The regime change in Washington is swiftly being felt in Western capitals Dublin included with the now ex-Minister for Integration Roderic O’Gorman appearing on the national broadcaster Monday to decry a new alliance between Trumpism and Big Tech.
Rather quiet on American corporate power when it was projecting the values of diversity and dissolution O’Gorman rightly pointed out the early warning signs that the Big Tech oligarchy has already gained the whiphand to the detriment of national populists in the new Trump administration.
While short on exact policy detail Trump’s inaugural speech will no doubt send shivers down the spines of white-collar elites in Dublin with protectionist measures enacted hours after taking the oath of office already undermining the IDA’s outreach to corporate America. From climate deregulation to lowering of US corporate taxes to 15% the United States is set to boom in contrast to a bloated and divided Europe. Sandwiched between a declining UK, federalising EU, and a now revanchist United States the contradictions in Ireland’s Atlantic economy, EU regulatory system, and third-worldist foreign policy outlook are gradually being revealed on the global stage as the multilateral system we pegged our fortune to goes into reversal.
As a new Programme for Government is signed off on and Gombeens replace the Greens in Cabinet it is perhaps worth remembering the various albatrosses O’Gorman and Eamon Ryan placed on the Irish state in lieu of preparing for a turbulent new Trumpian era.
From legally binding targets to decarbonise by 51% within five years to gobbling up the Irish hotel sector through facilitating an asylum bonanza post-Ukraine O’Gorman and friends have done more to destabilise the nation ahead of Trump 2.0 than Vladimir Putin ever could.
Irish politics is inertia-ridden at the best of times. What Irish Greens added was a specific legislative and ideological rationale for national self-immolation.
New cycles of dependencies from energy to migration policy are now built into the legislative cake in Ireland courtesy of Green dominance in the past government.
The death of Bord na Móna as an energy producer in 2021, the blanket ban on nuclear and hydrocarbon exploration coupled with a departmental veto on LNG infrastructure nevermind a Soviet-style COVID response that got vast segments of the Irish economy and population addicted to endless subsidies Ireland under O’Gorman and Ryan has spent the Biden years effectively pissing against the wind.
While even the Macronist strands of the EU establishment prepared for some degree of strategic Europe decoupled from Trump’s America or acknowledged the economic dependencies the West has on China, Ireland has spent the twilight years of unipolar liberalism digging ourselves a new hole. For those on the political right still naive about the reality of a Trump presidency in Ireland just remember that the tariff war to induce regime change against Trudeau in Canada can easily be replicated in Dublin and that America First doesn’t always align with the Irish national interest.
Similar to their German equivalents and their pursuit of aggression in Ukraine and the economic neutering of Germany at home Ireland will live in the shadow of the wreckage caused by green governance the next decade regardless of who is in the Department of Taoiseach. A new scramble for Irish sovereignty must begin on day one of the Trump administration and that begins with the tearing up of the legacy of green mania and the placement of Irish self-interest over a moribund multilateral order.
For Irish elites critical of Trump and all he represents it is not good enough anymore to ride the cultural and economic coattails of the DNC but instead prepare their own motherland for a world where nations and nationality mean more than any human rights declaration.
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