ONE thing every Irish person should definitely do when voting in the forthcoming British election is forget about Ireland.
This is not about Ireland and not about Britain’s relationship with Ireland in any substantial way. This is about your life in Britain. Ireland takes a back seat.
There will be some difference in attitude to the North depending on who is in power in Downing Street.
The fact that the North is now at something of a political standstill and David Cameron has been continuously disengaged from the area is not a coincidence.
But the situation in the North will primarily be resolved internally.
This election is not about that. This is about your everyday life in Britain. About your housing and your health and your education. Your society.
MAKING YOUR MIND UP
How will you make up your mind? What will swing your vote? Will it be the debates? Will it be the media? The front-page of the Sun?
Will it be that Ed Milliband has two kitchens in his North London home or that he ‘stabbed his brother in the back’ as it was put by a member of the audience on BBC Three's Free Speech programme last month.
Or will it be that David Cameron will keep Trident, Britain's nuclear weapons programme, and is proven Prime Ministerial material?
Will it be what the leaders and their parties believe in or will it be a sort of X-Factor personality vote where actual political philosophy plays second fiddle?
They say that one of the enduring problems in the North of Ireland is that the two communities are schooled apart and therefore estranged from each other from their earliest years, which in turn fuels bigotry and age-old hatreds.
When it comes to the main party leaders one thing they all have in common as their formative experience of British society is their schooldays.
Out of the main leaders, Ed Miliband of the Labour party and Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP went to schools much like the ones 93 per cent of the British population went to – sharing their young years with people who make up most of the electorate.
By contrast, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage, all went to private schools where the annual fee was over £30,000 - a formative experience that is shared by just seven per cent of the population, at best.
COMMERCE OVER COMMUNITY
Fairness, equality, social decency and justice no longer seem to be a part of a British political narrative that is now dominated by commerce, the market and self over community.
In this way the parties will debate not what the Government should prioritise tax spending on but on reducing tax instead.
It no longer seems to be a case of pay tax and with that tax we as a society provide decent housing and parks and hospitals and schools. It’s now just a case of we will tax you as little as possible. Just look at any of the manifestos and you'll see that.
So never mind if the health service falls apart and your kids don’t get a decent education and have nowhere to play. As long as you can buy a new pair of jeans, that’s ok.
That is certainly the political narrative here in Ireland and seems to be in much of the western democracies.
I’m still struck by the lack of any civic idea here in Ireland, in a Republic historically dominated by two conservative parties and culminating in a 16-year boom, which focused entirely on personal wealth at the expense of a social one.
No services, be it education, health or civic amenities, were greatly improved during the Celtic Tiger. People were just given more money. Consequently, the only lasting legacy has been horrendous personal debt.
No new parks, no new public swimming pools and no great amenities we could at least save from the wreckage of the crash.
WHO CARES ABOUT HEALTHCARE?
Britain has a different history in that it does have a history of civic and social amenities and facilities. I remember clearly the swimming pools and city parks of my childhood.
It also has a different history in that it has the NHS.
How big a part in how you vote is the state of the NHS going to play?
In the swirl of personal advancement and the free market invasion of every aspect of British life is it still important to you that the NHS and the principle of free health care be maintained?
Are you one of those seven out of 10 people who believe the NHS is less safe in the hands of the Conservatives?
The NHS runs counter to the very core of Conservative political thinking.
Free health care at the point of need, is an anathema to a political philosophy that believes you can and should purchase everything in the marketplace - from a new pair of shoes to a car to a life-saving operation.
The very setting up of the service was voted against by the Conservative opposition no less than 23 times - in 1948 the Tory opposition fought to prevent Labour getting the establishment of the NHS through Parliament.
That is why, however much they now feel beholden to say the right things about it, the Tories always struggle with the health service.
IMMIGRATION - A DISTANT MEMORY FOR THE IRISH
In my time in Britain I worked in the NHS, all over Britain, for nearly 10 years. In my experience the core of the NHS was staffed by the best of what constituted British society.
By Irish and West Indians and Asians and Brummies and Londoners and Mancunians and all of the above mixed in together.
It was, if you like, the best of British in the best thing about Britain.
I don’t know what Nigel Farage would have made of it if, irrespective of his views or his wealth or his privileged background, he was in need of care and found himself being lifted by Irish hands and soothed by a West Indian voice and mended by Asian expertise.
Would Nigel have bemoaned how terribly unBritish the whole experience was?
Which brings me unavoidably to a reader poll running on The Irish Post’s website and the revelation that 15.15 per cent of those asked said they would vote for UKIP.
Really? Do you now feel so safe in your immigrant status that you are happy to pass the label of undesirable outsiders on to someone else? Is memory that short and history that unimportant?
What is most heartening in the poll though is that the combined vote for Labour, Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru is just under 60 per cent.
That means that the vote of the Irish in Britain for progressive, left-wing, rejection of bigotry and selfishness politics, is the huge majority.
That is deeply heartening. Indeed, with Sinn Féin and assorted progressive parties also on the rise here in Ireland could it really be that there might be a new political dawn on both sides of the Irish Sea?
When I lived in Britain I only ever voted Labour, thought them the only natural home for the son of Irish immigrants.
I left before the Blair years really took hold and so never experienced the dislocation of a natural Tory being a Labour Prime Minister, so I’m not sure if I was still there how I would now feel.
I’d vote Labour to keep out a Tory or a UKIP, for sure, vote for a Green if I thought they would get in and in all honesty, if I was in Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield or London, might find myself wishing on the day that I could vote for the SNP.
David Cameron is right about one thing, it is the most important election for a generation. Be careful what you do.
