By a helpful coincidence, we saw violent scenes of far-right nationalism in this country in the week of the third anniversary of Brexit.
It was helpful, because in this situation we need to be thinking about Brexit. Indeed it would probably do no harm for a while to be thinking about nothing but Brexit. In these very dangerous times, Brexit can be our friend.
We watched it from afar, with a mixture of bafflement and revulsion and a kind of dread — the whole world could see the English really were losing the plot here. But we watched it with a note of unearned self-regard too, telling ourselves how great we were that we had somehow avoided the far-right nationalism which was afflicting the UK and other countries in various ways.
Some of us questioned this latest outbreak of ‘aren’t-we-great-ism’. We pointed out that, in terms of far-right nationalism, we may not have had a thriving far-right element since those years of the 20th century dominated by Catholicism, when we used to simply call it “the government”. But we most certainly had the nationalism part in the rise of Sinn Féin.
Now, once again, we have both.
Countries have their own ways of destroying themselves, but an overdose of nationalism is probably the quickest method.
In Britain there was a combination of factors which unlocked the madman in the attic that they call Brexit.
A cabal of upper-class traitors, with their falsified nostalgia for a glorious past, saw their opportunity to seize power on the back of a campaign of Europhobia drummed up by the bullshit of bad actors such as Nigel Farage. They were enabled not just by an astoundingly corrupt Tory press, but by the BBC, corrupted in its own way by its terrible weakness for ‘both-sidesing’ it.
Their secret sauce was probably Jeremy Corbyn, who gifted them not just an unelectable opposition, but who was himself effectively a Brexiteer, a collaborator. They knew Brexit would be bad for almost everyone but themselves and their owners and trainers, but they also knew the stars had aligned for them here, that the toxic energies of nationalism could overwhelm the forces of reason.
And how quickly it happened, as if the leverage they had found had flipped the UK upside down, turning it from a serious country into an international joke in one spectacular heist.
We watched in awe, and we were damaged by it, which did not necessarily mean we were going to refrain from indulging in one of our own most cherished traditions, that of copying stuff that happens in England a few years later.
Protesters outside the former ESB offices on East Wall Road against the housing of refugees in the building,
We have our own far-right now, and in our most popular party we have our nationalism — proven to be one of the deadliest known to humanity. Millions in the UK had been struggling after years of Tory austerity (austerity for the little people, of course), which Brexit allowed them to blame on the ‘invasion’ of immigrants.
Meanwhile in Ireland, governments have been horribly incapable of managing the issue of housing — which has now been conflated with our old friend, the ‘invasion’ of immigrants.
We know where this is going...
Increasingly it seems we have what it takes to make Brexit seem like a temporary little embarrassment.
Along with the over-arching scandal of housing, there are the corrosive scandals which are endemic to the political class. Last week it was a relatively big one, the issue of nursing home charges, the previous week it was the relatively small one of Paschal Donohoe’s election expenses. Which amusingly turned into the bigger one of Sinn Féin’s election expenses.
Last week too we learned of a kind of eternal scandal, whereby we discovered that for about 12 years, householders had been subsidising the electricity bills of big businesses — the re-distribution of wealth to the rich there, another case of corporate welfare.
Then again, all democracies have a kind of institutionalised level of corruption. It is axiomatic that political parties are engaged in many things, but a high priority is given to the diversion of public resources towards their own tribe.
The lads all-a-whooping on election night are not just high on the emotion of another successful exercise in Proportional Representation.
But even that beloved system of ours is not guaranteed to last. As we have seen in America, a far-right nationalist movement on the march is not overly concerned with technicalities such as voting 1, 2, 3, and the peaceful transfer of power.
Ireland’s ‘great patriots’ can also draw on the inspiration of the Brexiteers, taking a massive public policy failure such as housing — not to fix it, but to parlay it eventually into the seizure of power for themselves. Even now, three years on, and almost seven years since the referendum, the British can hardly bring themselves to talk about what has happened to them, what they let happen.
But for us, this is not a spectator sport any more. We are in the arena now, with everything on the line.
Tales of GAA gamblers reveal a losing streak
It’s hard to surprise me about anything to do with online gambling. But a recent piece in this paper by Lynne Kelleher, about a study of gambling among inter-county GAA players, had a few hair-raising moments.
Fourteen players — just one less than a full team, or maybe two or three less when the subs are thrown on — disclosed that their biggest bet was more than €1,000. Two players said they had gambled more than €10,000 in a single day.
Now, I’ve had many bets on many things, but I don’t think it ever crossed my mind that I would bet an actual grand on anything.
As for the lads punting €10,000, if they’re very lucky there might be a bed waiting for them eventually in the Rutland or some other treatment centre.
More than 600 senior inter-county players, mostly male, took part in the study in the journal Scientific Reports, which also found that if you play for the county, you are six times more likely to have a gambling problem than if you don’t. And, incredibly, it seems 20pc of players are unaware they are not allowed to bet on games in which they are personally involved — I suppose they reckon it gives them an edge.
Dr Jack McCaffrey, the Dublin star, was involved in producing the report, which itself raises another troubling aspect of this.
The GAA on the whole has been exemplary in its attitude to gambling, refusing sponsorship from betting companies, and doing much to raise awareness. If there’s any group of young men in Ireland who are educated on this subject, it should be inter-county players. But they seem to be up to their necks in it — and that’s assuming they were telling the whole truth, which for the gambler is always elusive.
Of the 84 elite players who said their biggest bet was between €100 and €1,000, I’d be intrigued to know how many were closer to the €1,000 than the €100. I can guess, but let us stick with what we know for sure; we’re losing this war, and it seems at this stage we can’t stop losing.
Niall O'Flaherty of the Sultans of Ping FC at Feile 1993
Sultans of Ping had near miss with the Late Late
Paul McDermott has for some time been doing the important cultural service of compiling the history of the bands of Cork in the Eighties and Nineties — a time of towering figures such as Finbarr Donnelly, Cathal Coughlan and Mick Lynch, all of whom have gone on ahead.
Tomorrow at 6pm on RTÉ 2XM there’s Dancing in the Disco: The Story of the Sultans of Ping, in which I learned for the first time that Where’s Me Jumper? was mixed in his own studio by Frank ‘Late Late’ McNamara.
Impossibly strange as this might seem, we are after all talking about a 1990s Cork band. Where’s Me Jumper?… Frank McNamara?
