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Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand One Hundred And Three

 

A Morning Thought @ 3275

Tommy McKearney ☭ A question for our readers. Is the Trump presidency an aberration in an otherwise properly functioning governmental structure, or is this bizarre regime symptomatic of a deeper malaise?


 Let us examine the situation.

Donald Trump is an obnoxious, unscrupulous, vainglorious, unprincipled thug. He is also a convicted felon who, as president, has used that position to greatly enlarge his personal wealth. Since returning to the White House in 2025, he has used executive orders to introduce a plethora of tariffs that have caused turmoil not only in states traditionally viewed as out of favour with Washington but among long-term allies as well. Coupled with his threat to annex countries that are members of NATO, he has destabilised what, for long, was a solidly united bloc of leading capitalist countries.

Moreover, and in contradiction to his election campaign promise not to embark on foreign wars, he has launched several military operations. Most recently, he has decided to attack Iran. An unwise option as it turned out, resulting in his popularity falling due to the inflationary impact of rising oil prices. Consequently, there is an opinion growing in some quarters that as his influence declines, his presidency will be viewed as an aberration never to be repeated.

Whatever about the Trump style of running the office being a bizarre, one-off phenomenon, the essence of the US presidency and its dictatorial use of economic power backed by flagrant use of military might will not change voluntarily. While Donald Trump may well pass into history as a boorish anomaly, he is not an aberration in terms of the United States’ exercise of power.

In reality, while the Trumpian delivery is theatrical to the point of ludicrousness, his underlying theme of ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) is something that the US ruling class wholeheartedly endorses. The reason is simply that the American Century is no more and the empire is in decline. A condition brought about largely through its adoption of neo-liberal economic policies at the beginning of the 1980s.

A policy found necessary by the US bourgeoisie in what might be described as an example of the inherent contradictions within capitalism. Three decades after the end of the Second World War and the Western bloc’s compromise with its working class in order to offset the attraction of Soviet-style socialism, the capitalist order was feeling threatened by the increasing power of labour. Drawing on the theories of the Chicago School of Economics led by Milton Friedman, the government of Ronald Reagan (and that of Margaret Thatcher) embarked on a mission to crush organised labour.

Utilising a strategy of ostensibly promoting the supremacy of free market capitalism, no consideration of how this impacted on employment or working-class living standards was to be tolerated. In practice, this meant that the state not only refused to consider any input from organised labour but actively worked to break trade union bargaining power.

Consequently, big business found it politically possible to move its manufacturing plants from the USA and relocate abroad in order to take advantage of lower labour costs. (A similar process was also underway in Thatcher’s Britain.) Over time, deindustrialisation led to what became known as the ‘Rust Belt’ across the Midwest and Great Lakes, accompanied inevitably by mass unemployment.

As Lenin had identified in his classic work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, the export of capital replaced the export of manufactured commodities. For several decades thereafter, the US financial sector benefitted as central government paid little attention to the hardship being endured by many working-class Americans.

By the same token, the US ruling class was initially indifferent to the outworking of facilitating the transfer of much of its manufacturing base abroad. Eventually, though, they came to realise that by doing so other countries, particularly China, had built a viable indigenous manufacturing base. Further concern was created by the fact that the People’s Republic had used its enormous sophisticated educational structures to enhance manufacturing processes once controlled solely by the USA.

This has resulted in China’s manufacturing sector now being significantly greater than that of the US. In the mid-1980s, China’s share of global manufacturing stood at less than 5 per cent, in contrast to the US share of approximately 27 per cent. Current figures show that China’s share stands at nearly 30 per cent while the US has declined to just over 17 per cent. Moreover, the PRC is leading global markets in crucial fields, among which are green energy, electronics, heavy industry and industrial automation tools.

Faced with the prospect of being comprehensively outperformed economically by what is deemed as Communist China, the US ruling capitalist class along with its Deep State are reacting despotically. This is evidenced by the fact that Trump was allowed leeway that would not have been tolerated if opposed by the embedded establishment. Between his abuse of office to self-enrich, his criminal conviction and the distinct likelihood of incriminating material in the Epstein files, there were ample grounds for impeachment if so desired.

There can only be one conclusion, and that is, regardless of his style, Trump is allowed, even encouraged, to launch a programme of measures compatible with the interests of the empire.

In short, to answer the question with which we opened: Donald Trump is undoubtedly a boorish charlatan, but he is not in any way an aberration in terms of the methodology, practices and strategy of the Yankee empire. Therein lies the dangerous malaise at the heart of that system.

Reference

¹ Felix Richter, ‘China’s Rise to Manufacturing Dominance’, Statista.

Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist.
He is author of The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament.
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney



Trump Is Not An Aberration But The Continuum

Anthony McIntyre ⚽ Just the two of us for this one. Neither Jay nor his mates tagged along.


First stop the Windmill for a double whiskey to top up the house glass I had already imbibed at home before setting out for the game. It is as well Paddy has the patience of a saint as a bane to my aversion to the sobriety of a judge. The Drogheda prices are much better than Dublin. In one of the bars yesterday I forked out 9.5 yo yo for a shot of Black Bush. I took Powers at 2.50 cheaper the round after that. Even then, considerably pricier than Drogheda pubs. 

It reveals a lot about our loss of confidence in this Drogheda side when the brace of us predicted a defeat going into the game. It's Sligo FFS but the performances from Drogheda throughout a string of matches has been so consistently poor that even the bottom team seems more than capable of walking away from Sullivan and Lamb Park three points to the good. Not a home win in the league in four months helps explain why the Drogs are facing yet another relegation battle and increasing disappointment on the terraces. 

On the night our Jeremiah perspective of doom and gloom was subverted by a commanding performance from the claret and blue who emerged 2-0 winners, game wrapped up in the first half with strikes from Warren Davis and Edwin Agbaje. The latter had played magnificently from start to finish, delivering the killer blow at the most psychologically demoralising moment for Sligo - just before the ref called time on the first half. 

It keeps the Drogs within touching distance of a resurgent Waterford, two points north and only 6 games left. It has also hammered another nail into the Sligo coffin, the Bit O'Red on the precipice almost certain to disappear into the abyss of the lower division for the first time in twenty two years. I wasn't even living in Drogheda when that happened.

Despite the weakness of the opposition the win should not be understated. Kevin Doherty was without seven of his first team regulars either due to injury or suspension. The Drogs allowed Sligo most of the possession, seemingly happy for them to pass the ball in areas they were never going to score from. Off the ball the Drogs put up a shield wall. On the ball they gave the Bit O' Red a bit o' lead. While the home exuded an uncharacteristic confidence, Sligo looked like a team that had lost all self belief, projecting a picture of dejection. 

Still, ninth with 31 points, with a maximum of 18 to be taken from the remaining fixtures, it is a precarious time for Drogheda United. Jeremiah might have taken a back seat for the evening but it is not quite time for Pollyanna to take his place.

⏩Follow on Bluesky.


Drogs ⚽ Bit O'Red ⚽ Bit O' Lead


Q&A: Student activism on American campuses in response to the war in Gaza has become a national debate over where to draw the line between political dissent and antisemitism.

Even as many universities have moved to restrict, disperse or discipline protest activity, demonstrations — and the arguments about how to describe them — have continued, raising questions about free speech, campus safety and whether criticism of Israel is being conflated with anti-Jewish hatred.

Alan Wald, the H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, is a historian of the 20th-century U.S. cultural Left. He discusses parallels to Cold War-era campus politics, Zionism and how debates over the meaning of antisemitism shape campus protests over Israel and Palestine.

Q/ What is Zionism — and why do you describe becoming a Zionist as a “choice” rather than an identity?

A/ Understanding Zionism requires one to enter complex political terrain. The assertion that Zionism is essential to Jewish identity is misleading for several reasons. Judaism is a monotheistic religion at least 3,000 years old, whereas Zionism began as a secular-led political movement in the late 19th century. 

Continue @ ESSF. 

Zionism Is A Political Choice 🪶 Not Always A Part Of Jewish Identity

Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ Ireland relative to her land mass and population size has a long and interesting history which she fails on too many occasions to give full credit to those who helped forge this history. 

From forgotten individuals to organisations the numbers of those who contributed greatly to the island's long and interesting past are forgotten. Of those remembered are people like Admiral William Brown of Foxford, County Mayo, often credited as the ‘father of the Argentine navy’ who fought in the Cisplatine War, better known as the Argentine War of Independence and County Wexford's John Barry who was the first commissioned officer in the Continental Navy in 1775 during the US Revolutionary War 1775-1783. 

Both these men are rightly remembered by the twenty-six-county government as are many other individuals and organisations who have contributed to Ireland's and other countries' bygone days. It is those who are not remembered or given minimum credibility usually due to ideological, perhaps anti-bourgeois tendencies, or because of their gender and others who just do not for whatever reason fit the bill so to speak. There are many of these unsung heroes of Ireland's long history dating back centuries. For our purpose, 1916 is the period under discussion beginning with the formation of the Irish Citizen Army.

On 12th November 1913 a meeting of the Industrial Peace Committee took place in the rooms of the Reverend R.M Gwynn at 40 Trinity College. Here the idea of a worker’s defence force was discussed, having being ruled out of order at a previous meeting, and arrangements were made for a drilling scheme for the locked-out workers and a fund opened to buy boots and staves, with Professor David Houston of the Royal College of science as treasurer - A Descriptive History of the Irish Citizen Army: Kevin Morley P. 7). 

This force would become the Irish Citizen Army and would take part along with the Irish Volunteers in the Easter Rising 1916. This trade union workers' defence force became what many have described as ‘the first Red Army in Europe’ predating Leon Trotsky albeit larger model by four years. Despite the part the ICA played in the events of Easter Week they do not get the recognition or anywhere near it as that afforded the middle-class led Irish Volunteers. 

Arguably but for the ICA, then led by James Connolly who had already planned an uprising against British rule involving the organised labour of the working-class and the ICA, the heroic events of Easter Week may well not have taken place, certainly not at the time they did. Connolly commanded the combined Irish forces, Irish Citizen Army and Irish Volunteers, in Dublin that week and but for his presence and signature on the Proclamation the Irish Citizen Army may have been airbrushed out of Irish history by the bourgeoisie and their governments. Recognition to Marxist led organisations in the fight for freedom appears not the preference of the middle-class exploiters of labour.

On 2nd April 1914 at Wynns Hotel in Dublin the Cumann na mBan was formed. The aims were to advance Irish liberty, organise Irishwomen, and assist in arming and equipping Irishmen for national defence. The organisation initially operated as an independent group serving as an auxiliary to the Irish Volunteers and later their roles would expand. The Cumann na mBan gave sterling service during Easter Week and it was Elizabeth O’Farrell of Cumann na mBan who delivered Pearse’s surrender to Brigadier General Lowe ending hostilities. Cumann na mBan took the anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War and probably due to their gender and anti-Treaty leanings they, like the ICA, have not received the credit they deserve for the part they played in 1916. So here are two prominent organisations which took part in the Easter Rising which have received very little credit or recognition for their roles. That then leaves the Irish Volunteers, for the purpose of length I will include Na Fianna Eireann who were the youth wing of the Volunteers, and even here we see double standards by the Dublin Government when it comes to recognising the efforts of some volunteers and, once again, women.

A major point of double standards by the twenty-six-county administration concerns a group of volunteers in County Laois. The descendants of Eamon Fleming (Officer in Charge), Michael Gray, a dedicated volunteer who joined the IRB before the rising, Michael Walsh, and John (Sean) Peter McGuire are now campaigning for formal recognition from the state and awards of 1916 commemorative medals to their relatives. These men who helped sabotage the Portlaoise railway line during the Easter Rising are among those who have been denied recognition, the forgotten heroes. The ‘Colt Wood Sabotage Group’ on the direct orders of Padraig Pearse dismantled the railway lines, derailed a train, cut vital telegraph communication wires at Colt Wood. Such actions would have been worthy of the Special Operations Executive for the allies during World War Two behind enemy lines.

Along with those aforementioned were Patrick J. Ramsbottom (Vice O/C), Lorcan (Laurence) O’ Bradaigh (Brady), Thomas F. Brady, Patrick Muldowney, John Muldowney, Colum Holohan, and Michael J. Sheridan. Local women also played an invaluable part in the mobilisation, dispatching messages, and supporting the operations. Key women of note were Noreen Brady, Kathleen Brady, Mrs May Conroy (nee Brady), and Breda Conroy (also nee Brady). While some participants in this operation did receive acknowledgement, descendants like Pat Flemming whose grandfather led the campaign, and Owen Kirby, grandson of Michael Gray, state many active volunteers have been overlooked (which may include those not mentioned here) and their past applications for 1916 medals were rejected. The women involved have been virtually airbrushed out of history which is shameful. The outcome of their actions in Laois was the successful derailment of a British military train thus slowing down the British advance considerably. They also disrupted communication lines causing the enemy untold problems.

According to state criteria for a medal a person must have ‘rendered recognized military service during the specific week of 23rd April to 29th April 1916’. The reason given many County Laois and other provincial families have come across difficulties and rejections over the decades comes down to how active service was ‘legally interpreted by early State Assessors’. How is it then, if this red tape is accepted, some of the volunteers, rightly so, have been awarded the medal and pension while others have not? Surely, they were all on the same mission, they were all acting under the direct orders of Commander in Chief and President of the Provisional Government, Padraig Pearse, so therefore all should have received their entitlements, shouldn’t they? So far it appears not and the question is, and never mind the state bullshit, why not? The operations carried out by the men and women of County Laois in 1916 were equal to those taking place in Dublin so why the discrepancies? Could it be County Laois was out of the way, therefore not considered as important as the theatre of war in Dublin? This could be the case because of all the executed men after the rising the two men executed outside Dublin, Thomas Kent and Roger Casement, appear to receive the least acknowledgements.

Whatever the reasons for the omissions from honours to the men and women of County Laois for their actions during Easter Week they need redressing and medals issued to their descendants now. An apology from the state should be forthcoming, particularly to the descendants of the women of Cumann na mBan. Medals need issuing to the families of all the neglected volunteers right now with no more hesitation or skirting round the issue. 

The twenty-six-county administration seem to have developed a habit of selectively not recognising individuals and organisations who fought an empire for a week at Easter 1916. Stop these double standards and stop them now, they are not becoming even of this state. The trade union movement honour the Irish Citizen Army and it was those who erected a statue to James Connolly opposite Liberty Hall in Dublin. Cumann na mBan hold their own commemorations along with other republican groups with very little state recognition. 

1916 was and remains one of Irelands finest hours and should still act as a beacon for oppressed and occupied peoples across the globe. The Dublin government, irrespective of party holding that position, must acknowledge all those volunteers through the descendants of the men and women of Easter Week 1916.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

1916 🪶 The Forgotten Heroes

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand One Hundred And Two

 

A Morning Thought @ 3274

Jim Duffy ✍ Plagues and pandemics were and are a constant in the human condition. 

The Black Death was as far as we know the worst pandemic ever experienced. Its mortality rate was highest in percentage terms, killing 60% of the known population in Europe. Only the Plague of Justinian had a similar rate.

In terms of death numbers the highest was the Spanish Flu, at its height between 1918 and 1920 but which is believed not to have disappeared until 1960, with the 1957 flu pandemic that killed my grand uncle, Brother Thomas O'Brien, SJ in Sydney, Australia. In numbers of deaths, the HIV-AIDS pandemic comes third, while Covid is fifth to date, with 38 million dying. Covid isn't over though. Hopefully we are past its peak though you never know until it ends and you only know it is over when it has disappeared completely for a decade. Occasionally a pandemic can come roaring back but usually they don't.

Of course the death rate of Covid was suppressed by vaccines. Without vaccines it might have had a death rate akin to the Spanish Flu - which is thought now to have killed 100 million.

One figure gives an indication of how extreme the Black Death was compared to HIV-AIDS or Covid. Covid's death rate worldwide was 0.4375%. The Black Death was up to 60% of the known population. So the Black Death was up to 120 times more lethal than Covid. Even without the vaccines that saved so many, covid would never have reached the lethality of the Black Death. Our answers in the Black Death saw three out of every five people they knew die.

The trouble with pandemics and plagues is that they are a constant. They always occur. We just don't know when. We might not have a pandemic for fifty years, or one could appear next week. We have no idea. All we know is that they usually involve an animal virus spreading into humans, and as we have never had it before our immune system has no way of fighting it.

Covid appears to come from bats in Wuhan. It was a natural bat virus. Either a researcher in the research lab in Wuhan didn’t follow the strict rules to protect themselves and accidentally got the virus and unknowingly spread it. Or it came from the notorious wet markets in Wuhan, where live bats are sold to be used in soups. The WHO had been warning for decades that those markets needed to be closed. China panicked either because a staff member in the lab got infected through negligence, or because China had failed to close down the wet markets.

The Spanish Flu appears to have come from a pig in Kansas. The pig passed it to a farm labourer. He was scheduled to join the US Army as America had joined World War I and so went to the local unit. Unbeknown to him he carried the pig virus and infected the unit. It spread like wildfire through the army and families. Soldiers arrived in the port of Brest and infected port workers. Port workers infected crews arriving in the port. Those crews carried it all over the world.

So the world was thrown into chaos because one pig infected one farm labourer with the Spanish Flu. Or on bat passed its virus to one person in Wuhan.

The US army noticed that lots of soldiers were suddenly getting very ill and some were dying but had no idea what was going on. The same happened in Wuhan. People began getting sick and rumours spread that there was some strange illness spreading. People like Dr Fauci received reports and began wondering "is this a new pandemic?"

China hushed it up as it was either caused by sloppy research practices in the lab in Wuhan, or China's failure despite warnings to close down the wet markets selling bats. Either way, a fuck by China had unleashed a pandemic and China tried to hide it as its reputation was at risk.

Unfortunately, just as the port of Brest spread the virus through crews on ships, Wuhan is a major transport hub, with air flights all over the world and vast numbers getting trains and planes in Wuhan. Bad as that was, the outbreak happened during major holidays, when literally millions were travelling through Wuhan to visit families, or travelling abroad.

That is how easy pandemics start. One animal. One virus. One infected human. So we have no idea when the next one will start. But one will occur. It may come from a cow or a sheep or a cat or a rabbit or a pig or a dog or a pigeon or some other animal. All it takes is one person to catch it and a calamity awaits.

One thing the Black Death taught us is that to stop it spreading, humans have to stop mixing. That is why since mediaeval times we have had lockdowns. The spread can only be slowed down by shutting down the country - at least until you find a vaccine and begin vaccinating people.

That is the world of plagues and pandemics. Predictable in what has to be done. Predictable that another one will always occur. Unpredictable in that you don't know the animal that will pass on the virus the type of virus and when it will occur.

My grandmothers lived through the Spanish Flu, 1929 flu, 1957 flu and the beginning of HIV-AIDS. My grandfathers were two decades older than their wives, so they also lived though the Russian Flu (1889-90s). My great-grandparents lived through five pandemics between the 1840s and 1930s.

Shakespeare lived through two pandemics in one decade. He was primarily a jobbing actor but with London constantly in lockdowns the theatres were closed. So he spent lockdowns writing plays.

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Pandemics

Anthony McIntyre ☠ There is growing disquiet in the US about the country's billionaire class continuing to supply the genocidal Israeli state with the weapons of war on children. 

The government has approved a 2.8 billion arms deal which includes the provision of '2,000-pound bombs that have frequently been used in both Gaza and Lebanon to devastating effect.'

The New York Times, is reported to have identified '208 craters at least 40 feet across in an area of southern Gaza where Israel told civilians to move to safety.' Which means at least 208 of these bombs were used to target civilians herded by Israeli Mengele-types into areas designated safe zones which were in fact kill zones. We will be forgiven for remembering the Jews who were told to go to the shower rooms where they would be safely cleansed but which were in fact execution chambers where they were routinely and systematically gassed.

In one incident at the Jabaliya Refugee Camp 195 Palestinian civilians were killed and a further 777 injured by these bombs.

It is the brutal savagery and its penchant for child murder - Norman Finkelstein has described Israel as a nation of child killers - which has led to a drop in support for Israel within the US.

In July a headline in the Tampa Free Press proclaimed that Polls Show 67-Point Shift In American Views On Israel Over Eight Years. 

In the body of the report the figures were broken down:

Appearing on “CNN News Central,” CNN Chief Data Analyst Harry Enten pointed to a series of recent polls showing that net favorability ratings for Israel have turned negative across multiple tracking organizations. According to the data, net favorability stands at minus 10 points in Ipsos polling, minus 11 points according to Fox News, minus 20 points in the Marquette University Law School poll, and minus 23 points in findings from the Pew Research Center. Gallup also reported negative numbers earlier this year.
The figures reflect a dramatic pivot from past political norms. During Donald Trump’s first term, Israel’s average net favorability hovered at plus 51 points. Today, that average has fallen to minus 16 points, representing a 67-point drop in less than a decade.

Enten interpreted the figures:

We’re not just talking about the Democratic base anymore. We’re talking about the general electorate as well . . . The general electorate has turned against Israel. This is not just a left issue. It is an American issue when it comes to opinions on Israel.

Perhaps most welcome of all for those opposed to genocide and most worrying for genocide backers is a Gallup poll finding from last year that just 9% of those age 18-34 of all political parties support Israeli actions.

When Ed Sheeran struggles to keep his show on the road for denying moral support to Macklemore who was cancelled but not silenced by the billionaire class, when the UK government opts to take action against Israeli land thieves in the West Bank, when pro-Israel US Representative Brad Sherman claims Israel is losing the battle for worldwide public opinion and lambasts Israeli ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich as apostles of settler violence, we can feel the winds of change.

None of this change in mindset has come about because of goodwill on the part of those in power. We need think no further than the swine Starmer who dragged his trotters at every opportunity.  It is the result of public pressure, the persistent congregating in the public square by people like you gathered here today. Which makes it important to show up again next week, and the week after that, every week until the genocidal beast is no longer in heat.  

⏩Follow on Bluesky.

Safe Zones Kill Zones

Louth For Ever ★ writing in Medium on  21-September-2026.

The all island party told its northern press officer she did not belong in Dublin. Five weeks later it named a number it could never take back.

Photo by atelierbyvineeth ... on Unsplash

The €300,000 tale has become the most repeated anecdote in Siobhán Fenton’s publicity drive. Over last weekend, The Irish Times led with it, adopting her own judgement of the incident: an absolute clanger. The reviews have seized on it too. One, from the left, argues that she assigns it far too much significance.

Most people are taking it to mean a gaffe. A leader spoke off the cuff, a press officer missed it, and the news cycle consumed a fortnight at Christmas. Seen that way, the criticism is understandable enough. A party that had been drifting since mid-2022 did not collapse because of a single figure in a single interview, and when Red C went in search of one defining moment behind the decline in November 2023, it said it could not identify one.

Yet the gaffe is the least compelling part of the chapter. The real issue is the eight days after the front page, which no one has discussed, and which account for something far bigger than a bad Christmas. They account for why Sinn Féin has not attached a number to anything since, and why it never will attach numbers to the thing for which it exists.

The Number

On Monday 18th December 2023, Mary Lou McDonald took part in the Irish Times Christmas interview with (Uncle) Pat Leahy. When he asked how much she wanted house prices to fall, she replied that, in a city such as Dublin, the €300,000 level was the aim, though it would differ by region. In the published interview, she described her goal, in her own words, as bringing prices “as low as we feasibly can”. Uncle Pat suggested that a decline of that scale would amount to a major reduction in home values and asked if she considered that a risky political stance. She rejected that wording, saying the much greater risk was a generation for whom owning a home had become an out of reach dream.

She was correct on that point, and the reporting that came afterward had little to do with it.

What much of the coverage missed, and what this piece should not miss, is the actual meaning of the figure. It was aimed at new-build homes. Eleven days before the interview, the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland released its Real Cost of New Housing Delivery report. That report estimated the cost of delivering a three bed semi in the Greater Dublin Area at €461,000, which was ninety thousand higher than three and a half years earlier. It also placed the value of that same house at €464,000, leaving a margin of about €2,600 above delivery cost. Those were the numbers in play, and €300,000 was the level the party wanted delivery costs reduced to, using a package of measures to lower construction costs together with a major social and affordable housing programme. It was not a proposal to collapse the value of the existing housing stock.

Viewed alongside the surveyors’ figures, the policy amounts to asking for about one third to be stripped from the cost of constructing a house in Dublin. That is a substantial challenge to explain. It is not the same as telling a homeowner to absorb a one third loss in the value of their own property, yet the whole controversy unfolded as though the second question had been asked rather than the first.

Fenton is candid about the element that still made the position indefensible. The party was unable to assign a number to the effect on current homeowners, and once you talk about deflating a bubble, a knock on effect is plainly foreseeable. So there was both an answer that could be given and a question that could not, placed next to each other: the answer took three sentences, while the unanswerable question was short enough to fit in a headline.

The Thing That Cannot Be Unsaid

The section that makes the book worth reading arrives that night. Fenton, on her own in the press office and replaying the interview tape, senses something off about the figure and dismisses the feeling.

Her line of thought deserves to be laid out, since each stage is logically sound. The party had never hidden its desire for prices to come down. If she had been vague on the issue, that would have been framed either as deceit or as evidence that the leader did not understand her own policy. All told, not a real difficulty.

But the judgment was mistaken. That is how a structural breakdown appears from the inside: not as stupidity, not as negligence, but as a skilled professional using sound judgment on a question whose answer had already been constrained by the party’s position.

The story appeared on the Wednesday front page. What followed is the crucial part, and it is why this is more than merely a tale of a slip up.

All night, Fenton worked through ways to bury it. She intended to get McDonald onto RTÉ’s Morning Ireland under some other pretext, knowing full well she would be questioned about the interview, and have her retreat publicly there and then: she had misspoken, no precise figure had been committed to, the numbers were still being finalised and would differ from area to area. A few days of embarrassment, then Christmas would smother it.

But she talked herself out of that, and the reasons she gives are the real discovery. A reversal would reinforce the accusation that the party was full of populists offering make believe economics and incapable of sticking to a line. It would deepen the impression of constant flip flopping. Worse, it might make the whole matter bigger by seeming like an effort to hide something.

Now take another look at that, because it’s a trap with no way out. Saying a price is risky. Taking back a stated price is worse, because the retreat shows you were never serious about the promise attached to it. Once the number is public, the only choices left to you are to stand behind it or to validate the charge.

The party stood behind it, and the room’s logic for doing so is the chapter’s most revealing sentence. The figure could trigger backlash among middle-class and upper-middle-class voters with valuable homes. The meeting decided that group probably would not have supported the party anyway.

That is a calculation of cost, and it is the same one the party had made a month earlier on different terrain. Fenton’s account of the reaction to the November riots shows a party that named the Garda Commissioner, the Justice Minister and the collapse of policing, while mentioning the organised far right only once, without organisers, politics, or a name. It cost nothing to blame the guards. It would have cost the Sinn Féin base to name the far right. By December, the same arithmetic concluded that owners of expensive houses were not voters they could afford to lose. Uncle Pat, writing the next morning, expressed the link more plainly than anyone else since: after faltering on law and order, the party had turned to housing as its safe, familiar ground. It was injured on the ground it claimed as its own.

The counteroffensive was swift. Within hours Varadkar held a press conference, and he handled it in two stages: first the economics of negative equity and lender confidence, then the broader framing, this was not just a row over a housing figure, but a test of whether a party that talks like this is fit to govern at all. Fine Gael then used the oldest press office trick, one Fenton says she herself had used many times: keep the story alive by feeding it through new voices so every comment looks like a fresh turn. A senator’s statement said the figure implied a 35% fall and warned of a generation trapped in negative equity, collapsing the new build target into existing values just as everything else had done. The FG party website added a ticker counting the days since Sinn Féin tried to fool the public.

The Christmas calendar handled the rest. No Dáil, no ministers making announcements, newsrooms running on bare bones staffing and with no desire to hunt for a rival story. Fenton says she even hoped for the usual late December death of an elderly celebrity to shift the cycle along. It never happened.

Not a Proper Dubliner

Two events unfolded five weeks apart, and the party’s difficulty is that they both involved the same person.

In November, after the riots, Fenton voiced worries twice about the direction the party was heading. The first reply was that the leadership was sure of itself and that McDonald understood the community better than any of them. The second turned back on Fenton: she was an outsider, “not a proper Dubliner,” and Belfast had accustomed her to riots in a way that was unhealthy. She recoiled and then ceased to raise the issue again.

Then, in December, she says plainly that she could not make sense of the southern response to the housing figure. She grasped negative equity as an economic idea, but not as a psychological one, because the 2008 crash hit the two sides of the border in different ways. In the South, a generation had seen their parents trapped in homes worth less than the debt attached to them. In the North, where prices were already low, the crash came through austerity and benefit cuts, and very few homeowners ended up in negative equity at all.

Taken together, the two episodes amount to something more pointed than either on its own. The northern voice inside the southern operation was brushed aside where she was correct, and constrained where the South most needed her. Partition was operating in both directions simultaneously, within a Sinn Féin press office, on the fifth floor of Leinster House.

This is a party that likes to present its defining strength as its ability to organise across the entire island, and it regards that as the singular advantage it has over every opponent. What the book shows, though, is that being the all island party did not provide it with two pairs of eyes. Instead, it gave it staff shaped by two distinct economies who could not offset each other’s blind spots: one rejected for not belonging, the other unable to see precisely where belonging would have mattered.

Nor was the rest of the system any better. Fenton describes a party with genuine, immediate, instinctive understanding of working class communities, because its politicians and staff came from those places and could judge how a policy would land by listening to their own neighbours. But for the middle class voters who arrived in 2020, it had no equivalent. Those people do not attend clinics and do not meet TDs in the street on a housing estate, so the party relied instead on focus groups and polling, which she describes as artificial environments where it is impossible to tell whether people are being truthful or simply courteous.

So when the number arrived, the party could read one side of its coalition accurately and the other only through tools that encourage agreement. And when Eoin Ó Broin stepped forward to explain it, the man who had both designed and embodied the housing policy, he could stand firm on new buyers but could only speak vaguely about existing homeowners, because the numbers were not available for him to present.

63%

On 6th January, the Sunday Independent asked the public outright. 69% said prices ought to drop to the figure. 63% said the same even if doing so reduced the value of their own home. Sinn Féin was up two points.

Three weeks afterward, the Irish Times had the party at 28, down from 34 in its own series. In the Red C series, which had placed them at 29 before the riots and 36 the previous summer, the decline was already firmly in motion and merely kept going.

These two polls are not interchangeable: they use different tools and pose different questions, so neither cancels the other out, which is exactly what makes the pair so valuable. Fenton’s interpretation is the candid one, and she arrives at it unaided. Telling a pollster, or a focus group full of peers, that you stand in solidarity is not the same as stepping into a voting booth and casting a ballot against your own financial self interest. That is the point she has been stressing in interviews all week: the party never understood the distance between what people said to it and what they did once the issue got close to home.

From inside, she could not have seen what the published analysis of that Irish Times poll shows. The setbacks were clustered among older and more affluent voters; support among ABC1s fell by nine points, and rural support dropped sharply. The property owning cohort, on the record, three weeks after the party concluded that the property owning cohort was never theirs anyway.

The response within the building is the case study. Those who had pressed to hold the line read the Sunday Independent result as proof that the crisis had become so severe that the nation’s homeowners had turned radical. Meanwhile, the unfriendly Irish Times coverage was blamed on that paper’s wealthier readership. An unfavourable signal was dismissed because of the class of the messenger delivering it, even as a favourable signal one page earlier was accepted without question.

What Else Has Not Been Priced

The real harm was not the number. It was the doubt the number generated, and Fenton presents it in the party’s own nervous register.

If this had come out by chance, during a Christmas interview, because a reporter had tossed in one extra question, then what else was the programme hiding? What other policies depended on voters accepting a sacrifice that had never been made explicit to them? If they surrendered the keys, would they only later discover what they had agreed to?

That is the trap. To specify is to create something that cannot be taken back, because a charge cannot be erased without acknowledging it. And once one price is identified, the unnamed ones start to look suspicious, so specifying spreads. After December 2023, silence is no longer prudence; it is the only shield left.

Fenton herself carries the logic further in a section on doublethink, and that is why this book matters more than the reviews imply. In principle, people back climate action, but at the pump they resist fuel taxes. They want the housing crisis fixed, yet they want their own home excluded. Likewise, she notes, some members of the Irish public support a united Ireland, but their enthusiasm fades when they are asked whether they would still want it if it meant higher taxes for them personally. She also says Sinn Féin advisers ought to have been especially alert to that point.

Because this comes from inside the operation rather than from polling, it deserves to be taken at that level. Even so, from the housing angle, she is describing precisely what the constitutional case has never been forced to confront. At present, the case for unity has no price attached to it. Those who support it know the pricing has not been done, and everyone assumes that is because the sums are difficult.

The sums are difficult. Yet the December 2023 file points to a more straightforward explanation. After a party has learned, through a polling collapse, that naming a single figure invites scrutiny of every figure left unnamed, it is unlikely to volunteer a cost for a united Ireland, or say who would bear it. This is not because the arithmetic is beyond reach. It is because the party has already tried the experiment once, in public, on an issue where it was arguing the morally correct side, and still lost.

In Fenton’s own version of that night, she is racing from Leinster House to Connolly station, catching the last train north, packed in with Christmas shoppers and people returning home pished from office parties. By the time the train reached Lanyon in Belfast, the next morning’s Irish Times was already being printed.

⏩Louth For Ever writes on Irish politics and constitutional change. Follow for analysis of Ireland’s democratic future as it’s constructed by those actually engaged in the work.

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