What a monumental week it has been in European and UK politics. But we will come back to that. Because, violence against women has been in the news in Ireland these past few weeks, in a way that is deeply upsetting – and requires an immediate, concerted response from all of us.

There are four recent instances which stand out.

• The first occurred at the end of the trial of 22-year-old serving Irish soldier, Cathal Crotty, for a brutal assault on 24 year-old Natasha O’Brien, in Limerick city, on 29 May 2022. Natasha had been knocked unconscious in the attack. But far from feeling guilt or remorse, Crotty boasted about what he had done on Snapchat. “Two to put her down,” he said. “Two to put her out.”

To most people, that level of cold-bloodedness in any human being will seem utterly mind-boggling. How could any man attack a woman so viciously in the first place? And then try to claim some twisted kind of hero-status afterwards? Is it possible that some of those who read his Snapchat message were not sickened by it, that they ‘liked’ it? Or conversely, did none of them think of going straight to the Gardaí, with evidence of an assault?

Anyone with a conscience has to ask: what confluence of forces, ideologies and personality characteristics produces an individual like this? And what can we do to prevent others developing in the same pernicious way?

These are urgent questions. But it was the sentence, by the now retired judge Tom O’Donnell, which provoked an immediate surge of national outrage. It is worth saying that O’Donnell had always been highly-regarded as a judge for his thoughtfulness and compassion. And one aspect of that involves an awareness that putting people found guilty of a crime behind bars is often not the best course of action. But this was not a case in which someone was accused of stealing a TV or collecting social welfare benefits to which they were not entitled.

Cathal Crotty had shown himself to be an extremely dangerous man. He was lucky that Natasha O’Brien’s head did not hit the pavement hard, when she went ‘down’. He hit her savagely four times. He knocked her unconscious. He might have killed her. It’s likely that he would attack someone again – and he might not be so lucky next time. Without acknowledgement of his crime, remorse and carefully managed rehabilitation, he cannot be trusted to walk the streets of Limerick or anywhere else.

In the context, the decision to impose a three year sentence, and then to suspend it in its entirety, was clearly wrong. Natasha O’Brien was strong and brave enough to speak out to that effect. Justice had not been served, she said. It was impossible to find anyone who’d endorse the exceptional leniency involved. The Director of Public Prosecutions has now appealed the sentence, and the case will come before the courts again. We may well see a very different outcome.

SEXUAL AGGRESSION

• Jonathan ‘Johnny’ Moore was brought before the courts for the rape of Bláthnaid Raleigh, in July 2019. He denied the charges. The details of the attack carried out on Bláthnaid were utterly appalling and sadistic. Moran locked the door of the shed they were in so that she could not escape. He proceeded to rape her brutally, using plastic bottles. Even reading about it was desperately harrowing – how could anyone do this? So it is impossible to even begin to imagine how horrific and physically devastating it was for the innocent young woman who was attacked in such an unconscionable, barbarous way?

Bláthnaid Raleigh showed immense bravery in dropping her anonymity and giving evidence openly in court. Moran insisted on his innocence – and might have got away with it were it not for the kindness of a couple of strangers who came across Bláthnaid in an extremely distressed state on the night and took her to the Garda station; and for the very speedy and effective response of the Gardaí on duty at the time, who located the hut and preserved the forensic evidence that inescapably confirmed Moran’s guilt.

He was sentenced to nine years in jail, with one year suspended. There was no outcry.

• A taxi driver, Raymond Shorten, was found guilty last month of raping two women – both of whom had more than usual to drink – in his taxi on separate nights. He claimed the sex was consensual, but the complaints were made completely independently of one another – a significant factor in confirming his guilt for the jury. Now, it has emerged that Shorten had – entirely separately again – been accused of raping a girl of seven, in 2012 and of sexually assaulting her. There were three incidents involved. He was convicted this week.

I know that you can’t locate a monster until he does something monstrous. But that begs the question: how many more of them are out there, lurking in the shadows?

Raymond Shorten

• Finally, three football coaches have been stood down by the FAI, while they are being investigated by the Gardaí for the sexual exploitation of young women footballers, Irish internationals among them. We have seen a lot of this in sports organisations over the years, with the abuse of rising teenage stars, female and male, in swimming standing out as one of the darkest ever moments in Irish sporting history. Now, we know that men in positions of power and trust in football were preying on teenagers too.

It is one more example of the sickening abuse of power by men, with women as victims. Right now, we can only hope that justice will be done, and that the women who were used and abused will find the process of naming those who exploited them so callously helpful and healing.

But the deeper questions remain: what can we do to effectively protect women from violence and abuse? And, on the flip side, how can we address the problem of male violence and the anger, temper, misogyny, sexual aggression, glorification of violence, blindness to the damage and the hurt caused – and all of the other elements in the cocktail of malign personal characteristics and societal distortions that lead to, trigger or are used to excuse completely unacceptable violence of this kind?

FASCIST SCORPION

On a more positive note, it feels very good right now to see the far right being comprehensively defeated in both the UK and France.

In the UK, we knew that Labour were a racing certainty to win a majority. The only issue was how big the potential landslide might be, with the performance of Nigel Farage’s Reform versus the Tories providing a niggling backdrop.

In France, however, there was a palpable fear that the fascists of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally might garner the most seats in the French National Assembly, and that enough less extremist right-wing members of parliament might slide across to the other side to create a majority – led by Le Pen and, in parliament, by her aspirant Prime Minister, Jordan Bardella.

What we saw in response to that stomach-turning possibility was an impressive galvanisation of left-wing parties, who put old divisions aside and hammered together a manifesto around which they could unite. French intellectuals, writers, historians and footballers alike appealed to the French people not to abandon the values of the Republic, of freedom, equality and solidarity.

It worked. There is no escaping the fact that France is more divided than ever since the Second World War. The old National Front – made up of anti-semites, xenophobes, racists, homophobes and people with very large chips on both shoulders – will have more seats than ever before in the National Assembly. And there is likely to be a lengthy period of sparring between the anti-Le Pen parties before a government can be formed.

The road ahead may prove difficult.

But polls in advance of the vote had carried grave tidings. After the first round – a feature of elections in France – Le Pen and her cohorts were in the ascendant. Well, not any more. Marine Le Pen had claimed, on the day before the election, that RN had an overall majority within their grasp. Now, they are not the biggest, nor even the second biggest, grouping in the National Assembly.

Marine Le Pen

This was the moment when the French people – turning out in record numbers – stuck a pin in the National Front/National Rally/National Disgrace balloon. Marine Le Pen may try to spin it differently, but she is visibly deflated. Le Pen and Bardella thought they’d be top of the pile, looking down and grinning maliciously at the serried ranks below them. Instead, they are faced with the realisation that a significant majority of the French people rallied to oppose them. The resistance is back, smashing the collaborators.

Magnifique!

I can relate to the palpable sense of relief – mingled with joy – that people in France are experiencing right now. I feel it myself. There was a possibility not just that France might be dragged into an abysmal pit of racism, aggression against minorities and isolationism, but that Europe might in turn be destabilised. To a considerable extent, the gathering stench has now been dissipated.

The sun will shine tomorrow morning, and we will rise to usher in the day feeling exhilarated.

There is doubtless a huge sense of relief in Germany too. There, the far right AfD established itself more firmly as a political force in the recent European elections, gaining 16% of the vote. Well, if narrow-minded, populist, hate-stoking, anti-immigrant parties and politicians can be shifted towards the sidings in France, surely they can be in Germany too.

It would be wrong to imagine that the lying, plotting, skulduggery and scheming of the racists and the xenophobes are done. They will be back, and there is dark money behind them that will likely redouble its efforts. But a space has been created in which the feelings of alienation among rural French people in particular can be addressed. Whatever shape it takes, the incoming government must put into effect policies and strategies that start to redress the imbalances caused by the austerity years, and the pursuit of neoliberal economic policies under Emmanuel Macron.

The sting must be extracted from the fascist scorpion. The good news is that it can be done...

VOTES ARE WASTED

In England, Scotland and Wales there is a similar buzz of excitement. After 14 years of appalling misrule, the Tory party has been crushed. It couldn’t happen to a more unappealing bunch of jokers. Some of the most noxious characters in the Conservative ranks have been defenestrated unceremoniously by the British people: Prime Minister for a day Liz Truss; the ridiculous Jacob Rees-Mogg; defence secretary Grant Shapps; would-be leadership contender and leader of the commons (no more!) Penny Mordaunt; education secretary Gillian Keegan; culture secretary Lucy Frazer – and so on. And on!

In all, eight members of cabinet and four senior Ministers who attend(ed) Cabinet, have been ousted. That makes twelve angry men (and women).

The election was a disaster for the Tories. In the new parliament, Labour will have 412 seats, the Conservative Party 121, the Liberal Democrats 72, the Scottish National Party a mere 9, Sinn Féin 7 and, among others, the DUP 5.

Those last two seat-counts reflect a minor Irish sub-plot in the UK election. The DUP monolith in Norn Iron is crumbling. Ian Paisley lost the family dynasty’s – and the party’s – seat in North Antrim to the even more reactionary Jim Allister of Traditional Unionist Voice; meanwhile, the Alliance Party’s Sorcha Eastwood swept into the seat in Lagan Valley formerly occupied by recently resigned DUP leader, Jeffrey Donaldson – who is currently before the courts on charges of rape and indecency (which he denies).

Elsewhere, bigoted old lags Sammy Wilson and Gregory Campbell saw their margins cut hugely, with Campbell lucky to survive a very strong challenge from Sinn Féin, in what is officially called ‘East Londonderry’ – that’s East Derry to you and me.

The hilarious thing is that the DUP have the same number of seats in the UK parliament as Revenge or Refuse or Recycle or Reframe, or whatever the name of the new Nigel Farage jalopy might be. Thankfully, Refuel didn’t do nearly as well in the end as the initial Exit Poll had suggested. We were warned, then, that they were likely to get 13 seats; they got five, which is still far too many. But it is a measure of the absurdity of the British first-past-the-post system that Reform (that might be it!) got over 4 million votes – 14.3% of the total – and the DUP received just 172,000 – and yet the two parties end up with exactly the same number of seats.

It’d make you cry if it didn’t make you laugh...

In fact, Refork – Refried? Reviled? – received half a million votes more than the Liberal Democrats – with the latter taking 72 seats. You might say that this is a very good reason not to introduce proportional representation in the UK. But that’s only true if you really don’t want a parliament that reflects the views of the electorate.

One of the first things Keir Starmer should do as Prime Minister is to follow through on the commitment made by Labour at their party conference to change the electoral system. Ireland knows the PR system inside out, and will be glad to advise on its implementation. He should do this – but he won’t. Because, right now, this would not seem to be in Labour’s best interests.

That should not, of course, be the point. It is about giving expression in parliament to all of the competing political perspectives that have sufficient support to warrant it. The current system means that approximately 70% of all votes are wasted. That can’t be right.

NARCISSISTIC BULLY

While the results this weekend represent a welcome pushback against the rise of the far right in two of the world’s longest established democracies, there is an even bigger challenge ahead later this year.

It is apparent by now that Joe Biden is not in any condition to effectively oppose Donald Trump in the US Presidential election. He is confused, forgetful, sometimes doesn’t make sense and is generally frail and off the pace. And that can only get worse. By November, dementia might have taken over.

The fact that Donald Trump is not much better equipped cognitively is beside the point. Listening to Joe Biden during the infamous TV debate where he got completely lost, mumbled and rambled, I couldn’t help thinking of his recent conversations with the tyrannical Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. Suddenly, it was clear why Netanyahu had been able to play him so easily and, in the end, ignore everything he said.

Were Joe Biden in full command of his senses, it’s possible that there would already be a ceasefire in Gaza; and also a complete hold on the land-theft being carried out by supremacist Israeli thugs, supported by the army and the Government. But Biden has allowed the Israeli tail to wag the American dog. He doesn’t seem to get how directly culpable he has been for the catastrophic loss of Palestinian lives, and the genocidal intent that reflects.

Illustration: David Rooney

The truth is that the Democratic Party desperately needs to replace him as a candidate. Are Biden’s supporters within the Democratic establishment really willing to let a stubborn man, who is no longer up to the job, hand the keys of the White House to a lying, thieving, corrupt, megalomaniacal, narcissistic bully called Donald Trump?

We live in hope. The next few weeks will be both fascinating and frightening. But the bottom line is that someone has to convince Joe Biden that there is no loss of dignity in handing over the torch.

The most important imperative of all is to beat Donald Trump and to drive him back into the swamp out of which he crawled. Amen.