Category: John Bruton Page 2 of 25

The UK government is unilaterally signalling its intent to ditch the provisions of the Northern Ireland Protocol that are designed to protect the integrity of the EU Single Market. The integrity of the Single Market rests on their being a single set of rules, uniformly enforced and consistently applied, across the 27 EU States.

Under the Protocol, goods produced in NI would enjoy full access to the Single Market without any checks at the EU border in Ireland or anywhere else. The Protocol also affirms that NI retains full access to the UK market. This is a win/win situation for .NI business.

The new UK legislation announced this week would instead create a control free zone in Ireland, which would radically weaken Irelands position as a member of the EU. By doing away with the controls at the ports in NI , envisaged in in the Protocol , it would create a situation whereby good and foods, not meeting EU standards , could be brought into the EU market via Ireland.

We should not forget that the Withdrawal Agreement, of which the Protocol was a central part, was a key element in the winning Conservative Party General Election Manifesto of 2019.

Now the joint author of the Protocol, Boris Johnson , wants eviscerate it by means of unilateral UK legislation.

A unilateral breach of a Treaty by domestic legislation on an internationally sensitive matter Is clearly a breach of international law.

International commerce, in which the UK was once a major champion, rests on scrupulous respect for treaties and contracts.

“My word is my bond” was once a watchword in British international dealings. No more, it seems.

The UK are now claiming that an international Treaty can be breached on the basis of

“ necessity”.

This is a hard claim to justify in this case . 52 of the 90 members of Northern Ireland Assembly have indicated support for the Protocol, so there is no democratic “necessity“ to scrap the Protocol.

It is true that the DUP has said it will not sit in the NI Executive unless it’s seven demands for changes are met. These demands are vaguely phrased and symbolic and do not provide a solid basis for legal resolution. It is not clear when or if the DUP would take up their seats in the NI Executive. So one minority political party , in small part of the UK , cannot be allowed to determine what is a “necessity” for a large and diverse state like the UK .

The fact that the UK government, Parliament, and electorate , all endorsed the Protocol as recently as 2019, with their eyes wide open, makes it very hard to plead “necessity” as a ground for undoing their own work.

An objective court would decide that they could and should have anticipated what would happen in their own jurisdiction.

The situation we are in today is a sign that debate within the ruling Tory party is taking place within a bubble , within which the needs of others outside the bubble are not heard.

Following the debate on the Protocol in Tory supporting press in Britain is like watching the reaction of the Republican base to the hearings about the invasion of the Capitol. They hear what they want to hear , and nothing else.

One Brexiteer recently described the NI Protocol as “ a punishment the EU inflicted on the UK for Brexit”. This is despite the fact that in 2019, Boris Johnson, who negotiated the Protocol himself, claimed that ,in the Protocol , he had swiftly negotiated what he called a “great new deal”!

He, unlike his predecessor, had got Brexit done, he boasted.

The same Brexiteer writer said the Protocol was “an attempted power grab “ by the EU over the NI economy “on behalf of its allies in Dublin”. The writer ignores the fact , under rules written while the UK was still an EU member, the Single Market of the EU has to have border controls, and these controls have to be more or less the same at all EU Borders.

Any precedent the EU might cede to the UK will be demanded by other non EU states with land borders with the EU.

The UK demands to be trusted when they say that nothing that fails to meet EU standards will cross the border into the EU .

They seem to have forgotten the long tradition of smuggling on and around the NI border , some of which which helped finance paramilitary activity in the past, activity which costs thousand of IRish (and British) lives , and could do so again.

Trust has to be earned, it cannot be commanded. If the EU cannot trust the UK government to keep its word, it will be even harder for it trust the private sector “trusted traders” , the same government appoints to protect the EU from the smuggling of sub standard goods and foods across the border into the Republic.

What will happen now?

The EU has made clear the terms of the Agreed Protocol will not be changed. It has also made clear that without the Protocol there could have been no Withdrawal Agreement, and without that , there could have been no Trade and Cooperation Agreement(TCA)

Without the TCA, the Common External Tariff of the EU would have to be applied to British goods coming into Ireland and every other EU state. This would be deeply destructive , but it is the logical outcome , when one tries to unravel complex inter related international agreements unilaterally. The whole thing comes apart.

As an EU member, Ireland would then have to apply the Common External Tariff on its own land and sea borders, a task of daunting proportions politically and practically. The effect on stability in NI , and the sense of isolation of Northern nationalists , would be intense. The disruption of the food industry in The whole of Ireland would be disastrous.

One hopes that it will not come to that. But pretending that this could never happen is not wise.

The best approach for the EU will be to gradually turn up the heat on the UK so as to give them time to learn that actions have consequences , and the price could be very high. The European Commission has much experience in trade disputes and know how and where to target it’s actions. Meanwhile the political climate in the UK could change. The UK opposition parties need to assert themselves for the sake of the reputation of their country.

famous seated statue of president in memorial

PRESIDENT BUCHANAN

By John Bruton

On June 10, 2022

In James Buchanan, John Bruton

I recently enjoyed reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln’s immediate predecessor as US President, James Buchanan.

Of Northern Irish stock, he had a long political career in Washington, and abroad representing his country, before he became President at the then advanced age of 70.

The book by Garry Boulard is entitled “ The Worst President”, a title that is not really warranted by its content.

Buchanan did not believe in the forceful abolition of slavery in the South, but he did not want to see it spread any further.

He was also uncertain whether the Federal government had the right to use force to prevent state from seceding from the Union, although he eventually came to the view that it had.

There was genuine room for doubt on the legal position at the time.

The issue was eventually settled only when, after Lincoln had taken over, South Carolina forces fired on a Federal Fort in Charleston.

The Civil War that followed polarised opinion, and Buchanan’s temporising earned him a bad reputation.

But hindsight is at work here. Buchanan suffered the same sort of retrospective reputational fate as Neville Chamberlain.

Both bought time, and preserved peace as long as they could, thereby ensuring that when battle was finally joined, public opinion was better prepared for the sacrifices involved.

UK’s threat to break international treaty is ‘gravely serious’

By John Bruton

On June 9, 2022

In BREXIT, John Bruton

WHY THE UK DEMANDS, IF CONCEDED , WOULD UNDERMINE THE EU

By John Bruton

On May 30, 2022

In John Bruton

UK critics of the Protocol, including unionists, fail to explore why the Protocol must contain provisions that EU rules on goods must apply to NI, and be interpreted there in the same way as in the 27 EU states.

It has been this unwillingness to try to understand the EU reasoning that has made the negotiation so difficult. The first principle of a good negotiation to understand your interlocutors genuine needs. I do not feel the Protocol critics are doing this sufficiently.

This unwillingness to try to understand the reasoning behind the Protocol testifies to the deep lack of seriousness at the top of British politics.

Expertise is disdained. Verbal dexterity and witty put downs are preferred to truth telling and serious analysis. The former are the skills that win votes in student debates in Oxford University, but they are useless when it comes to the hard slog of governing a country and negotiating with other countries

This lack of seriousness explains why Boris Johnson agreed to the Protocol, won an election on the basis that it was “getting Brexit done, and now wants to pull out of it.

There is also a complete mismatch between the negotiating styles of the UK government and of the European Commission.

The UK approach is one that emphasises drama, and performance for an external audience. The Commission’s approach is low key and legalistic and is rooted in the texts of EU treaties and laws, documents which the UK political negotiators hardly take the trouble to read (as we have seen with the Protocol)

The essence of the Single Market is that it sets up a single set of standards for goods and foods, standards which are uniformly applied and interpreted consistently across the EU. That makes trade simpler and protects consumers equally, where ever the make their purchases in the EU

NI is important, but so too are the 27 EU states and their Treaty commitments to one another.

For example, a UK proposal that exempted NI from any of the EU rules, listed in the Protocol ,would create doubt as to the wisdom of investing in an EU oriented business in NI. NI sourced goods could then no longer be relied upon as fully meeting EU standards . That would dilute the unity of the Single Market. The Commission is not going to allow this to happen.

When a Competence review, to see if the balance of responsibilities between the UK and the EU was right, was undertaken by the UK Coalition from 2012 to 2014 before the 2016 Referendum, the then NI Executive said access to the Single Market was “vital” to NI.

The UK took part in the drafting of all the EU rules listed in the Protocol which will apply in NI under it, and understood at the time that they were necessary to protect the integrity of the Single Market. Chapter 3 of the UK’s own Competence Review explained why this was needed. Why does the UK not understand in 2022 what it understood in 2012?

The answer is that the present UK government thinks the 2016 Referendum result changes everything.

That may be so for the UK, but it changes nothing or the EU and its 27 members states. The requirements for maintaining the Single Market among the 27 EU members have not changed. These rules are there to protect the EU Single Market and they will not be changed Boris Johnson or for Jeffrey Donaldson, who freely chose to leave the EU.

The suggestion, by the UK, that ECJ jurisdiction would not apply to interpreting the EU rules as applied in NI is dangerous. It could be seen as subversive of the entire Single Market. It would institutionalise double standards inside the EU Single Market, and potentially reverse 50 years of European integration.

ECJ judgements created the Single market, almost as much as did EU Treaties and legislation.

The idea that there might be two versions of EU law, a version applied in the EU on the basis of ECJ jurisprudence, and another NI version, based on UK Court interpretations, could not endure.

It would be a formula for perpetual and wasteful conflict.

The same consideration applies to the idea that EU state aid rules would not apply in NI while NI was supposed to have unfettered access for goods to the Single Market. It would create a platform for unfair competition which is the antithesis of the EU Single Market.

We should remember also that proposing changes to the Customs Code of the EU is an exclusive Commission competence, rather than one for the Member states. If it has been otherwise, there would never have been a Single Market. The UK proposals on flexibility directly attack on this exclusive competence of the Commission. I worked in the Commission for five years and I know the Commission will not give this up to some joint EU/UK Committee..

Because the EU is a voluntary Union of 27 states, it is an inherently fragile construction, bound together by rules that are freely accepted by 27 very different countries.

The big weakness of the European Commission in the present impasse is that it is not good at explaining why its rules are as they are. The Commission is good at details, but not good at communicating basic concepts and the logic of the EU position in plain language.

It is allowing the UK to make all the running publicity wise. It is time to change this.

REES MOGG APPOINTMENT COULD MAKE PROTOCOL DIFFICULTIES MORE ACUTE

By John Bruton

On February 10, 2022

In Boris Johnson, BREXIT, John Bruton

Jacob Rees Mogg has been appointed as UK Minister for Brexit Opportunities, with a mandate from Boris Johnson to change 1000 regulations, now in force , which the UK adopted as an EU member.

This mandate, if acted upon, makes a settlement of the EU/UK dispute over the Protocol next to impossible.

The more EU inherited UK regulations in respect of goods, which Minister Rees Mogg changes, the more will be the frequency and intrusiveness of checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Britain.

This because, under the Protocol Minister Rees Mogg and his colleagues signed , Northern Ireland will continue to apply EU regulations for goods, including food products.

Any new and different UK rules , sponsored by Minister Rees Mogg, will not apply in Northern Ireland . This will mean even more checks on British goods entering Northern Ireland to ensure that the goods comply with the EU rules.

New and different UK rules for goods, will also mean more things to check at British ports facing continental Europe, and more traffic jams on the roads approaching these ports.

Of course, this applies only to goods. In the case of services, the UK can make whatever rules it likes without any impact on customs checks at ports.

But as far as goods are concerned, it is almost as if the Rees Mogg appointment is designed to sabotage any possibility of his colleague Liz Truss finding an agreement with Vice President Sefcovic on a lightening the Protocol.

If he does the job he has been given , Mr Rees Mogg’s real title should perhaps be “Minister for Extra Trade Barriers”. Of course this applies only to goods.

A recent UK paper on the “Benefits of Brexit” suggested that scrapping EU rules could bring £1 billion worth of benefits to the UK economy. This seems like a figure plucked out of the sky. There is no detail of what rules might be changed, even though the UK has been preparing for the suppose benefits of Brexit for the past six years.

Indeed separate and different UK rules might actually increase costs, because of the duplication involved.

But there are strong suspicions that the “benefits of Brexit” paper is just for show, and that Rees Mogg will not actually be able to diverge much from EU standards at all, because UK businesses will not want to lose markets in the EU..

In a way, his appointment is an expression of the confused expectations about Brexit within the Conservative Party……members want a bonfire of EU rules. But they also want to be able to have their exports accepted in the countries of the EU as being compliant with the very EU rules they have just scrapped!

Businesses which trade internationally know the importance of regulations for both goods and services, and may not be so keen on unilateral UK regulatory changes that put the UK out of line with its neighbours to whom they want to export.

Whether it is product safety, or the transfer of cross-border data, domestic regulations and international agreements are a crucial element in making access to markets easier, or making them more difficult. Having different rules is a way of keeping imports out and making consumers pay more.

Under Prime Minister Theresa May there was some openness in the UK government to aligning with EU rules, particularly in the area of goods, in order to facilitate trade and resolve issues around Northern Ireland .

The arrival of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister in July 2019 ended this openness. His view was that UK regulatory sovereignty is crucial, or at least must be made to appear to be so.

Boris Johnson’s present political difficulties weaken his ability to reach compromises with the EU on the Protocol.

His party is, in fact, a coalition between those who want more spending and those who want less spending, between those who want more protectionism and those who want less, and between those who want more regulation and those who want less.

Some problems have already arisen. The new UKCA conformity assessment mark to replace the EU’s CE mark, means greater internal regulatory inconsistency between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, and hence more bureaucracy at Northern Ireland ports.

The more Rees Mogg does his job, the more will be the differences between Northern Ireland standards and those in the rest of the UK.

Trade Agreements may be an added complication.

For example there are suggestions that Canada will challenge the UK’s ban on hormone treated beef, as part of the accession process for the UK to the new Pacific Trade Agreement.

If this were to happen, it would mean extra controls on beef products from Britain coming into either part of Ireland. It would also place beef exports from either part of Ireland to Britain at a competitive disadvantage vis a vis hormone treated beef imported from Canada.

But would British consumers want to eat hormone treated beef?

Whether the UK actually diverges all that much from its existing EU standards or not, the fact that the UK is SAYING now it intends to diverge a lot , means that the EU has to maintain tight customs controls of British goods .

That means insisting that the Protocol is respected to the full in Northern Ireland ports, and continuing delays on British good going to continental Europe

So the Protocol row may go on and on, until the UK finally settles on what EU rules it wants to change, and what EU rules it intends to keep.

Given how slow progress on making these decisions has been in the six years since Brexit , the Protocol dispute could drag on for years.

This does not augur well for stability in Northern Ireland, or for Anglo Irish relations.

BREXIT CRISIS LOOMS OVER PROTOCOL

By John Bruton

On January 30, 2022

In John Bruton

Notwithstanding the positive sounds emanating from Monday’s meeting between Liz Truss and Maros Sefcovic, the talks between the European Commission and the UK government over the Protocol on Northern Ireland are probably heading to a major crisis in the next month. There has been no movement of the UK side, and immovable deadlines are approaching.

The UK agreed to the Protocol as part of their Withdrawal Treaty with the EU. The Protocol was an intrinsic part of the Treaty. The UK Parliament ratified the Treaty, including the Protocol, but now the UK government is trying to scrap it altogether, under a this pretence of “renegotiating “ it.

The fundamental problem is that the British negotiating strategy is being driven by old fashioned, populist, and simplistic notions about trade. The EU strategy, on the other hand, is driven by a legal imperative to protect the most advanced form of economic and commercial integration between sovereign nations that has ever been achieved. The clash is a clash of mind sets. The arguments of either side are based on fundamentally incompatible assumptions.

There is the added complication that the negotiations between Liz Truss and Maros Sefcovic are taking place in the midst of a political crisis in Britain, in which any compromise is liable to be used as a political weapon in a struggle to lead the Conservative Party.
Conservative Britain always pretended to see the EU as simple free trade area. But the rest of the EU members realized one could not have truly free trade, unless there were four other things

common rules on the quality of products
freedom for people and money to move from country to country,
common trade policies vis a vis the rest of the world, and
a shared set of political goals that facilitated day to day compromise.

A big segment of English opinion never accepted this latter concept of the EU. This makes it difficult for them to even to understand the necessary implications of the Protocol .

The Protocol makes Northern Ireland part of the EU Single market for goods produced in Northern Ireland. Meanwhile Britain has left the EU Single Market. Britain has no more than a bare bones trade agreement with the EU. This makes a big difference. But it is what the UK government and Parliament agreed.
Goods produced in Northern Ireland (NI) are being treated as EU goods, whereas goods produced in Britain are non EU goods.

In the case of goods made up of parts, ingredients or components coming from different countries, The parts, ingredients or components produced in Northern Ireland qualify, for rules of origin purposes, as “European”. Meanwhile parts, ingredients or components originating in Britain are of non EU origin.

This distinction can be very important in deciding whether a final product is sufficiently “European” to benefit from duty free access to the EU market. If one wants to ensure that a sufficient percentage of a final product is “European”, it makes sense to source ingredients or parts in NI rather than in another part of the UK.

Goods coming into NI will be subject to EU Customs rules and tariffs, whereas goods coming into Britain will be subject to (potentially very different) UK Customs rules and tariffs.

This gap has to be policed, if there is not to be abuse. In the Protocol the EU and the UK agreed how this gap is to be policed.
The gap will become progressively wider, if the UK seeks to exploit the freedom it won by Brexit by making new (and different) British standards to replace the old standards that it might claim had been “imposed by Brussels”.

The more the standards diverge, the more will checks be needed on goods entering the EU market through NI, to ensure that they comply with EU requirements.

Then there is the question of the European Court interpreting EU rules as they apply to NI goods circulating freely in the EU Single Market . The UK agreed to this but now is objecting to it.
For NI businesses to be free to export their products within the EU Single Market under the Protocol they have to be able to convince their competitors and customers in France and Germany that NI goods are fully compliant with EU rules. These rules are interpreted, in final analysis, by the European Court of Justice. That ensures consistency.
The rules must be interpreted in the same way for NI goods, as they are for goods produced in France or Germany. The role of the ECJ in the Protocol is the passport for NI goods into Europe, one of the biggest markets in the world.

The role of the ECJ is, of course, confined to EU rules applying to goods. It will have no general jurisdiction in NI on other matters. There the final arbiter will be the UK Supreme Court.

There is a logjam in the negotiations because the UK side keeps repeating the same talking points , pocketing EU concessions without reciprocity, and withholding cooperation with the EU authorities on access to data. It is also stalling on building installations in Belfast Port that would allow customs officials there to do their work safely and conveniently. The UK is using “grace periods” to defer indefinitely controls it agreed to. It is almost as if the UK does not want to face up to the implications of Brexit.

The UK, and some unionists, talk about using Article 16 as if this would allow the ending of checks in Belfast port. That is not legally possible. Article 16 only allows limited and temporary derogations. To use it to go beyond that would be a straightforward breach on international law.
We are facing a moment of truth.

Haughey

By John Bruton

On December 13, 2021

In Books, John Bruton

Charles Haughey’s childhood was marked by the illness and financial tribulations of his Derry born father, a retired army Officer and IRA veteran, Johnny Haughey.

Johnny Haughey was on the run in the South Derry countryside for much on 1920/1 and this may have permanently damaged his health.

He took part in the IRA Ambush at Swatragh on 5 June 1921, in which the 28 year old Catholic member of the RIC from Ballinrobe, Co Mayo, Michael Burke, was killed.

Johnny Haughey went on the serve as an officer in the Free State Army, but seems not to have been politically involved beyond that. His wife, Sarah, had to bear an extra burden of caring for him when he contracted multiple sclerosis.

Charles Haughey was a good student, won a scholarship to UCD and had qualified as both an accountant and a barrister by the age of 24, quite a feat. He also represented Dublin in the minor hurling All Ireland final. His hurling career ended, when he was suspended for a year for striking a linesman, when playing when for Parnells.

This book is useful in reminding readers of his early career, his struggle to be elected to the Dail, and his nationwide role in party reorganisation.

He was effective, as Minister for Justice, in enacting some of the large backlog of partially prepared legislation in the Department , notably the Succession Act, which gave greater protection to widows. He also reformed the Civil Liability Act, which, among other things, recognized that unborn children might be injured, and thus be entitled to redress after birth. In this, he was more enlightened, and had a larger vision of human rights, than has the present generation.

His avoidable confrontation with the farmers in 1966 is covered rather cursorily. Things got so bad that outgoing Taoiseach, Sean Lemass had to intervene to bring this row to a diplomatic conclusion.

Gary Murphy claims that, in this book, he is making what he calls a “reassessment” of Charles Haughey, on the basis of his unprecedented access to Haughey’s private papers.

The facts of Mr Haugheys later career, and of his totally inappropriate financial dependency on donors to maintain an artificially extravagant public lifestyle, are so well known that this “reassessment” is unlikely to change opinions. Readers will just be better informed of the facts.

Apart from some private jottings, which Haughey left in his papers, about his attitude to Northern Ireland and the Arms Trial, the private papers reveal relatively little that is illuminating about Haughey himself, or his private thoughts.

The private papers are full of letters of enthusiastic praise from correspondents on the occasion of his various promotions as a Minister, and of his survivals of party heaves against him.

Surprisingly for such a partisan figure, many of these letters he received came from senior civil servants and judges, people one might have been expected would maintain greater professional distance.

The fact that such people felt moved to write to him throws light on the persona that Charles Haughey had deliberately cultivated. His persona was designed to mesmerize and hold people in thrall, and thus to enhance his power. In his manner and comportment, he cultivated mystery, awe, and to a great degree, fear.

He wanted to be seen as the uncommon man, not as the common man.

His exotic , and mysteriously financed, extravagant lifestyle, was part his attempt to cultivate awe and a consequent degree of fear.

As Donald Trump once said to the author , Bob Woodward;

“Real power is….. I don’t want to use the word….. fear”.

This fear was an important instrument in Mr Haughey’s political repertoire. The author says Haughey “could be extremely dismissive of his political colleagues”, but adds , rather dubiously, that he was never rude to his civil servants.

From long before his own election to the Dail, Haughey had cultivated a relationship with the grassroots members of Fianna Fail all over the country, by attending Cumann functions and addressing meetings. He later harnessed this relationship to browbeat some TDs into voting for him.

He also was a master of symbolic language, of uncertain content.

He claimed adherence to Fianna Fail’s “republicanism”, without ever defining what that meant, in terms of day to day politics in the here and now.

By focussing on the distant dream, he kept everyone happy.

He believed the” British had no more right to be in the 6 counties than in the 26”, as if the problem was the British, rather than the unionists. After his acquittal in the Arms Trial, he claimed to have a “fundamental difference” on Northern policy with Jack Lynch, but never elaborated on what that was. The author does not probe this.

The author describes Haugheys views on Northern Ireland as “naive”, believing, it seems, that all that was needed was to persuade the British to leave, and all would be well.

When it comes to Mr Haughey’s economic record, the author does not dig very deep at all. He claims Haughey was an “instinctive Keynesian”. The author does not reflect on what ”Keynesianism” could credibly mean, in a small open economy, where any debt fuelled stimulus would quickly leave the country in the form of extra imports.

When Haughey became Taoiseach in 1979, he was warned that the solvency of the state was at risk as a result of increases in spending and reductions in the tax base, that had occurred since 1977 and before.

In the meantime, international interest rates had been deliberately hiked by Paul Volker of the Federal Reserve, in what proved to be a successful , but very painful , attempt to drive inflation out of the international system.

As a small country, but a big borrower for day to day spending, Ireland was very vulnerable indeed in 1979, when Mr Haughey inherited Jack Lynch’s large parliamentary majority, and could have done something about it.

Maurice Doyle of the Department of Finance, one of his regular congratulatory correspondents, warned Haughey that the country was already at stage 2 on a 5 stage route to economic disintegration.

Haughey then made an eloquent television broadcast warning that the country was living beyond its means, and hinting that he would take imminent action. But, notwithstanding his large parliamentary majority, his government did nothing.

Haughey pursued the illusion of an understanding with unions and employers, rather than putting the government’s own financial house in order first, by tax increases and spending reductions.

He acted as his own Minister for Finance, sidelining the real Ministers for Finance, Michael O Kennedy and Gene Fitzgerald.

In January 1981, he produced a budget that pretended to curb nominal spending, without taking any of the necessary policy decisions, and which artificially inflated 1981 revenue, by bringing forward revenue from 1982 ( adding to the 1982 problem).

As Opposition spokesman at the time, I informed the Dail of the phoniness of these budget numbers and described the budget as one of “drift and expediency”.

Shortly after this budget, Mr Haughey, who had a large overall majority, and could have continued in office for another year, to deal with the financial crisis, called General Election. He lost it, and Fianna Fail was never again to regain the overall parliamentary majority that he had failed to use, and then prematurely cast away.

His government was replaced by a Fine Gael/Labour government which, unlike the Haughey government, was in a minority in the Dail.

That new government had no choice, minority or not, to tackle to financial problem it had inherited head on, and I am proud to say , it did so.

But because of the lack of a parliamentary majority, this led to the country having to endure three General Elections in a row, something which could have been avoided if the Haughey government, which did have a majority in the Dail, had done its job between 1979 and 1981.

When he returned to office in 1987, with the insurance provided by the support of Fine Gael and Alan Dukes Tallaght strategy, his government eventually made the economies he could have made in the 1979/81 period. The task was eased by the fact that international interest rates had fallen in the meantime, which reduced government spending on debt service. But he then cast that insurance aside, by calling a wholly unnecessary General Election in 1989, a mistake that he paid for later.

In second order things, Charles Haughey was a very imaginative policy maker. But on the big things, he often dodged responsibility, and showed a degree of timidity that sat very uneasily beside his carefully cultivated public image.

This 637 page book is more than a biography. It is a fairly full political history of Ireland, from the 1950’s to 1990, as seen from the perspective of Ireland’s then largest party, Fianna Fail.

AN AIRLIFT OF SURPLUS VACCINES TO POORER COUNTRIES COULD SAVE MANY LIVES

By John Bruton

On October 31, 2021

In John Bruton

Statement by John Bruton, Former Taoiseach

I am happy to be one of the signatories of a letter to the G20 leaders, meeting in Rome this weekend, calling on them to airlift surplus Covid 19 vaccines, unlikely to be used in high income countries, to low income countries, where vaccine rates are dangerously low.

Gordon Brown estimates that 240 million unused vaccines will accumulate in the EU, the US , Canada and the UK, by the end of the year, and that 100m of these will have passed their ”use by” date by then.

It is calculated that, for every 100m vaccines administered, 120000 lives will be saved.

The more vaccines that are administered in Africa, and in other low income countries, the less likely will be the development of new variants of Covid, which could spread back into better off countries.

Gordon Brown’s proposal is a sound one.

AFGHAN LESSONS FOR THE WORLD

By John Bruton

On August 20, 2021

In John Bruton

The collapse of the western backed government in Afghanistan is a shock. It has shaken confidence in democratic countries, and changed the balance of power somewhat, as between the United States and China.

It shows that efforts from the outside to topple regimes, and to replace them with friendlier ones are more difficult than anyone thought 20 years ago, when the western allies first overthrew the Taliban regime in the wake of 9/11. The aim of capturing Osama Bin Laden was not achieved until much later, and then it was achieved in Pakistan (an ostensible ally of the United States) , and not in Afghanistan at all.

The end of the US intervention in Afghanistan has lessons for those who might wish to undertake similar exercises in Somalia, Libya, Syria, Cuba, Mali or Venezuela. The objectives need to be clear and limited. Local support must be genuine. If one is seeking out terrorist suspects, invasion is not the best way of achieving extradition! Nation building is best done by locals.

Existing regimes may be oppressive or corrupt, but if they are home grown, and have developed organically from local roots, they survive better than anything , however enlightened, introduced from outside.

Conventional military power-boots on the ground and targeted bombing- is of limited effectiveness against networks of fanatics or mobile guerrillas.

Western countries will now need to reassess their military spending priorities in light of the lessons of the interventions in Iraq, Libya and now Afghanistan

On this occasion, it is the US and NATO that have the hardest lessons to learn, but I suspect that if China were to attempt a similar exercise in nation building from the outside (say in Taiwan) they would have the same experience.

The fact that China has had to adopt such extreme measures in Sinkiang to integrate that province into the Chinese social system is a sign of weakness rather than strength.

Afghanistan is an ethnically diverse society which, despite its diversity and disunity, has been able to resist rule from Britain, the USSR and, most recently, from the US and NATO. Religion was a unifying factor is an otherwise very divided country.

It seems the Taliban have been more effective in building an ethnically diverse coalition than was the former government in Kabul. It is not yet clear whether the Taliban will be able to hold that coalition together.

It does seem that the Taliban has, in the past, been able to impose a degree of order in Afghan society, and has been able to punish corruption. It created a form of order in a brutal and misogynistic way, but it did so. Order is something the outgoing government in Kabul could not provide, even with generous outside help.

Order, after all, is a prerequisite for any form of stable existence. Furthermore without order there can be no rule of law, and no democracy. Without iy, civil society breaks down. This applies in the West as much as it does in Central Asia.

Order is created by a combination of three essentials- loyalty, acquiescence and fear. All three elements are needed to some extent. Hamid Karzai could not command these three essentials, it remains to be seen whether the Taliban will do any better

It is hard to assess the effect the Afghan debacle will have on the United States, which has by far the most elaborate and expensive military forces in the world.

Will there be a change in US strategy?

There is a strong temptation to turn inwards and reduce commitments to the defence of other countries, including the defence of European countries. From 1783 until 1941 the US tended to remain neutral and rely on the oceans for protection against its enemies.

The countries of the European Union will also need to work out what their practical defence priorities are, in light of the Afghan and other recent experiences.. This is a political task of great difficulty because the 27 member states have very different views and geographic imperatives.

LEGAL CRISIS IN EU MUST BE RESOLVED;

By John Bruton

On July 18, 2021

In John Bruton

EU AID TO POLAND SHOULD BE STOPPED,

GERMANY SHOULD ACCEPT ECJ RULINGS AS FINAL.

The Courts in Poland and Germany have recently challenged to legal foundation of the European Union.

The essence of the EU is that it is a system of rules, agreed democratically, enforced consistently and interpreted in a uniform way.

The uniform interpretation of EU rules has been ensured by the acceptance by member states that the final word on what an EU rule or law means, is made by the European Court of Justice, and by it alone.

This is put into effect by Article 260 of the EU Treaty which says;

“If the Court of Justice finds that a Member State has failed to fulfil an obligation under the Treaties, the State shall be required to take the necessary measures to comply with the judgement of the Court.”

The European Court of Justice recently found that recent moves by the Polish Government were in conflict with the principle that the judiciary should be independent of politics.

Last week the Polish Supreme Court decided that it would defy the European court’s ruling.

This is the road to chaos, and to an end to the EU’s Single Market.

Poland’s independent Ombudsman put it this way;

“If every EU member state interprets EU law in its own way, we would not have a free flow of goods, capital and services, and much more”.

In a more limited way, the German Supreme Court has also questioned the finality of judgements of the European Court of Justice in the matter of bond buying by the European Central Bank.

The German Court has long challenged the principle of the primacy of the European Court, but so far has avoided the matter coming to ahead. This ambiguity provides cover for Poland and for others, like Hungary, who might be tempted to defy European Court rulings. Germany should sort this out.

If these Polish and German positions are allowed to stand, they undermine the basis on which the EU is undertaking ambitious joint borrowing for economic recovery, and is setting equally ambitious joint rules to combat climate change.

If the financial and legal obligations being created by these initiatives cannot be guaranteed to be interpreted consistently across all 27 member states, the initiatives should not go ahead.

At the very least, the proposed EU recovery package for Poland should be suspended.

Meanwhile, Germany should amend its Basic Law to ensure that it accepts the primacy of European Court rules in matters that come within the competence of the EU.

All EU states should take this matter up.

In the wake of Brexit, Ireland is making significant sacrifices to stay in the EU Single Market. So Ireland should make it clear it will defend the legal basis of the Single Market in every way it can.

Countries that do not accept the primacy of the European court of Justice in matters of EU competence should leave the EU.

Opinions & Ideas

Category: John Bruton Page 2 of 25

THE UK’s ATTEMPT TO BACK OUT OF THE PROTOCOL IT AGREED

What will happen now?

PRESIDENT BUCHANAN

UK’s threat to break international treaty is ‘gravely serious’

WHY THE UK DEMANDS, IF CONCEDED , WOULD UNDERMINE THE EU

REES MOGG APPOINTMENT COULD MAKE PROTOCOL DIFFICULTIES MORE ACUTE

BREXIT CRISIS LOOMS OVER PROTOCOL

Haughey

AN AIRLIFT OF SURPLUS VACCINES TO POORER COUNTRIES COULD SAVE MANY LIVES

Statement by John Bruton, Former Taoiseach

AFGHAN LESSONS FOR THE WORLD

Will there be a change in US strategy?

LEGAL CRISIS IN EU MUST BE RESOLVED;