Irish, EU & international politics & economics
By Niamh Ni Bhriain. Covid-19 is causing thousands of deaths every day, but the pandemic is killing in other ways too. Governments around the world responded to the pandemic by shutting their borders to international arrivals and severely restricting people’s freedom of movement. While for some this was unprecedented, for […]
A poem by Kevin Higgins. Not the Deliveroo riders named Tariq and Omar who Gemma O’Doherty is terrified will try to marry her.Nor the taxi drivers from Togo John Waters fears will make him go around the place wearing a veil.Not the Hutch Kinehan wet squad The Sunday World keeps telling you are […]
Pádraig Ó Meiscill discovers his own personal lesser spotted Belfast at the start of the lockdown. When the silence came, caused by a cough, only a few were expecting it. Many had predicted an uproar over borders. A cacophony of bile about the difference, or lack thereof, between Derry and Letterkenny, […]
By Emma Clancy. The recession we are facing as a result of the coronavirus pandemic – together with the urgent need for climate transition – will require unprecedented public investment by the European Union (EU) and its member states. The EU’s absurd debt and deficit rules – combined with the […]
By Zack Breslin. Neoliberalism has been exposed as a failed doctrine, first by the financial crisis that erupted more than a decade ago and now by the Covid-19 pandemic. What replaces it? The seismic events of the financial crash of 2008 revealed the consequences of allowing rampant financial capitalism to […]
By Lisbeth Latham. The central driver of the capitalist system is the drive for capitalists to constantly increase profits – failure to do so can be a trigger for a crisis within the capitalist system. Since the end of the long boom in the early 1970s, capitalism, particularly in the […]
By Lisbeth Latham. Triumphalist comments about the end of capitalism or neoliberalism abounded in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2008, just as there are many people today who believe that the current crisis is the end of neoliberalism or capitalism. Unfortunately, neoliberalism and – more importantly – […]
By Emma Clancy. Addressing members of the European Parliament on 27 May, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed the creation of a ‘Next Generation’ European Union recovery fund worth €750 billion, to be raised by the Commission – a temporary Eurobond. The funds would be disbursed as €500bn in […]
By Karthik Preyeswary. The Left Democratic Front (LDF)-governed Indian state of Kerala’s reaction to the coronavirus virus outbreak is now hailed as an international example for COVID-19 control. As of 18 May, this state, with a population of 35 million, had only 524 confirmed cases and just four deaths. This […]
By Conor McCabe. This is the fourth and final article in a series adapted from the Unite union’s policy document, Hope or Austerity: A Road Map for a Better, Fairer Ireland After the Pandemic, written by Conor McCabe. The current crisis is an interplay between Covid-19 and the deep-rooted inequalities and structural […]