It is an article of Irish republican faith not to acknowledge the authority of the British crown. So the fact that Gerry Adams, of all people, did it symbolically this week is important, because symbols matter to republicans. By submitting to the procedural charade – which should be replaced – of accepting a meaningless medieval office in order to resign his Westminster seat, the Sinn Féin leader showed how desperate he is to take part in the most important Irish general election in decades.
This year's Irish election will be an all‑change affair, but not just for Adams, who is trying to win a seat in Louth. The exact election date – late February or early March – will be announced in the next few days. Often, Irish elections tend to be of local interest only. The British, ignorant and condescending where Ireland is concerned, rarely devote a fraction of the interest to Irish contests that they lavish on far less relevant US ones. But this 2011 election ought to be an absolute cracker.
There are two main reasons for this. The imminent collapse of Brian Cowen's government will provide Europe with its first general election directly triggered by the tumult in the eurozone. So it will be nervously watched by governments in every capital across the continent – David Cameron is certainly doing so in this country. But it also looks set to be a milestone in Ireland's history, perhaps marking the historic downfall of Eamon de Valera's Fianna Fáil party, the political movement that has done more to shape the 90-year history of our independent neighbour than any other.
In one sense, it is a surprise that Ireland should be going to the polls now. Why call an election when the polls say that you will lose and when parliament has more than 12 months to run? The government coalition had a working majority for its controversial economic policy until it fell apart a few days ago. The austerity package imposed as a result of November's €85bn EU bailout is about to go through, even so. Adrift in the polls, Cowen and his coalition would try to hang on to power in any normal circumstances.
But these are not normal circumstances. Ireland's exposure to the banking collapse of 2008 and the bond market challenge of 2010 were an economic double-whammy compounded by the country's increasingly old-fashioned party politics. Unlike in Greece, where the single-party socialist government managed to hold on to power last spring in spite of the economic shock of the bond market battering, Ireland's Fianna Fáil-Green coalition has imploded under the weight of unpopularity. That says something about brittle coalitions in conditions of crisis – UK observers take note. Even more, it says something specific about Irish party politics, which are still framed by the events of 1921 and which, especially in Fianna Fáil's case, have become recklessly complacent.
As soon as the autumn bond market crisis broke in Dublin, Fianna Fáil and the Greens turned against each other. Then, in the new year, Fianna Fáil increasingly turned in on itself, with Cowen winning a pyrrhic victory over a challenge from Micheál Martin last week, only to resign the party leadership at the weekend and be succeeded by Martin on Wednesday. It may not be as spectacular as the uprisings taking place in the Arab world. But it is a revolution of a kind, all the same.
Opinion polls show the centre-right Fine Gael and the centre-left Labour party are on course to be the big winners when the vote comes, probably for no better reason than that they are the opposition. Fianna Fáil is struggling to stay in third place against the challenge of Sinn Féin, while the rest, including the battered Greens, trail far behind. The likelihood of Fine Gael's Enda Kenny taking over as prime minister from Cowen at the head of an FG-Labour coalition is widely assumed, not least in London. Cameron and Kenny had a long telephone conversation on Sunday.
Ireland is used to changes of government of that kind. There have been several FG-Labour coalition governments in the past, most recently in the 1990s. What would be unprecedented, however, would be for Fianna Fáil to slump to something like the 14% recorded in a Red C poll this month. For a party that has not slipped below 39% in any general election since it first took power under De Valera in 1932, such a result would be nothing short of catastrophic. Even Martin is only talking of getting into the mid-20s, which in any other circumstances would be humiliating.
But what would be the longer-term consequences? It is tempting to say a humbling would genuinely mark the end of the Fianna Fáil era. A party that was successively the carrier of De Valera's austere Celtic exceptionalism, of Charlie Haughey's Tammany republicanism and of Bertie Ahern's good-time wheels and deals – all of which belong to the past rather than the future – is a party that has perhaps now completed its historic nationalist mission. Surely, as the Irish Independent columnist Martina Devlin argued today, Fianna Fáil would now be better off merging into a European-style centre-right block with Fine Gael.
The problem, though, is that Ireland cannot escape its exceptionalism quite so easily. It is not a nation like others because no nation is quite like another. Even if an Ireland based on European-style centre-left versus centre-right politics may seem generally more suited to the 21st century than a politics based on the position your great-grandparents took to the Anglo-Irish treaty, those left-right politics are themselves dissolving and fragmenting and are now also adjusting to the impact of the financial crisis.
In Ireland, as elsewhere, voters are keen to penalise the governments that led them into financial crisis and the bank bailouts. But voters don't like the austerity imposed by their replacements much more either. If that process takes place in Ireland, then, yes, Fianna Fáil will lose badly in a few weeks time. But then, rather like the Tories have done here, Fianna Fáil may recover and reinvent itself, not disappear into the mists of history.
Old politics can be inconveniently tenacious in any country. We British ought to know this. The large bomb scare in north Belfast today is a reminder of one aspect of that in the Irish context. It would be foolish to write off Fianna Fáil too, however much of a drubbing it gets. It may not be so long before it returns, perhaps even in coalition with Sinn Féin, just in time for the centenary of the Easter Rising in 2016, or for that of the treaty five years later.
Comments in chronological order (Total 95 comments)
27 January 2011 9:15PM
The obliteration of Fianna Fail would be the best to happen in Ireland since, oh, about 1982.
27 January 2011 9:15PM
The Irish should be the first country to embrace socialist ideals, after all they led the neocon failed bankrupt experiment
Unless they realise more of the same will not solve their economic problems but just exponentially increase them, they are doomed for generations.
27 January 2011 9:15PM
Eh, he didn't.
So...this article is in the "if we had lost the Battle of Britain, what would the world look like today?" genre.
27 January 2011 9:17PM
fianna "fail" indeed.
:o)
27 January 2011 9:20PM
Were I to misrepresent the utterings of Mr Kettle to the the extent that he is misrepresenting Mr Adams (above) my comments would be unceremoniously deleted.
I suppose, Mod, in the interests of accuracy, you wouldn't delete the article?
27 January 2011 9:22PM
Actually, the Civil War divide will quite possibly continue: disilluisoned Fianna Fail voters will many of them transfer over to vote for Sinn Fein instead, and the Labour Party leadership is dominated by a large number of ex-Worker's Party characters & ex-student radicals such as Eamon Gilmore & Pat Rabbitte, who regard SF with abhorrence. Given that a FF/Fine Gael coalition is absolutely unthinkable, the likelihood is that the mutual abhorrence of the two big parties on the right will be paralleled by something analogous on the 2 big parties of the left. The only possible game-changer could be a coalition of Socialists & angry left-wing independents, who could prefer a coalition with both SF and Labour.
27 January 2011 9:23PM
The only thing that matters in this election is if people vote in FG and Labour and thus continue the financial policies of FF, which, if they do, is a continuation of the same old same old politics. The counter revolution will be complete and we will have our NuLab Irish version.
However this author along with the rest of the commetariat is operating on wishful thinking rather than what is happening on the ground. I predict in my own constituency a Socialist Worker Richard Boyd Barrett is going to take a seat, (he was only 400 short in the last election, being pipped at the post by the now dead duck Ciaran Green Party Cuffe). Of the two FF ministers one Hanafin is definitely going to lose, and David Andrews may just hang on because of his local dynastical advantage). There may be an SF win too.
Gerry Adams is a shoo in in Louth, as well many SFers who will soak up FF votes, along with a load of independent. But, if the Finance bill stays, they too will founder.
People want change. And regardless of our rebel credentials, no revolutionary change in Ireland was never popularly supported at the time, (eg the Rising itself), but we are always happy to queue and claim glory a la Dara O Brian whose grandmother was in the OLD IRA, you understand, the OLD IRA, those fluffy cuddly ones who blew black and tans and loads of civilians to death, not the new fanged Gerry Adams variety, who are way way worse than our grandparents.
But it will entail re privatising bank debt, and stopping the reliance on a low corporation tax amongst other unpalatables. Which is why we have Eurobots on Irish news right now telling us that no new government can renege on its responsibilities.......
27 January 2011 9:24PM
"Irish election: this will be Ireland's chance to move on from 1921"
Top 4 parties are Fianna Fail, Fianna Gael, Labour and Sinn Fein.
Only one of them, Labour isn't tied to the Civil War, the only one of them who isn't hopelessly tied to families and nepotism.
Anyway it will be a labour/Fianna Gael coalition and if that doesn't win hearts and minds in 4 years it is likely Fianna Fail will be back as they are too greatly tied into Irish life.
Or worse Sinn Fein will get turned to.
Both parties inexplicably linked to the civil war and testaments to everything thats wrong with Irish politics.
Expect the civil war hangover to last a long long time, post colonial politics suck. Empires leave a mess behind when they leave.
27 January 2011 9:24PM
Fianna Fail will be soundly drubbed in the election. The Irish people will never forgive them for taking away their baby rattle.
27 January 2011 9:30PM
Maybe in a decade or so, FF might stage a comeback in coalition with SF. FG/Labour for the foreseeable, tho.
27 January 2011 9:30PM
I don't know why Ireland's Civil War political divisions should be expexcted to end. Ours have not and they are 60 years older than Ireland's.
a bomb scare in Belfast, eh?
that will be good for business.
27 January 2011 9:34PM
He resigned his seat, whatever way parliament responded to his resignation was no concern of Gerry Adams, nor would it matter to the electorate of the south of Ireland whether Gerry Adams had gone through the 'proper procedures' of resigning from the British parliament.
It is good to see articles addressing the problems caused by crooked bankers and politicians in Ireland, but do not spoil it by falsely attributing actions to individuals who are participating in the election, Ireland has enough myths without you adding to them.
27 January 2011 9:41PM
OK - I guess the article stays!
I was pitching for some groundbreaking action - alas!
Frustrated once again.
27 January 2011 10:00PM
The idea of a FF and FG merger makes sense outside Ireland; less so from within.
As others have noted, they represent two different strands in Irish history.
The former that of violence to achieve independence; the latter that of opposing such violence.
No doubt it would make things tidier for foreign commentators when Ireland occasionally engages their attention.
The people of Ireland will probably not be taking this into account.
27 January 2011 10:05PM
.
www.irishexaminer.com
BBC Website
Gerry Adams
CP Scott
27 January 2011 10:15PM
The problem for Mr Adams is that I genuinely believe he has renounced violence. But unfortunately we now have a situation that requires a ahem 'robust' type of nationalism . There is no way whatsoever that the Eurocratic elite will be dissuaded democratically. (Same is true for Greece or wherever as well).
Unlike Tunisia people are NOT starving. I think the majority just like on this side of the Irish Sea don't GAF. It needs energy or food to motivate people off the sofa.
I usually agree with Mr Kettle's psephological type stuff but in this instance I think he is wrong and the people in Ireland simply can't be bothered (at this stage) to resort to all the horrors of violence and fighting once again. It wouldn't surprise me if Fianna Epic Fail win (on a v'.low turnout).
Also the factor in favour of the status quo (apart from the obvious reluctance of people to go into wanting agro violence and bombings) is that nationalism in Portugal, Spain, Greece and Ireland has a sad history, still in living memory of not delivering much benefits to the 'patrias' they were supposedly there to defend.
(yes OK there is a prob in my analysis in that Eire is slightly diff in that the nationalists tend to be a bit lefty rather than hard right like in southern Europe)
27 January 2011 10:18PM
Yes indeed, as several people have pointed out above, Gerry Adams, playing himself, did not accept an obscure royal title in order to resign, as per The Rules - he simply resigned.
I'm no fan of that man, or that shower better known as The Shinners, but it seems like a clumsy hook, or presumption, to have laid out the rest of the story.
And, as nicely convenient as it may be to think that everything in Ireland hinges around 1921, and Blah Blah Blah, the fact is that as fiercely independent etc as the vast majority of the Irish people are today, they - we - can actually manage to do things, and vote, without considering the role and the rule of the British, pre-1921.
Actually, I think you'll find that people cast their vote entirely free of any consideration of any impact of British anything, but simply consider themselves with the problems and issues facing our country today, with those being fully enclosed within our borders.
I'm often left feeling rather unimpressed at a number of persistent and cliched views of Ireland, and the Irish, whenever I visit London or meet any British friends, who do everything but pat me on the head and mutter "There, there...", such is their expectation that I'm about to start rabbitting on about "800 years of oppression when those British bastard kings and queens stole my great great great great great grandfather's potato fiels in 14-niminy-two..."
Please accept that the issue of Fianna Fail as a quote-unquote Republican party is more complicated than merely seeing it as a sop with which to placate the (then) population against The British (boo! hiss!), when it is 'just' seen by most as A Political Party With Certain Views, today.
Thank you so much. There, there...
27 January 2011 10:24PM
Jeez.
Have I got news for you!
27 January 2011 10:26PM
I'll believe it when I see it quite frankly. You'd be surprised at how thick-headed some of the cretins are in this country as regards party loyalties.
Also, has anyone heard any of the vox-pops from Cork on the Irish radio stations the past few days? Cork people are falling over themselves to declare that they will actually vote FF now that it is being lead by "one of their own". This sort of small town-small mind rural fuckwittery is a bigger blight on politics on this island than civil war politics. The civil war divide largely only matters to politicans and only then for scoring cheap points off each other in what passes for witty political debate in these parts. It's the sheer fuckwittery of voting for a party based solely on the leader coming from the same county as you that keeps time and again getting the same calibre of low-life, corrupt, incompetant, anything-for-a-quick-euro politicians that got us into this mess in the first place. More of the same will not solve anything.
27 January 2011 10:32PM
@SamJohnson
But 1982 was the start of half a decade of Depression and emigration under non-FF rule.
You a misery junkie?
27 January 2011 10:36PM
@CrashBall
Was it not Mayor Daly of Chicago who so accurately observed that "all politics is local"?
There is a certain type of Irish Lefty/"Liberal" who reckons Ireland is somehow Xceptional.
I put it down to our fairly average educational system.
27 January 2011 10:37PM
Bigwigandfiver
Mr Adams does not need violence here . Were he or any other like minded to publicly accept that deposits were at risk in the event of default and substantial monies left Eire banks the " Eurocratic elite " would have no immediate answer .
It is a shot to nothing _ the least that would happen is Eire`s usurous loan terms would be re-negotiated - before a vote was cast .
27 January 2011 11:00PM
Hopefully the people of Ireland will redress the wrong done to them when they were forced to vote on the Lisbon Treaty again and again until they gave the answer required by the EU.
Hopefully they will assert their independence from the EU and steer their own course.
They have been appallingly served by their government and the EU elite.
27 January 2011 11:11PM
Chigurh undeniable.
But has Mr A worked that out himself? Let alone his hard core supporters?
Ireland could definately play and WIN high stake Europoker in a way not open to say Spain (as Spain is too big and also Ireland is basically OK apart from real estate and banks we Brits would wish for their rate of small company formation).
Also the chances of the average voter thinking like you do are zero. Even though I agree with you I feel guilty of talking to some like minded soul in some echo chamber like I vicously accuse the Guardian journalists of doing! So hypocritical. See posts above Cork = FF etc etc etc.
(that etc etc etc was in a Yul Brinner voice).
27 January 2011 11:14PM
@JonathanBW
Which is presumably why Ireland was just about the poorest country in Europe when it joined the EEC (as then was) in 1973 - economically little more than a British client state - and is now - even after the recent nosedive, one of the richest countries per capita in the world, and still last time I heard ahead of the UK.
And how precisely would rejection of the Lisbon Treaty have improved their curent position.
27 January 2011 11:23PM
Loveable Lefty and thats another reason why a political earthquake WON'T happen.
Although Ireland has been utterly screwed over by the EU people will remember that it wasn't always this way and allying with France and Germany helped them A LOT in the RECENT past.
I would love it just love it in a Keeganest style if the Irish slapped the Eurocrats hard straight in the face ESPECIALLY with a party that used to be violent, BUT IT WON'T HAPPEN.
27 January 2011 11:23PM
The reality in Ireland is way bigger than what is being discussed here.
The dysfunctional and abusive nature of the nexus between Church and State is made visible in the ways in which the Survivors of Residential Schools, of clergy abuse, and of family abuse have been treated.
What has happened is the biggest crime in the history of the Irish State...
Many tens of thousands of children, many thousands of girls and women, in Residential Schools, Industrial Schools, Magdalene Launderies and fee paying boarding schools , in Asylums, in rural and urban parishes were abused, beaten, raped, humiliated on a vast scale for some 70 years or so....
In many cases these Institutions were run by Church and State.....
And the Irish State's response was to go into 'crisis management' ; to craft a sordid deal designed to indemnify both Church and State from further civil litiagtion and criminal prosecution.
Thanks a bunch Bertie!
1, 2, 3, 4 reports later and it's clear that a cover-up had been in operation since the 1970s. It's clear that pedophile abuser clergy passed victims around. It was a ring.
There are more reports, one of which is the Cloyne Report which was to have been released last week. It's still not relased.
On the day before it was due to be released, the Cloyne diocese called in a psychotherapist to advise and counsel the Clergy in readiness for that release.
There are more on the way...
No prosecutions. The DPP remains a sullen protector.
Shannon Airport was handed to the US Military as a transit point for combat troops on their way to two illegal wars. Nive one Bertie!
We know whom the Irish politicans are sided with.
Shell, that repugnant destroyer of Nigerian Ogoni people, that polluter of lands, Vince Cables employers for a while, were given the resources off the west coast of Ireland for free.
The Gardai were instructed not to arrest protestors, after the imprisonment of 5 local people who protested the imposition of Shell's untested pipeline on their lands. It gave too much publicity to the protestors. They beat the protestors instead. On a daily basis.
Shell employed it's own 'security firm', hard men from Eastern Europe and elsewhere, to protect it's work sites. Locals were beaten, some quite badly, by masked assailants. No-one was charged. A local fisherman's boat was boarded on the high seas, and scuttled..... he was one of the lead protestors. he was lucky to survive. No-one was charged.
What all this tells anyone with a brain is that the Government of Ireland has no interest in the welfare of the people of Ireland beyond ensuring that enough of them are satiated such that they do not challenge the status quo of Power.
Sinead O'Connor's song "Famine" talked about the intergenerational effects of unresolved trauma. These effects permeate Irish Society.
It's no wonder that Governance in ireland is so toxic.
It's no wonder that the people are unable to grasp the nettle, face the truth.
And yet, sooner or later, they will have to do so.
Ireland, for all it's tiger wealth, for all it's shamrock tourist idealism, is a wounded nation. Those wounds go deep.
And there is no-one amongst the traditional power elites, the parties, the Civil Service, that can stand with honour today. Not even the Presidents Robinson or McAleese...
This mess won't go way, won't be fixed overnight. One election will make not a dent.
27 January 2011 11:29PM
The numbers are there: the left could and should win a majority and re-negotiate the debt.
The usurers and Securocrats are counting on sectarianism, of the Official vs Provo variety, to save the bankers bacon.
It is the ghost of Conor Cruise O'Brien against the spirit of James Connolly.
It is good to see Gerry Adams has 'given up violence' it would be much better if the British government did the same.
27 January 2011 11:30PM
Depends what happens in the campaign. Will the blinkers come off the electorate? We can only hope so but I foresee a fudge and a triumphant media misinformation campaign
How about frequent free showings of " Inside Job" in the week before the election.
There is a huge pile of illegal ordure swept under the rugs and squashed flat by the desperate trampling of government, but that has just made the stink even worse.
If Ireland goes has the balls to go independent, and actually start to prosecute the undoubted perps, it will have huge repurcussions throughout the EU and I wouldn't want to be holding shares in the big banks. Now who owns shares in the banks?- oh yes the taxpayers. (shit and double shit).
Politicians, and their cronies must be held accountable for this calamity, which is still rolling around waiting to come ashore.
27 January 2011 11:41PM
It was Boston Representative and House speaker John McCormick, I think.
28 January 2011 12:10AM
The pensions and payoffs.
The barefaced lies.
The 'party first, country second' ethos.
The inability or arrogance to accept responsibility.
The ludicrous shite out of bertie's mouth today about how the only think he could be blamed for was the bertie bowl.
The whole situation sickens me.
I hope that this is the end of the 'Soldiers of Destiny', or "Mercenaries of Fáil' as someone smarter than me so eloquently put it.
But does anyone honestly believe that the next shower will be any better? I really really hope so but my head tells me otherwise.
The only ones who are making the right noises and seem not to be spoofing on the same scale as the M.o.F. are the shinners...but it will be a long time before would vote for them.
All in all, a depressing state of affairs. I'm leaving the country next month, and I hope when/if I return, the whole system is much improved.
depressing...
28 January 2011 12:10AM
Apparently, Northstead is within the Scalby district of Scarborough. So, as Adams claimed never to have submitted to anything, but simply resigned from Parliament, will he be boycotting (bad word, I know), Yorkshire as well as Westminster? I knew some good would come of it, even though I'm from the other side of the hills myself (a region where at least a third of people are at least half Irish).
@Vercoda:
Then the Pope closed down a lot of the factories that were making the potatoes...
@coreluminous:
Let's see now- 2 reports into clerical child abuse on a national scale, 1 report into the diocese of Ferns (Wexford and area), 1 into the diocese of Dublin and 1 forthcoming into the diocese of Cloyne (near Cork). I'm aware there are 26 dioceses in Ireland (of which only 5 are wholly or partly in NI), so this looks to be a long drawn out process without much chance of mass convictions (any more than the guilty ex-priests being thrown into the sea with millstones round their necks).
The almost simultaneous fall of both the Church and the government (together with the economy)- no wonder the Irish are feeling screwed over.
28 January 2011 12:15AM
Fianna Fail will get 20/25% of the vote, but a Fine Gael/Labour Coalition will have to put through the same spending cuts as FF would, which will cause serious problems for Labour as the smaller, more left-wing partner, and allow FF to make some form of comeback in the next election.
Does that sound familiar to anyone?
28 January 2011 12:16AM
What a shame it must be for FF & SF that it is the British Government that has offered a loan to bail out the Republic.
It is the mother country that has come to the aid of it's child.
28 January 2011 12:18AM
So in summary, this article is suggesting that by voting for Sinn Fein the Irish people will be moving on from the Civil War! Dear oh dear...
The only question is, what will be the balance of power between Labour and FG?
SF to finish 4th and Gilmore elected Taoiseach would be the best result possible. It would doubly piss Adams off to be ruled by a bunch of old stickies!
28 January 2011 12:18AM
The narrative is circular:
Fianna Fáil will get a drubbing, then will return with Sinn Féin.
What point is being made?
28 January 2011 12:29AM
Fiann Fail's voluntary submission to the polls is the child of their need to save what minimal credibility they have left to get through the austerity bill that woud pave the way for the UE/IMF bailout. The Tammany corruption you refer didn't soften, as you suggest, into semi-respectable wheels and deals when Bertie Ahern took up the reins from his mentor Charlie Haughey. They burgeoned, as one might expect, when the property boom took off. And not least of the reasons why the property market turned cancerous was the zoning of development land, hardly in short supply in this country of low population density, but deliberately restricted - against the warnings of their best analysts and official reporting - in order to allow Fianna Fail's cronies to fall into fabulous wealth.
The Irish people, long duped, have been given a stark choice by their complicit, desperate leaders to accept that either their children foot the bill both for the gains of their greediest minority and the losses of private foreign investors in private banks, or that they are otherwise fecked for future inward investment. That of course is manifest rubbish. They should pay no more what than what they are properly due. But, in any event, they can only pay what they are able to pay.
Rememer the Wiemar Republic and reparations? That didn't lead to a happy ending. Nor will this, if it's enacted.
I see, by the way, that in the last hour or two, Fine Gael have seen sense (or at least the seeds of their own destruction starting to sprout). They're going to challenge the terms of the bail-out. Fine, but the Irish people should be challenging the terms of the bail-out first, foremost and in no uncertain terms.
It's nevertheless true, as you say, Martin Kettle, that Irish elections tend to be of local interest only. And you're equally right that the British are, often, ignorant and condescending where Ireland is concerned.
28 January 2011 12:48AM
spirit2534 - " It is the mother country that has come to the aid of it's child."
No it's the British government coming to the aid of it's own banks which are bond holders in Irish Banks. Most Irish people don;t want to a 7Billion loan they just want to tell RBS that they ain't getting their 88 million the Irish bank is bust. Sorry it was a bad investment. Irish tax payers shouldn't be responsible for bank bonds or covering British banks bad investments.
28 January 2011 12:55AM
Sorry 88 billion
28 January 2011 12:59AM
Its a bit weird that people are claiming that the article is an example of British people seeing the Irish as obsessed with the civil war and the previous history of British oppression because it sees the divide between Fine Fail and Fine Gael as still being about the civil war (and therefore a bit silly in the modern context) when the article links to an article in an Irish newspaper which a) assumes that the divide is still about the civil war and b) suggests that this is a silly thing for two centre-right parties to be divided about 80 odd years later.
28 January 2011 1:08AM
Xceptional
If he didn't, then he is still a member of the British Parliament and will remain so until it is dissolved.
That is the only way that you can resign from Parliament mid-term: namely by accepting one of the handful of "offices of profit" which still trigger an election.(Prior to the current arrangements, acceptance of any paid crown office - PM, Chancellor ... all of them - triggered a by-election.)
One must assume that Gerry Adams (who is no fool) will have made himself aware of this fact before he stood for election to Westminster.
OTOH, it is deeply ironic that Martin Kettle should be urging Irish politicians to "move on" from 1921, when he is still deploying meanings of "left" and "right" which date back to the French revolution!
28 January 2011 1:16AM
vercoda
Except that MPs cannot resign. There is no provision for them to resign.
The only way that they can be required to vacate their seat - and it is not a resignation, it is a "sacking" - is if they apply for, and are accepted for, one of the handful of crown offices which still automatically create a by-election.
It was quite mischievous of Cameron to offer the one which might cause embarrassment - the usual office being that of Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds.
OTOH, he could have been offered the office of "Escheator of Ulster": which would have been fun.
28 January 2011 1:32AM
I know that this is a little bit off topic, but it reminds me of a song:
"I've been a good boy, I've said my prayers
I brushed my teeth and I went upstairs
I asked Lord God, won't you bless my soul
I want hole, foal, rock and roll
When I grow up, I wanna be
The baddest motherf***er what you ever done see
But Christ looked down, he said my son,
What you ask of me can not be done
The position you require it has been filled
By a bad motherf***er with a bag of pills
A three piece suit, snakeskin boots
A rhinestone smile and an attitude
He robbed your phone, he f***ed your beor
His name is written all across the toilet door
He'll get the holy ghost, he'll spread it on toast
It's f***ing Eamon DeValera and he's double dropping yokes
Call round and meet his folks
And laugh at all his jokes
And give him alll your smokes
And double drop some yokes
The yokes went in two by two
If they're good enough for Eamon,
They're good enough for you"
'Double Drop DeValera' - The Rubberbandits
28 January 2011 1:39AM
@WheatFromChaff (and others)
Wrong. He just did. You can make up all the fairy stories you like, as can Cameron but Gerry has just shown you your constitution is made out of magic wishes and bits of pumpkin.
28 January 2011 1:56AM
WFC
I thought the positions were taken in turn? However, if he won't apply for a meaningless position his resignation should be ignored and he should be required to turn up and vote as usual.
28 January 2011 1:58AM
smellybeard
Then no election should be called.
28 January 2011 5:33AM
TokenDissent*s "take" on how the upcoming Election turns out was one of the better contributions.However,unless Labour*s Gilmore must take some risks e..g repudiating the untenable Croke Park Agreement and/or demanding big haircuts for Senior Bondholders.If he plays too timidly,I believe that Fine Gael will win;Labour -2nd;F.F -3rd;S.F-4th.
Labour,alone of the 5 parties,voted against the wretched Euro 440 Billion Guarantee(!) for 6-Banks{ 2 were,even then,Zombified entities} in late Sept/2008.The Voters should be reminded,again & again,that F.F+Greens+ remnants of the Irish neo-Thatcherites put Ireland on the road to economic perdition by bailing-out their very own homegrown casino capitalists.The EU+IMF funds were a direct consequence of Sept/08.Labour had to support Lenihan this week to preclude 8/9 weeks of total chaos
But, Labour should not expect automatic electoral support for their excellent reading of the recklessness involved in that "Guarantee" 29 months ago.Otherwise,they will just be support -players to F.G.The breakthrough is tantalizingly close....
28 January 2011 8:01AM
smellybeard
Not unless he accepted one of the offices-of-profit, he didn't.
Just back from the pub?
Orthus
He would not be required to do anything. He would , however, retain the status of MP until the next dissolution: which, I presume (given the premise of the article), would disqualify him from standing for the Irish Parliament.
28 January 2011 8:18AM
So Gerry Adams has been assigned an office previously held by Boris Johnson, Peter Mandelson, Robert Kilroy-Silk, Enoch Powell and...Ian Paisley.
28 January 2011 8:52AM
Just logged on, I’m curious as to your opinions on independents standing in the upcoming election does anyone think that they can achieve any leverage in what may well be a FineGael only government.