I turn my back for five minutes and, when I return, find the State on the brink of surrender. I missed nice Mr Blair's visit to Ireland during the week because, funnily enough, while he was in Dublin I was in London. And since I'm in the process of moving house in the mainland-centred part of my life, I currently find myself without access to either radio or television. So, the first I heard of the Taoiseach's suggestion that Ireland might consider rejoining the British Commonwealth was in a hilarious editorial in the London Independent. If you haven't already seen it, and are in need of a good laugh, I suggest you ring up the Independent's back issues service and ask it to send you a copy of Friday's newspaper by express post. The reference to Mr Ahern's remarks lay deep in a veritable hatful of chuckles. The tone of the leader was set by the headline: "A dynamic nation that is a blueprint for modern Britain". Who could it be talking about? I knew you couldn't guess. It was talking about us. The tone was a bit like the one your father used to adopt when lecturing about how poorly you compared to that nice boy or girl down the street, who always said "Good morning", was never caught stealing apples and got nine As in the Inter Cert.
"There is one European nation," it began, "which, more than any other, provides a model for Tony Blair's ambition to rebrand Britain as a modernised `young country'. It is a nation which has shaken off the burden of its obsession with history, its bitterness towards its neighbour and the obscurantism of its conservative constitution and established church". (Have you noticed that it is invariably those with much to be embarrassed about in their own history who seek to persuade others to forget about theirs?) The ensuing 500 words offered every cliche you might expect from a writer whose knowledge of Ireland had been gleaned entirely from Newsnight. The phrase "dynamic economy", I regret to report, was employed. The term "self-confident outlook" cropped up also. Mention was made, too, of some unfortunate difficulties with persuading the backward denizens of Ireland of the benefits of abortion.
Such obscurantism notwithstanding, however, Mr Blair's Irish visit, we were informed, was - yes, I'm afraid so - a symbol of the new relationship between "the two parts of what was once a single nation". Even the architect of our obscurantist Constitution would have envied the internalised, self-sufficient logic of that description.
Much mention, of course, was made of the unfortunate Mr de Valera, the "author of the culturally nationalistic, Roman Catholic, inward-looking 1937 constitution", who "famously thought of Irish women as homemakers and `comely maidens dancing at crossroads'. " At this point I would like to issue a small wager to the editor of the London Independent: my new little house in Hampstead Garden Suburb to a leader-writing job in your newspaper that you cannot produce, outside the demented scribblings of a handful of Irish commentators suffering from false memory syndrome, an iota of substantiation that Eamon de Valera ever used, within a Volvo's roar of a single paragraph, the words "comely", "maiden", "dancing" and "crossroads". And then, there it was. "Bertie Ahern's hint that the Republic might rejoin the Commonwealth shows how the Irish are now moving on from the past." At this point even my new neighbour's cat stopped laughing at the window. Could this be the same Bertie Ahern who, just a few days earlier, had mused in public about the possibility of a united Ireland within his lifetime?
After a brief fret I reassured myself with the thought that the Taoiseach was most likely suffering from a seasonal dose of Lenihanitis, a minor political ailment whereby the colour of one's opinion alters according to the location and company. (The late Brian Lenihan had an inspired knack of delivering much the same speech in increasingly nationalistic tones the closer he got to the Border. In Wicklow it was all tolerance and respect for the "two traditions"; by Monaghan, it was green flags and the graves of our Fenian dead.) Alternatively, I decided, in the wake of his recent ardfheis excesses, the Taoiseach's handlers had instructed him to give something to the other side. But by the time I got home on Saturday, it was clear something more serious was going on. Mr Ahern had told the London Times that he now anticipated a "debate" about Ireland rejoining the Commonwealth, and he would not try to "suppress" this debate.
Taoiseach, watch my lips: there is no "debate" about Ireland rejoining the Commonwealth and therefore no call for you to suppress it, which is not, in any event, part of the Taoiseach's job description. To my certain knowledge, at most a half-dozen Irish people have ever expressed the slightest desire for Ireland to rejoin the British Commonwealth.
One of these was Mary Robinson, at a time when she was auditioning for her present job with the United Nations. Another recent advocate was the Fianna Fail TD Eamon O Cuiv, who is perhaps understandably attempting to rehabilitate his late grandfather's reputation by insinuating that Mr de Valera's cunning plan for the reintegration of the national territory was frustrated by our leaving the Commonwealth. All the others who made this suggestion were certified lunatics or descendants of Blueshirts who have wet dreams about shaking hands with the Queen of England.
There are, in other words, no serious demands for Ireland to rejoin the British Commonwealth and no call for a debate on the subject. The very idea is an insult not just to the present citizens of this half-liberated nation but to the countless thousands who have died so that we might have the right to have "debates" about anything. But we should not be so complacent as to believe that this load of nonsense does not contain dangers. Unless we nip it in the bud straight away, there is every possibility that this "debate" will unfold in a manner similar to the "debate" about Articles 2 and 3. For many years, these two articles nestled harmlessly on page four of Bunreacht na hEireann, minding their own business. Then, one day, a couple of opportunistic southern politicians, by way of sucking up to unionists, decided to propose deleting these inoffensive aspirations.
Very quickly, as unionists perceived the potential in this issue for delaying significant change, it became a barrier to even the most basic forms of progress in turning Northern Ireland into a half-civilised society. Unless we put this ridiculous notion back in the closet, there is therefore every possibility that, in five years' time, we will be listening to unionist politicians telling us that there can be no progress until Ireland is once again a full member of the British Commonwealth.