Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Is it enough to come first in an election? In the Netherlands, you hear that centrist Rob Jetten won big and Geert Wilders’ far right lost a lot — even though either one could still turn out to be No. 1 when all the votes are counted. Eva Hartog breaks down the results of the Dutch election with host Sarah Wheaton, and Max Griera reflects on what Frans Timmermans’ defeat means for social democrats all over Europe. Then, our Berlaymont Who’s Who series is back, with an introduction to Vice President of the European Commission Roxana Mînzatu of Romania. Finally, Shawn Pogatchnik takes us through last week’s Irish presidential election, which was, in contrast to the Dutch vote, a bright spot for the political left.

Eoin Drea is senior research officer at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies. Catherine Connolly’s election as Ireland’s next president highlights just how delusional the country has become when it comes to security. It should also serve as a wake-up call for other EU members in terms of the country’s unreliability on defense issues. Opposing Germany’s rearmament on the basis that it represents a “revitalization” of its “military industrial base” isn’t even Connolly’s most extreme position. To her, Berlin’s current spending plans are reminiscent of the military build-up in the 1930s. She’s critical of NATO, voted no to the Lisbon and Nice treaties in Irish referenda and has called Hamas “part of the fabric of the Palestinian people.” Yet, she romped home with nearly 65 percent of the vote. That’s because Connolly’s views aren’t fringe or some populist narrative — they actually represent mainstream political sentiment on the Emerald Isle. As the EU starts focusing on rearmament, Ireland’s traveling in the exact opposite direction. Even with war raging in Ukraine, America’s growing unpredictability and Russia probing undersea infrastructure in Irish waters, Dublin’s political culture remains mired in myths of neutrality and moral exceptionalism — and it is refusing to budge. This approach is no longer credible in Brussels. And it’s why only a defense union with Britain can save Ireland now. Despite bumper budget surpluses underpinned by surging receipts from U.S. tech and pharma companies, Ireland is refusing to spend more on its armed forces. The country’s defense spending has barely risen above inflation since 2022. It’s capital budget for defense stands at a paltry €300 million for 2026 — and this is in an EU country with no fighter jets, navy ships with sporadically working guns and only enough sailors to send a single vessel on patrol per day. Dublin has demonstrably failed to seize the geopolitical moment, and is instead being scarily naïve. And given the circumstances, only a formal bilateral agreement with the U.K. can deliver the territorial security that Ireland — and the EU’s western borders — desperately needs. This is realpolitik, not Celtic sentimentality. The case for a defense union rests on two inconvenient but undeniable truths. First, geography — not history — is destiny. Ireland and Britain share an island archipelago, as well as a free travel area. Despite Brexit, there remains no physical border between Southern and Northern Ireland. And the country has long prioritized maintaining its common travel zone with Britain over potentially joining the EU’s Schengen area. The current reality is that British jets already respond to threats in Irish airspace with the Irish government’s approval, and it’s the British Navy that hunts Russian threats in Irish waters. But Irish sovereignty would be better protected through structured partnership — one along the lines of the Belgian and Dutch naval forces — than through the kind of cheapskate dependence that currently exists. Second, the U.K. has what Ireland simply refuses to provide: fighters, frigates, satellites, cyber infrastructure and institutional depth. France and Germany lack both proximity and capability to consistently patrol the Irish Sea and North Atlantic. Continental European forces can’t scramble from nearby airfields or deploy from Ireland-adjacent ports on short notice. Catherine Connolly romped home with nearly 65 percent of the vote. | Niall Carson/PA Images via Getty Images The framework I’m talking about is rather simple: Joint Anglo-Irish responsibility for air policing and maritime surveillance in Irish zones, with Irish participation in joint command, training and procurement mechanisms. Ireland would also invest in complementary capabilities like patrol vessels, intelligence, cyber defense and infrastructure protection. And no Ireland-based British bases would be necessary; forward deployment and joint operation centers would suffice. Speaking more broadly, a formal Anglo-Irish agreement would also embed Britain in EU defense policy. A key objective in Brussels, considering the ongoing war in Ukraine and the uncertainty over future U.S. support. Such a union would intertwine the security objectives of London, Washington and the EU, and could also be narrowly tailored to placate the perennially disgruntled French. No foreign adventures. No NATO. Just credible security capabilities in Irish waters and skies. Ireland has long prided itself on being one of Europe’s most globalized economies. It hosts U.S. tech and pharma giants, and its economy is fueled by their corporate taxes. Dublin depends on free trade and stable institutions. Yet, the same political class celebrating such openness to global capital demands insularity when it comes to security. The cognitive dissonance is staggering. How can one host Apple, Google, and Pfizer while playing neutral on defense? Of course, opposition will undoubtedly come from the “1916 Brigade,” who worship neutrality as doctrine rather than policy, and see any British security cooperation as treasonable. But this position is neither principled nor rational. The 1916 Brigade dreams of Western prosperity without Western security obligations — that is not neutrality. It is nativism wrapped in nationalist mythology. Austria — the neutrality model some invoke — spends about three times Ireland’s defense percentage and maintains real military capability. Simply put, Ireland’s military helplessness has been subsidized by British and NATO-member taxpayers for far too long. It’s time for the country to focus on the present, not the past.

DUBLIN — Independent socialist Catherine Connolly swept to a landslide victory Saturday to become Ireland’s next president, dealing a record-breaking rebuke to the two center-ground parties of government. Jubilant supporters of the 68-year-old Connolly, a lawmaker from the western city of Galway, embraced and kissed her as final results from Friday’s election were announced at the Dublin Castle count center. In her victory speech, Connolly struck an immediate note of unity. She stood side by side with Ireland’s government leaders — and pledged to challenge the far right and its anti-immigrant agenda. “Together we can shape a new republic that values everybody, that values and champions diversity … and the new people that have come to our country,” she said. “I will be an inclusive president for all of you.” Connolly won a record 63.4 percent of valid votes. Heather Humphreys of the government coalition party Fine Gael finished a distant second with 29.5 percent. Connolly’s triumph shattered the previous record set in 1959 when Eamon de Valera, the towering figure of 20th-century Irish politics, won his first term as president with 56.3 percent support. On Nov. 11, Connolly will succeed her fellow Galway socialist Michael D. Higgins, Ireland’s president since 2011, who was constitutionally barred from seeking a third seven-year term. Finishing in third and last place Saturday was Jim Gavin of the largest government party, Fianna Fáil, who won barely 7 percent of votes. Gavin, a political novice hand-picked by Prime Minister Micheál Martin, remained on the official ballot despite quitting the race midway after admitting he had pocketed €3,300 in excess rent from a tenant. Connolly won, in no small part, thanks to backing from Ireland’s five left-wing parties, most crucially Sinn Féin. All stood aside to give her a clean run on an anti-government platform, a political first for the normally fractious left. While the left celebrated from Dublin Castle to Galway, Ireland’s disgruntled conservatives left their own mark on the election — by vandalizing their ballots in unprecedented numbers. More than 200,000 ballots — or about one of every eight cast — had to be discarded. Many voters had written in the names of their own invalid choices, or drawn disparaging X marks across all three candidates. Others defaced their ballots, often with anti-immigrant messages expressed in nativist or racist terms. Their alienation reflects how the government parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, since the 1990s have largely ditched their previous bonds with Catholic conservatism and have become, like Connolly and the wider left, socially progressive and welcoming to immigrants. A Catholic conservative, Maria Steen, narrowly failed to qualify for the ballot, falling two short of the required backing from 20 lawmakers. Mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor, who often denounces immigrants in his social media posts, tapped out after attracting virtually no official support. Kevin Cunningham, managing director of the polling firm Ireland Thinks, called the volume of spoiled votes “enormous.” He found that more than two-thirds of protesting voters had expressed support for Steen. The final week of campaigning coincided with one of the biggest flare-ups of racist sentiment since downtown Dublin was wracked by rioting in November 2023. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, crowds of up to 2,000 people clashed with riot police protecting Citywest, a hotel and conference center southwest of Dublin that has been turned into the state’s biggest shelter for asylum seekers. That area registered one of the highest rates of spoiled ballots. And on Friday, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, who had opted not to seek the presidency herself, was subjected to vulgar threats from an anti-immigration activist as she canvassed in her central Dublin constituency for Connolly. That man, who posted video footage of his verbal assault on McDonald and other Sinn Féin canvassers, was arrested Saturday. Humphreys — who had stepped into the breach when Fine Gael’s original candidate, former European Commissioner Mairead McGuinness, quit the race citing health problems — conceded defeat hours before the official result. Humphreys, too, expressed worries about the rising level of social media-driven harassment. Humphreys, a member of the Republic of Ireland’s tiny Protestant minority, said she hadn’t regretted running despite suffering a barrage of online insults belittling her family’s background. She said that vitriol had demonstrated that her country wasn’t yet ready to reconcile, and potentially unite as Irish nationalists want, with Protestants in the neighboring U.K. territory of Northern Ireland. “My family and I were subject to some absolutely awful sectarian abuse. As a country, I thought we had moved on from that,” Humphreys said. “If we’re ever to have a united Ireland, we have to respect all traditions.”

DUBLIN — Conor McGregor has quit without landing a blow in his doomed bid to become Ireland’s next president. The Dublin-born mixed martial arts fighter, who now spends much of his online time decrying immigration, long had vowed to win a place on the ballot for the Oct. 24 election. To become eligible, McGregor required official nominations from at least four of Ireland’s 31 councils. Yet, after months of huffing and puffing online, he didn’t even attempt to clear that low bar. Instead, he quit in an online missive Monday to avoid suffering a likely technical knockout at the hands of Dublin City Council. The council had been due to convene within hours to hear McGregor’s in-person appeal for their support. He had secured backing from only a few anti-immigration councilors, while dozens had pledged to reject him. The fighter had secured less, if any, support from other councils. Reflecting the lack of real-world seriousness of his campaign, McGregor didn’t even travel to Dublin and issued his submission statement from the United States. McGregor blamed “the straitjacket of an outdated Constitution” for his failure to get on the ballot. He didn’t mention the 2024 court judgment finding him civilly liable for raping a Dublin woman, nor his more recent failed effort to overturn that ruling using two withdrawn witnesses now being investigated for alleged perjury. Ireland’s 1937 constitution does require presidential candidates to secure nominations either from four councils or 20 members of the Oireachtas, Ireland’s two-chamber parliament. McGregor failed to win even a single nomination from Ireland’s 234 national lawmakers. However, McGregor’s bid for the Irish presidency — during which he won a visit to meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House and was given copious long-distance support from X owner Elon Musk — likewise failed to garner any significant backing from the Irish public. The latest opinion poll, published Sunday in the Business Post, dumped McGregor into the humiliating “others” category with less than 2 percent support. It was an inglorious end for a candidate who, only a few days beforehand, claimed that “the great indigenous of Ireland” would be “swarmed” by foreigners unless he was elected president — a largely ceremonial post with no say in setting government policy. “I do not say it lightly nor do I say it braggadociously,” he wrote then. McGregor’s withdrawal — following similarly expected exits by Riverdance star Michael Flatley and disgraced ex-Prime Minister Bertie Ahern — leaves Ireland’s presidential election a three-horse race between Heather Humphreys of the governing Fine Gael party, the independent socialist Catherine Connolly and Jim Gavin of the other major government party, Fianna Fáil. But the field may grow more crowded ahead of the Sept. 24 cutoff for nominations. Several independent candidates are still seeking council nominations. A Catholic social conservative, anti-abortion campaigner Maria Steen, is also still trying to cobble together 20 votes from parliamentarians. And the main opposition Sinn Féin party is set to decide Saturday whether to run its own candidate or throw its weight behind Connolly.

DUBLIN — Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has ruled out running for Ireland’s presidency — and her Irish republican party might opt not to run a candidate at all. McDonald’s decision, announced Monday after months of speculation, could set the scene for Sinn Féin to throw its support behind the candidacy of independent socialist Catherine Connolly. She is one of only two confirmed candidates in the race to become Ireland’s next head of state in the Oct. 24 election. But some within the once-militant party are hoping, instead, for a surprise return of its former leader, Gerry Adams, who retired from politics in 2018 to be replaced by his hand-picked successor, McDonald. Sinn Féin leaders are meeting Monday in the Dublin suburb of Dún Laoghaire to discuss, behind closed doors, who — if anyone — should be their candidate. Ahead of that meeting, McDonald told RTÉ radio it wouldn’t be her — and stressed the party wouldn’t announce its decision until a final Sept. 20 meeting, four days before the nomination period closes. The 56-year-old McDonald said she must stay focused, as opposition leader in the Dáil Éireann parliament, on winning Ireland’s next general election. This may not happen until 2029. According to an opinion poll of the party’s own members, 17 percent had hoped to see McDonald, a Dubliner, run for president. The next most popular options were the 76-year-old Adams, the Belfast native who led Sinn Féin for 35 years; First Minister Michelle O’Neill, who leads the Northern Ireland government now; and McDonald’s deputy leader in the Dáil, Pearse Doherty, who hails from the republic’s northernmost county of Donegal. Sinn Féin finished a narrow third in last November’s election, leaving the two centrist establishment parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, in coalition government together. While McDonald said she didn’t want to prejudge the outcome of Sinn Féin’s internal debate, she pointedly praised Connolly for her strong anti-Israel and pro-Gaza views and her most recent comments, delivered in Belfast, on uniting Ireland. Like Connolly, Sinn Féin is ardently pro-Palestinian.

DUBLIN — Ireland will elect a new president on Oct. 24, the government has confirmed, as a sprawling field of potential candidates scrambles to secure a spot on the ballot. For now, independent socialist lawmaker Catherine Connolly and Heather Humphreys from the centrist government party Fine Gael are the only two confirmed candidates to become Ireland’s next head of state. Humphreys, a former government minister, stepped in quickly following her party’s surprise loss of its expected candidate, EU luminary Mairead McGuinness. But the field could quickly become crowded. Candidates have two potential routes to get their name on the ballot paper: by winning support from at least 20 national lawmakers or from at least four of the country’s 31 local councils. Lawmakers from the other major government party, Fianna Fáil, will be asked to choose next week between two candidates: veteran lawmaker Billy Kelleher or Dublin’s former Gaelic football manager Jim Gavin. Prime Minister Micheál Martin, the Fianna Fáil chief, is publicly backing Gavin, a political newcomer who led Dublin to a record five straight All-Ireland championships. But backbenchers are grumbling that Kelleher — a Cork lawmaker from 1997 to 2019 and, since then, an MEP — is more deserving. They’ll decide in a secret ballot set for Tuesday night. The biggest unknown is whether Sinn Féin, the main opposition party, will run a candidate or back Connolly, who shares Sinn Féin’s focus on the Palestinian cause. Sinn Féin has already dismissed suggestions it could back another potential candidate, singer and human rights activist Bob Geldof. Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, the party chief since 2018, hasn’t ruled out running. The party’s lawmakers are set to meet behind closed doors on Sept. 20 to decide, just four days before the deadline for nominations. Others trying to be listed on the ballot paper stand little to no chance of winning sufficient support from members of Dáil Éireann, Ireland’s two-chamber parliament. Instead they would need to win an official endorsement from at least four city or county councils, a lower bar for political outsiders. The hopefuls already lobbying councillors include mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor, former Riverdance star Michael Flatley, pharma entrepreneur Gareth Sheridan, retired weather forecaster Joanna Donnelly, anti-abortion campaigner Maria Steen, immigration critic Nick Delehanty and former Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, who has been stuck in political purgatory ever since his murky personal finances were exposed by a public tribunal in 2008. Given the lack of a confirmed field, Irish media organizations have yet to conduct any detailed polling on the likely outcome. But Ireland’s bookmakers are already taking bets and list the ex-football manager, Gavin, as the early favorite, followed by Fine Gael’s Humphreys. Connolly and McDonald are rated as distant 10-to-1 outsiders, though the Sinn Féin leader’s odds would surely narrow should she choose to run.

BALLYMENA, Northern Ireland — Elena no longer walks up her own road to do the shopping in her adopted hometown of Ballymena. She’s afraid even to go out her front door, past neighbors’ homes with newly shattered windows and fire-blackened brickwork. Since masked men and youths started laying nightly siege to her small residential street in a hunt for foreign faces, the Romanian immigrant has kept her lights off after dark — and a fire extinguisher and a packed suitcase by her front door. “I don’t know how much longer I can live here. Which is what they want, to make me run away,” Elena, a 32-year-old social worker, told POLITICO in her living room with boarded-up windows on Ballymena’s Clonavon Terrace. Nearby, homes for immigrants from Romania, Bulgaria and the Philippines have already been attacked and now lie empty. At least 14 immigrant families have fled their homes, mostly from Ballymena, and received emergency accommodation elsewhere, according to Northern Ireland’s public housing agency. More than 60 police officers have suffered injuries in street skirmishes with rioters. Such racism-fueled intimidation and violence has become a recurring problem in Northern Ireland, the least ethnically diverse corner of the United Kingdom, where a three-decade conflict between British unionists and Irish nationalists known as “The Troubles” came to a negotiated end a quarter-century ago. Since then, immigration from outside Britain or Ireland has grown from virtually nothing to represent around 6.5 percent of the population. Newcomers from Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa have found housing with the least difficulty in the poorest quarters of the British unionist community, where outlawed paramilitary gangs spent decades killing Catholics in a bid to keep “outsiders” from taking root in their Union Jack-marked turf. Those so-called loyalist groups, principally the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), killed hundreds of Catholic civilians before calling a joint 1994 cease-fire. But they retain a militant and xenophobic hold today over many working-class Protestant communities, where the next generation of alienated youth sporadically lashes out at new targets, most notably in Brexit-related turmoil in 2021 and against immigrants last summer. WHAT CANNOT BE TOLERATED This cycle resumed Monday, when two 14-year-old boys appeared in court to be charged with the attempted oral rape of a Ballymena girl. Both boys, speaking with help from a Romanian interpreter, denied the charges. That evening, hundreds of protesters rallied at a nearby parking lot, in the words of the girl’s father, “to show our anger at what cannot and will not be tolerated in this town.” While the family and others called for the protest to be peaceful, scores of men and youths leaving the rally started attacking nearby homes identified with immigrants. Many of the attackers donned masks to make it harder for police video footage to identify them. Northern Ireland’s overstretched police force spent the past four nights bottling up those rioters in Ballymena, but immigrants and police came under attack in several other staunchly unionist towns and at least three districts in Belfast, the capital. As happened during last summer’s racist attacks, Northern Ireland police chief Jon Boutcher is seeking reinforcements from other U.K. police forces. About 80 officers from Police Scotland have already arrived and will hit the streets this weekend. Leaders of Northern Ireland’s cross-community government — the crisis-prone cornerstone of the region’s 1998 peace accord — sought Friday to project an air of unity as they held a previously scheduled summit with the Irish government and other regional U.K. administrations. But behind the scenes, tensions are rising again between the principal power-sharing parties, Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a potentially volatile combination of extremes. First Minister Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Féin repeated her call for one of her DUP colleagues, Communities Minister Gordon Lyons, to resign over his social media posts Wednesday identifying an emergency shelter for immigrants fleeing Ballymena — a sports center in Lyons’ own constituency. A 100-strong masked mob soon attacked the center, terrifying those inside but injuring nobody. “Four nights in a row, what we’ve seen on our streets is totally unacceptable. I hope that we all stand strong in facing it down and saying no to racism in our society,” O’Neill said. But back in Ballymena, a traditional DUP stronghold, a Facebook-based community group is urging locals to register their properties as occupied by natives — and therefore not targets for the vandals. Elena, who didn’t want her last name used because she doesn’t want to be identifiable on social media, told POLITICO she wants to put a Union Jack on her door in hopes of protecting herself this weekend. A native-born neighbor is trying to source one for her. “I’m a home carer. I probably look after some of the grandparents, or aunts or uncles, of these hoods going around smashing up people’s homes,” she said. “I shouldn’t have to wrap myself in a flag to live here.”

DUBLIN — Former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has won a €100,000 libel judgment against the BBC after a Dublin jury found that the broadcaster had falsely connected him to a 2006 Irish Republican Army killing. Friday’s ruling marked the latest legal victory for Adams, 76, who led Sinn Féin from 1983 to 2018. He has become the most senior in a long list of Sinn Féin figures to pursue journalists with the aid of Ireland’s unusually plaintiff-friendly libel laws. These commonly place the burden of proof on the defendant — and that can prove an impossibly high bar when reporting on reputed chieftains of the Provisional IRA. That outlawed group killed nearly 1,800 people before calling a 1997 cease-fire in the neighboring British territory of Northern Ireland. Flanked by his legal team outside Dublin’s Four Courts, Adams said he had filed his lawsuit to “put manners on the British Broadcasting Corporation.” Adams again denied any involvement in the slaying of Denis Donaldson. Donaldson, a Provisional IRA veteran, had been appointed Sinn Féin’s senior office administrator at the Stormont Parliamentary Building in Belfast. He was killed with a point-blank shotgun blast months after admitting — at a 2005 press conference alongside an ashen-faced Adams — that he had served as a British intelligence agent operating secretly within Sinn Féin-IRA circles for more than a decade. As Adams himself has noted in the past, any admission of “informing” typically results in an IRA death sentence. In its 2016 documentary on the Donaldson slaying, BBC Northern Ireland’s Spotlight program interviewed a former IRA and Sinn Féin member, identified only as “Martin,” who claimed that Adams had final sign-off on the killing. Speaking outside the courthouse, Adam Smyth, director of BBC Northern Ireland, said the jury’s award for Adams would have a “profound” effect on journalists vulnerable to the Republic of Ireland’s libel laws. “If the BBC’s case cannot be won under existing Irish defamation law, it’s hard to see how anyone’s could,” Smyth said. For decades, Adams has been identified in every credible history of the Irish republican movement as a Provisional IRA commander since at least 1972, when British authorities freed him from prison to participate in the Provisionals’ first face-to-face truce talks with U.K. government ministers in London. The Irish government, citing its own security services, says Adams stepped down from the IRA’s ruling “army council” only in 2005 when the group formally renounced violence and disarmed. Yet Adams has insisted he was never in the IRA — a position repeated at the end of each episode of Disney’s recent acclaimed series “Say Nothing” that depicted Adams as, indeed, a key IRA figure involved in orchestrating Belfast bloodshed from the early 1970s onward. That TV show was based on a book about the IRA’s 1972 abduction, execution and secret burial of a Belfast mother of 10. Adams was arrested in 2014 over claims he oversaw the IRA unit responsible but was released without charge. Since then, Adams has successfully sued the British government to quash the only criminal convictions in his record — for trying to escape from prison in 1973 and 1974 while being interned without trial as an IRA suspect. This time, after a three-week trial, the 11-member jury ruled that the BBC’s Spotlight program and a follow-up online article had damaged Adams’ reputation by contending that he had sanctioned Donaldson’s killing. Jurors rejected the BBC’s defense that reporting the allegations against Adams was “fair, reasonable and in the public interest.”

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music The EU-Israel relationship is at a tipping point.  This week on EU Confidential, host Sarah Wheaton breaks down how EU leaders are calling for scrutiny of a long-standing trade agreement between Brussels and Israel, as Gaza faces famine amid an ongoing Israeli military offensive. Rym Momtaz, editor-in-chief of the Strategic Europe blog at Carnegie Europe and an expert on European and Middle Eastern politics, joins to explain what’s driving the shift — and whether it could lead to real consequences. Later, former Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar drops into the studio to strategize on how to handle Trump 2.0, the rise of “identity politics” globally and the EU-U.K. rapprochement.  

DUBLIN — The speaker of Ireland’s parliament survived an unprecedented vote of confidence Tuesday following weeks of bitter high-decibel confrontations that have brought legislative work to a standstill. Verona Murphy, who in December became the first woman to be elected as Ceann Comhairle — Irish for the speaker’s post — kept her job by a margin of 96 votes to 71. It was the first time since Ireland’s independence from Britain more than a century ago that the speaker, which is officially a neutral post, has faced such a direct challenge. Both government parties voted for Murphy while almost the entire opposition called for her to go. Opening the three-hour debate, Prime Minister Micheál Martin said Ireland couldn’t afford the squabbling in the Dáil Éireann chamber at a time when incoming U.S. tariffs on EU goods imperil Ireland’s export-driven economy. “Our country is facing enormous threats,” Martin said, referencing the tariffs expected to be announced Wednesday by U.S. President Donald Trump. “We simply do not have time to waste on cynical strategies of aggression and disruption.” Led by the main opposition Sinn Féin, several parties on the left of Irish politics called for Murphy’s head following last week’s struggle to agree new rules determining who gets to ask Martin questions. Angering the opposition, which normally dominates question periods, a new slot has been created for a small group of pro-government independent lawmakers led by one of the parliament’s most scandal-tainted politicians, Michael Lowry. Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald emphasized that her party wanted Murphy to lose the speaker’s post specifically because Lowry had been instrumental in getting her the job. (Murphy was among the independent lawmakers who agreed to support Martin’s government, giving it a working majority.) McDonald said the speaker had an intolerable pro-Lowry bias.  “The Ceann Comhairle is not fair, is not impartial, is not independent and cannot stay,” the Sinn Féin leader said of Murphy. Led by the main opposition Sinn Féin, several parties on the left of Irish politics called for Verona Murphy’s head. | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images Murphy didn’t speak in her own defense and left the speaker’s chair soon after the debate on her future began. The deputy speaker, John McGuinness, took her place. To date the dispute has prevented the government from forming parliamentary committees tasked with scrutinizing, amending and advancing legislative bills. The next flash point will likely be whether Lowry or other pro-government independents are given committee chairs normally awarded to opposition lawmakers.