Michael Murphy

As the opening salvos of a possible third world war were fired across the Middle East, Britain’s once peerless navy was nowhere to be seen. HMS Dragon, one of our ‘Daring-class’ air-defence destroyers, sat idle in Portsmouth for a week after a drone struck a British base in Cyprus, partly because MoD contractors dare not work out of hours. It is unclear what the Tories and Reform thought was to be gained from rattling blunt sabres in support of this conflict If only our politicians showed the same insouciance. Instead, Kemi Badenoch has been pictured sitting resolutely in a tank, an impressive feat given how few remain in existence. Badenoch then declared her support for the bombing of missile sites in Iran.

Bucharest, Romania Surely it’s only a matter of time before someone writes Children of the Deal: a portrait gallery of populists, showmen and media-savvy impresarios moulded in Donald Trump’s image. When that book appears, George Simion may well warrant the opening chapter. In the basement of a Lebanese restaurant in central Bucharest, he holds court, poised to become Romania’s next president. ‘This is Romanian,’ he says, waving a hand over the mezze. ‘Like the Gulf of America… I’ll have an executive order to declare it Romanian.’ The room laughed. So did Simion. He was joking. Probably. Simion is not, by any conventional measure, a traditional politician.

Bucharest, Romania Moments before Romania’s exit poll was announced, George Simion, the nationalist firebrand and presidential hopeful, was tapping his feet to YMCA on the steps of parliament. The campy American anthem bounced off the marble facade of Nicolae Ceausescu’s vast neoclassical palace, an incongruous soundtrack for the night’s unfolding drama. Behind him, a phalanx of aides, friendly broadcasters and visiting politicians, some in MAGA hats, swayed to the beat. Then came the news: Simion was on track to lose. He didn’t miss a step. Taking the lectern, he thundered that he had, in fact, won by 400,000 votes. His supporters cheered. Cameras snapped. It wasn’t entirely clear whether he believed it himself.

As thousands of protesters thundered through central Dublin over Easter weekend, waving a sea of tricolour flags, Ireland’s anti-immigration movement staked a bold claim. The legacy of the Easter Rising martyrs – who underwrote with their lives the founding of the Irish state – was theirs. ‘We will be a true following on from our forefathers in 1916 who had a workers’ revolution,’ declared Malachy Steenson, a Dublin councillor and nationalist leader.  This fusion of grassroots nationalism and potent revolutionary symbols powered the largest demonstration yet. A genie was out of the bottle, and the establishment took notice.

As Irish households glowed with lights and festive cheer ahead of Christmas day, the Taoiseach of Ireland made time for a cordial call with Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority. Simon Harris assured Abbas that the plight of Gazans weighed heavily on Irish minds, reaffirming his country’s 'unbreakable’ support.  ‘Ireland once again calls for a lasting ceasefire in Gaza,’ read a statement from Harris’s office. ‘Despite the humanitarian catastrophe and unconscionable loss of life in 2024, peace fuelled by a two-state solution must be the goal of the world community in 2025.’ No doubt, Harris saw the conversation as a diplomatic win.

‘When in doubt, blame Britain’ has, since Brexit, become something of an iron law of Irish politics. So it came as no surprise yesterday to see Michael Martin, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, attribute Ireland’s mounting migration crisis to Britain’s Rwanda scheme. There’s an obvious appeal for the Irish government to blame the Rwanda scheme, when it is under fire over its poorly handled migration policy ‘It is having a real impact on Ireland now in terms of people being fearful in the UK,’ Mr Martin said, adding: ‘maybe that's the impact it was designed to have.’ Mr Martin claims that migrants are fleeing to Ireland from the UK to avoid being deported to Rwanda. This, in turn, is clogging up Ireland’s immigration system.

Leo Varadkar's abrupt resignation today left even his closest allies perplexed. ‘I was very surprised, I didn’t expect it at all’, said his deputy, Micheal Martin, after the announcement. Varadkar said he's stepping down for reasons that were ‘both personal and political’, to give Fine Gael the best chance of victory. So what made him walk? Varadkar’s government rebuffed people’s concerns with platitudes Varadkar may have thought he was continuing a decades-long progressive trend where liberal Irish governments had the wind at their backs. Divorce and same-sex marriage were legalised after successful referendums, and most recently, a ban on abortions was repealed. Ireland was shedding the small-c conservative, Roman Catholic principles on which it was founded.