On Monday the 15th of November last I interviewed Joanne Spain, Sinn Féin’s economic advisor and party strategy manager. The interview dealt first with Sinn Féin’s pre-Budget submission, which unlike those of the other main parties in the Dáil argues that the deficit must be closed not through cuts but by providing a properly costed stimulus funded by money in the National Pension Reserve Fund and by instigating a wealth tax.
The conversation then turned to the recent High Court victory of Senator Pearse Doherty, whose success has forced the government to hold a by-election in his constituency of Donegal South-West, which has been held up for 17 months.
We also discussed the announcement of Sinn Féin’s Finance spokesperson, Arthur Morgan to stand down at the next electon and return to running his family business. This lead the conversation to the recent news that Party leader Gerry Adams hopes to stand in Arthur Morgan’s Louth constituency in the forthcoming General Election.
The interview is 35 minutes long and can be listened to in the embedded played below or downloaded by right-clicking on the file and selecting Save As.
Or download this link.
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November 17, 2010 9:10 am
This is great. Very strong analysis.
November 17, 2010 10:17 am
If anyone has problems accessing this podcast could they let me know?
Donagh
November 17, 2010 1:45 pm
The narrative of justification has gotten the government into an awkward place. Their argument up to yesterday has been that the state is fully funded until next July and that no EU/ECB/IMF bail out is needed. In order to keep face the eventual bail out will be (already is being) presented not as a bail out of the fully funded state but as a bail out (capitalisation, restructuring) of the Irish banks.
On the other hand the arrival after all of a EU/ECB/IMF bail out may bring with it a version of the Latvian blitzkrieg so direly warned about (by, for instance, RTE’s Prime Time last night). Or, more likely, a copperfastening of the already dire €6 million cuts already planned. People will quickly think, “hold on a minute, we are getting worse cuts (or the full €15 billion over four years backed by the imperative of the IMF) and it is, we are told, not for the state, not for the deficit in the public finances, but purely for and because of the banks!”
But it seems that logic and embarassment over inconsistency are beyond Brian Lenihan and much of the commentariat. The throngs on the streets on 27 November might begin to offer a different logic.
The external intervention and all the talk about it last week, furthermore, shifted the dominant discourse from ‘we must have €6 billion cuts and €15 billion by 2014 rather than a lesser austerity’ to ‘we don’t need an EU/ECB/IMF bail out because we have the €6 billion plus four-year plan, which now must be defended as the lesser evil’. Very useful in the game of persuasion.