You never know who you’ll run into on the way from Brussels to Kerry. In the check-in line at Zaventem, I met John Bruton, former Fine Gael Taoiseach and now the EU’s ambassador to the US. On Wednesday night, he had treated the Brussels branch of Fine Gael to his pungent and witty take on US/EU relations, and he was still in flying form. In the lounge, I was gently ribbed for my blueshirtedness by Fianna Fail MEPs Sean O’Neachtain and Liam Aylward. Both MEPs had been reading The Four Glorious Years, 1917 – 1921, an institutional account of the foundation of the Irish State by a civil servant of the time. They warmly recommended the book, saying you wouldn’t know the writer was a Dev man till the last chapter. Now this is something I just love about Irish politicians.
Politicians around the world are obsessed with political biography, and make an immodest study of the lives of great men. In the UK, it’s practically compulsory to have written a great life of a great man before you consider a run for parliament. But Irish politicians are more interested in the broad historic cut and thrust of our history, and especially with the foundation of the state.
Now, some say we’re too obsessed with the Civil War that gave rise to our party system. The two main parties were based along cultural or tribal lines until fairly recently. (In a moment of honorable foolishness, Labour sat out the 1918 General Election and has never really regained its footing. Since the 1990s and, I believe, the polarizing emergence of the Progressive Democrats, party support has slowly begun to follow class interest.) But if the war in Iraq has shown us anything, it’s that political leaders who lack deep contextual knowledge tend to vastly over-estimate their ability to direct the course of history.
Later on the Dublin-Farranfore flight, who did I spot but former Tanaiste and Labour party leader, Dick Spring, who was on his way back from a conference in Stockholm. (Not that I was talking to him, just earwigging.)
But all this pol-spotting is nothing compared to the text I just got from my sister who’s on a weekend hostelling in Paris. She is sat in a café listening to the beautiful but faithless Olivier Martinez pouring a stream of blue invective into his mobile phone. Now there’s a celebrity.
{ 8 comments }
nick s 09.14.07 at 5:58 pm
Ah, the wonders of small countries, where if you’re not related to yer man in the Dáil (or on RTÉ) you’ve probably just arrived on the boat.
Are there any other countries in Europe where the main parties are still so difficult for foreigners to sum up in terms of modern politics?
mollymooly 09.14.07 at 7:46 pm
Of course half the people in RTÉ are related to yer man in the Dáil.
c.l. ball 09.14.07 at 10:37 pm
Politicians are not celebrities unless their celebrity status preceded their political status. Or put differently, celebrities fly first class (unless their traveling with their family).
Now, Martinez is a celebrity.
Laleh 09.15.07 at 12:18 am
Who’s Olivier Martinez?
James Wimberley 09.16.07 at 4:19 pm
Did you other non-Irish know the plural of taoiseach is taoisigh?
Doug 09.16.07 at 6:42 pm
“political leaders
who lack deep contextual knowledgetend to vastly over-estimate their ability to direct the course of history!”Edited for brevity.
And while I’m at it: 1 “Are there any other countries in Europe where the main parties are still so difficult for foreigners to sum up in terms of modern politics?”
should be “Are there any other countries in Europe where the main parties are not difficult for foreigners to sum up in terms of modern politics?”
P O'Neill 09.16.07 at 7:44 pm
Be ready for an e-mail from Ireland’s leading Eurosceptic, whose name currently escapes me, complaining that you’re referred to Bruton as an Ambassador, thereby giving sovereign status to the European Union. I’ve heart of the Meath Chronicle being carefully scrutinized for such references with corresponding letters to the editor the next week.
James Wimberley 09.17.07 at 9:03 am
p.o-neill is out of date. The job title of officials who speak for countries not only in the EU but in the plethora of IGOs is usually “permanent representative”, but their foreign service rank is amabassador.
The OSCE takes this further, and has arrogated to itself the power to call its own representatives in trouble spots “ambassadors”. Even the EU doesn’t do this -yet. Basically a retirement perk.
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