Interesting leader in today’s FT, which touches on some of the same themes (the rising tide of cheap populism as a threat to any newly ‘mandated’ government) as Elaine Byrne noted in the Irish Times (blogged here this am). But it urges that the Irish people make a distinction between setting a budget and dealing more directly with the bank deficit:
Ireland does need a budget that addresses its unsustainable structural deficit, and almost everyone recognises that. Whether taxpayers can or should keep paying the debts of Irish banks – in what is now widely seen as a bail-out of European banks that recklessly lent to them – is another matter.
It also quietly recommends “legal accountability for the bankers, builders and politicians whose cronyism brought Ireland to its knees’.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty