PM May calls a snap election - Power grab or a bid for stability?

THE announcement yesterday by Theresa May that she will today ask the House of Commons to facilitate a general election on June 8 will not help the Irish negotiators charged with protecting our interests during Brexit talks sleep any better. Irish businessmen and women — and workers — who depend on the British market will not sleep too soundly either.

An already uncertain, unmapped process will be suspended on a political life-support machine while the Conservative party, both wings of it, tries to exploit a 20-point lead in opinion polls. They, steadfast and brave, are emboldened too by and the irrelevant opposition offered by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, one that seems to have tragically lost its way.

May’s announcement, naturally enough, follows cast-iron assurances that she had no intention of taking this course of action — one already described by one British commentator as an “attempted coup”. Though she said her hand was forced by continued opposition to Brexit and the need for stability, it seems like a power grab of the most feral kind. Should the hard right prevail then we will be faced with a new and unattractive reality — one that will have little enough regard for the peripheral elements of the United Kingdom much less for the interests of a Bolshie neighbour with a lot to lose.

The desire for stability did not, however, inculcate a sensitivity around Northern Ireland where efforts, real or otherwise, to reach a new deal on power sharing are ongoing. Those talks will not be helped by a June general election. It will not contribute to stability in Northern Ireland where the majority of people voted to stay in the EU. So too did the majority of Scots so yesterday’s announcement will confirm for them that they are not at all in a relationship of equals.

Our history is littered with delusion dressed as fact but yesterday’s announcement confirms an eternal truth. No matter how hard we try, no matter how successful and determined we are to stand on our own two feet we will always be buffeted by a storm generated in London.