Northern Ireland's first minister faces vote of no confidence

[Donald Ian Rankin]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/18/northern-ireland-assembly-faces-vote-of-no-confidence

The thing that I find most striking about this story is the battle-lines. If you had told me 20 years ago that in 2016 the DUP and Sinn Fein would be the governing coalition, joining forces to oppose the SDLP, the Ulster Unionists, the Greens, Traditional Unionist Voice and People Before Profit, I would have suggested you take a breathalyser test*!

[T_i_B]

1. Interesting that it's over a renewable energy incentive scheme

Rather than sectarian stuff. In that respect it's heartening to see Northern Ireland politicians having a battle over a proper day to day issue.

Hopefully this can be sorted out in a constructive manner.

[LeftishBrit]

2. Agree

[Bayard]

3. Vote of no confidence......

How can we get some of that in the U.S.?

[Bad Dog]

5. By getting rid of direct presidential elections,

and giving the executive power to the speaker of the house. That's the Westminster system in a nutshell.

[Ken Burch]

7. The Westminster system is never having presidential elections in the first place.

They have this nice German family that takes care of the ceremonial parts of the job, y'see. Quiet little lot they are...you never hear much about them...

[T_i_B]

8. What you've inadvertently done...

...is shown the reason why I've never been persuaded by the republican argument.

Republicanism in the UK is all about getting rid of the monarchy, with little to nothing ever being said about how the British constitution would operate without them. If they were making arguments for a US style separation of legislative and executive powers then I might be persuaded, but that argument is never made. Instead it seems to be just muddling along as before, but without a monarch, and that might not even be an improvement!

Do I want Theresa May to have more powers as president? No, I want her to be held to account a lot more then is currently the case, and the republican argument does not deliver on this crucial point.

[Bad Dog]

9. They're still German?

Prince Albert, the last actual German, died in 1861. If a black family had lived in Britain for that long would you still call them Zambian or Ethiopian, or wouldn't you feel that might sound a tad racist.

I've gone from being an armchair republican to a reluctant royalist purely because the alternatives aren't any better, and could be a lot worse. I think you'll agree that Blair was too presidential, and we don't need any more of that crap.

[LeftishBrit]

10. It's a good thing IMO that we separate the ceremonial and political roles

If I was starting from scratch, I'd prefer an elected figurehead president, rather than a hereditary one, but I'd rather have either than extend the role of our Prime Minister. Some of them have been rather too royal in their behaviour as it was (notably Thatcher and Blair).

And I would hardly call the Royals 'German' these days. They are descended from 'eeevil EU immigrants' just as we all are if you go back far enough: even the Ancient Britons are thought to have been descendants of Spanish fisherment who migrated here. But your incoming president has much more recent German ancestry than Lizzie does; and nobody calls him German - well, I'm sure the Germans wouldn't want to own him anyway!

[Ken Burch]

11. You've missed all the threads here where we call him "Drumpf"(his father's family's real surname)

And ok, the German thing may be slightly outdated(I put that there as a small joke), but we're not that far from a big deal having to be made about listing Prince Philip as a "Greek" prince and there were some questions about which side the Duke of Windsor was on in the War.

The figurehead president, on the European republican model, is probably the best choice.

[T_i_B]

12. What I still can't believe about you Americans...

...is that you still haven't worked out what a trump is.

I've just eaten some baked beans so I'm going to be trumping quite a bit tonight.

In fact I have friends who make a point of trumping in the lifts of Trump towers whenever they visit New York.

[LeftishBrit]

14. And I've found out what Johnson means to Americans...

so if our great Foreign Secretary meets the great American President, it's a prick meeting a fart. About right!

[Donald Ian Rankin]

13. I prefer the ceremonial focus of patriotism to be hereditary.

"...Tories saying it ought to be preserved because it was clever, and Radicals saying it ought to be destroyed because it was stupid, and all the time no one saw that it was right because it was stupid..." - G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill.

I think it's very valuable to separate the ceremonial focus of the nation's identity from the person who actually runs the country, to ensure that the latter is in no way shielded from attack by misguided patriotism.

A lot of Americans make the argument that even if you don't respect the president, you have a duty to treat him respectfully out of respect for the office. I think that's appalling, and I'm glad you hear it less about British Prime ministers. I think the monarchy is a large part of the reason for that.

I think the great virtue of a hereditary monarch is that it's the way of selecting a head of state that bestows the least legitimacy, and makes it clearest that they have no right to any power whatsoever. I could live with a president randomly chosen by lot, but even then you'd get idiots saying they represented the common man against the Westminster Elite, and similar guff. Choosing a monarch by inheritance is the single best way I can think of to undermine any attempts to interfere in the governance of the country.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Northern Ireland's Arlene Foster survives no-confidence vote

Northern Ireland’s first minister, Arlene Foster, has seen off an attempt to remove her from office following a failed green energy scheme costing taxpayers £400m.

Sinn Féin’s decision to abstain in a no-confidence vote against Foster on Monday ensured the Democratic Unionist party leader remained first minister.

Under the complex rules of power sharing in the Northern Ireland assembly, the DUP was able to exercise a veto to block the motion.

The rules state that she could only be removed as first minister if a majority of nationalist representatives supported the cross-party proposal to censure her.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/19/northern-ireland-arlene-foster-survives-no-confidence-vote-green-energy-scandal-sinn-fein

[Ken Burch]

6. This points up a very interesting contradiction between Sinn Fein in N.I., and in the Republc.

In the power-sharing arrangement in the North, Sinn Fein and the DUP have cooperated to pass a harsh austerity package. The Greens and PBP could BOTH make gains at SF's expense at the next NI elections if public anger over the service cuts this has caused and will cause does not subside.

In the Republic, Sinn Fein(now the third-largest party in the Dail) has been an anti-austerity party. It's almost impossible to imagine the SF TD's supporting what the SF group in the NI Assembly have done.

In a way, this makes SF begin to look like the Irish wing of the Peronist Party...left-wing and right-wing at the same time(a situation memorably satirized in the Argentine film "Funny Dirty Little War". in which, in one scene, a right-wing Peronist shoots a left-wing Peronist-both shout "Viva Peron!" as the fatal shot is fired-after which, the camera pans to framed quote from Juan Peron that translates as "the best thing for a Peronist is ANOTHER Peronist!).

"Things fall apart-"?