can have in our world in its Present State.

With zionists using the US President’s idiocy, narcissism and diminished capacity for reality testing to leverage their genocide into a conflict with truly global ramifications, Martin did not think it necessary to avoid paying obeisance at Trump’s feet. He accepted minor insults such as the misgendering of An Uachtarán and some conversation about the world’s most boring sport—if sport is even the word—but what finally pressed Martin into open rebellion was some perceived insult against Martin’s English Paymasters. Yes, Martin finally twitched into life in order to defend the least charismatic mass murderer in history, Keith Starmer (your correspondent has hereby revoked Lord Starmer’s Celtic name and given him a more apposite and beige one, admittedly of Celtic origin but very thoroughly appropriated by the Germanic hordes of Lower Britain).

If you remember all the fuss last year, but we got a landing zone between Europe eh and the US, and I think we can eh get em a landing zone again. And I think, I just met with [Keith] Starmer last week, the British-Irish relationship is a very important one emmm Churchill was a great wartime leader […] he was a great wartime hero. [Keith] Starmer has done a lot to reset the Irish-British relationship, I just want to put that on the record, emmm but I do believe that he’s a very earnest, sound person […] we had our own conflict, em which went on for thirty years, eh and we learnt a lot from that eh in terms of how to bring about peace.

(He also stated that there cannot be a rogue state with access to a nuclear weapon, making it sound like he believes that the Iranian State has one, though he knows it does not. He naturally took time to whine about Iranian support for anti-zionism, but not for zionist genocide.)

Now Martin’s monologue, with its compulsory piss-poor delivery (because Partitionists need us to see that they are unwilling to do the minimum in training themselves for public speaking) offers a vision ofthirty years of conflict (rather than the standard eight hundred years), which succeeded in teaching us a valuable lesson about how Peace is Nice and the English are even Nicer. This is a Barney the Dinosaur version of West Brit history. It is comically out of touch with any actual understanding of Imperialism in Ireland; it is, in other words, barely even gaslighting, but purely Martin demonstrating to his handlers that he is on their side, the way paid zionists have to show their loyalty by adopting ever more absurd stances.

Ultimately Martin was pleading pointlessly for Trump to remember that the elites have a common cause: destroying Palestine, Iran, other Brown and Black countries, yes, and maintaining the class war in the White Countries. Don’t criticise Keith too much, Mister President—he is corrupt too: one of us! 

Pointless, stupid, boring, cringey. Macdara never wants to see a green tie or a bowl of shamrocks again. Perhaps the luminaries of the Irish Government could stay at home and do some fucking work in March instead?