The Political Crisis Next Door

Day 2,357, 21:16 • Published in Ireland Ireland • by Brian Boru


Britain Under Serious Threat of Serbian Take-Over
In a stunning failure of British immigration controls, it now appears that the eUnited Kingdom is within reach for a coordinated Serbian political takeover. This has resulted in the problem being a significant campaign issue for the elections due to be held today. The crisis essentially started after the last congress elections as Serbians began immigrating in some appreciable numbers. The new arrivals have formed a political party, the British Serbian Union. As of the writing of this article, the party has forty-two members, a mere sixteen members off the all-important top five spot, and their growth appears to have stalled only for lack of citizenship passes in this congressional term.

A threat to Ireland
Britain's alliance alignment has resulted in peace between our two countries, with Ireland concentrating on various alliance endevours, empowered by the mutual understanding between our respective alliances. Britain's alignment has also meant it has found itself on the other side of the tracks as Serbia for the first time in years. If Britain falls, Ireland will be under severe threat, given our mischief with airstrikes and Austria. The lack of discussion on this topic in Ireland has disturbed me deeply as I lurk around, as usually we're quite alert to threats from abroad. There can be no complacency on this matter from the coming administration.



The ATO
The British themselves understand the threat well enough, but seem deeply divided as to the appropriate response. Thankfully, a comrade of mine and a highly competent sort in the form of Ayame Crocodile seems likely to win the British election, and he has laid out a timetable for specific steps in dealing with this threat. What is less encouraging is that he seems to have been forced by political necessity to pledge to step back from the ATO, as he has said here that he will appoint a government liaison to take command of the job. From an Irish perspective, with the President and Cabinet taking absolute authority for the defence of the country from all threats, this seems a bizarre abandonment of responsibility. However, we have to remember that Britain didn't go through the same political struggles as we have. The British congress has significantly more authority than our own, which causes significant problems for Presidents wishing to carry out policy. The question however remains, will the British succeed in fending off the Serbian infiltrators?

Should Ireland intervene? Can we?
A hostile Britain controlled by Serbia would be an entirely different proposition to past Anglo-Irish conflicts. The British can usually be negotiated with on a reasonable basis, provided they don't believe they've been slighted unnecessarily. The Serbs on the other hand are outward imperialists with no interest in negotiating with anyone but countries of equal or greater power. It's a natural consequence of the size of their country in-game. This means we would have to rely on our allies to prevent a serious problem for our sovereignty, which weakens our place within our alliance by making us dependants rather than participants.



Ireland has had a relatively strict immigration regime for much of its history, a culture I attribute to our early PTO by the Romanians in 2008 that has been passed down as a notion through the big players and reinforced by us watching the fate of small countries who were more liberal with their access. This leaves us largely secure from foreign threats while we maintain vigilance, even though it wouldn't take many PTOers to take control. Britain is small enough to be taken by an easily controlled number of players, but also large enough that immigration control has been disregarded as a necessity by many internally. Ireland's relative security, relative internal harmony and every vote counting for a lot in Britain means that we can intervene to aid the British ATO should the British government cooperate and find the need for those extra arms, all without any harm to the Irish political scene. If we need to.

Necessity will remain the big question right up until the 15th, however. The parties backing Ayame for President already have the manpower to intervene to stop this. How enthusiastic they will be in supporting the campaign depends presumably on activity, attention and whether or not each party regards a PTO as a credible threat. Of course, it is also possible that Ayame will not win, despite overwhelming party support, leaving the organisation of an ATO in much doubt or destroyed entirely if BigAnt wins.

What should Ireland do?
A coordination committee should be set up to manage our response. PPs should be pre-selected in advance by their parties to insure stability over the next month. Each party should recruit a certain proportion of their membership for deployment to Britain to vote in their PP elections, and coordinate with our own congress to insure they get passes back into the country ASAP. Diplomatic overtures to Britain should be made as soon as the next President is elected to insure we're not just talking to ourselves about our concerns and what small aid we can give.

TLDR: Take all possible measures to insure we're not sleepwalking into a war our alliance can do without.