Subscribe Already Drumcree is expected to provide a more dramatic forum this year than last
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Already Drumcree is expected to provide a more dramatic forum this year than last. Mr Trimble, the local MP, will feel obliged to lead the defence of his constituents' right to march.Even if Mr Blair moved swiftly to set up the commission recommended by the North report to arbitrate over marches, that may not help. One well-informed observer says: "The Unionists would use the occasion to test whatever structures are in place, the more so if those are new."Labour's top people are not innocents abroad. The Blair office, at least, has taken one of John Major's observations to heart.
"With Ireland," said one key player last week, "it's often two steps forward, and one step back And sometimes it's the other way around.". It Is 63 years since there were so many unemployed workers in Germany, and in those days Hitler's financial guru - a banker named Hjalmar Schacht - spent government money freely to create new jobs. When German unemployment reached 4,658,000, or 12.2 per cent, last Thursday, Chancellor Helmut Kohl must have felt tempted to reach for the same remedy. But he can't. If the German government spends heavily to attack joblessness, it will fail to meet the Maastricht criteria for entry into European Monetary Union. But, in order to achieve the end he most devoutly desires, the Chancellor is steadily destroying his own power base at home.
And the strain is showing.For the first time since taking up residence in Bonn, Mr Kohl seems listless and unsure of himself. His authority is eroding within the government's inner circle and the Christian Democrat Party as a whole; his poll ratings tumble with every rise in the unemployment figures. According to a survey published last week, a mere 32 per cent of Germans think Mr Kohl is the right man to put the country back on its feet, and 55 per cent are of the opinion that he should not stand again in next year's elections.Mr Kohl has tried to put a brave face on this. A few days ago he boastfully invited his rivals to put up or shut up, saying: "The people who are against me are lurking in the bushes again, and now they think they might dare to come out into the open." But the strategy backfired disastrously - the bushes outside Helmut Kohl's bedroom window are now rustling with predatory wildlife. Suddenly, enemies old and new are mustering the courage to take a stab at the Chancellor's exposed back.Mr Kohl stands accused of having lost control over the economy, and perhaps even the will to govern, and the unemployment figures measure the scale of his failure. The roots of Mr Kohl's malaise lie in his European vision, and his sudden departure would mark a sea change in the balance of power and priorities on the continent.
Without him, the driving force of integration, the process is bound to slow down, or perhaps even go into reverse.On two occasions recently, Mr Kohl is reported to have told leaders of his Christian Democrat Party that he would step down if Germany failed to launch monetary union on schedule on 1 January 1999. Bonn's rumour mill is also grinding out speculation that Mr Kohl is planning to call it a day at the conclusion of the Inter-Governmental Conference in Amsterdam in mid-summer.Both scenarios envisage a prospect that would have been laughed out of the Chancellor's court only a few months ago - that Germany will prove incapable of running its own accounts in accordance with rules it had laid down for the other members of the club.If Mr Kohl cannot deliver a single currency, he is history; if it does go ahead, it will be the only "achievement" to dangle before the voters at next year's elections.There are many in the party who are now beginning to say openly that EMU might not be enough, especially if it means doom for the potent symbol of Germany's post-war prosperity - the Deutschmark. Under the cover of sniper fire from an increasingly vociferous Euro-sceptic wing, senior Christian Democrats in the provinces have begun to lambast Mr Kohl's dithering. As a result of their ambush, the Chancellor's manifesto commitment to a radical reform of taxation and the welfare state lies in ruins.The skirmishes have now spread to the cabinet, with ministers slandering one another and their boss in public, and the coalition parties and powerful regional grandees plotting escape routes.There is a "Wild Bunch" of thirty-somethings in the regions determined to distance themselves from the Chancellor before the coming local elections. There are Christian Democrat prime ministers in the Lander, dumped there by Mr Kohl after a power struggle that went wrong, who have now decided that it is time to have another go.