The description of the new Dublin Government as a "Rainbow Coalition" might leave you desperately casting your mind back to the last time you saw a rainbow.
For red, what about Prionsias De Rossa, former Republican internee, former leader of the Kim Il Sung-admiring Work-. ers' Party, now main man of the Democratic Left and Minister for Social Welfare in the "centre-left" Government dominated by Fine Gael.
Orange and blue are well represented by new Taoiseach John Bruton, who came back from political death after Dick Spring did the dirty on Albert Reynolds. Recent opinion polls showed Bruton ('Brutal" to his legions of enemies) to be in the John Major league of popularity - more than half his own party didn't want him as Taoiseach. Bruton got his reputation from his hardline monetarist policies in previous coalition governments. He is a unionist to his Blueshirt boots.
Yellow Spring Kingmaker and Labour Leader Dick Spring couldn't be described as "green" in any sense - nor "red" for that matter. Yellow would be much more appropriate for such an opportunist.
IRELAND UNFREE The would-be hammer of Fianna Fail was prepared to crawl back into Government with Reynolds successor Bertie Ahern when the Irish Times published an old story about Fianna Fail duplicity. Spring Major government promptly picked up his ball and went looking for someone else to play with.
Some paranoid people have even suggested that the scuppering of a new Fianna Fail/Labour Coalition might have something to do with the British preference for dealing with Bruton and Spring. The appearance of British Ambassador Blatherwick at Bruton's first meeting of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation is surely a nod of approval from London.
The Brits can more easily negotiate with a new Dublin Government that is fiercely anti-Republican and which is more likely to agree an internal settlement in the North and to changes to Articles 2 and 3 of the South's Constitution. The problem for the British is that although Fianna Fail would have asked for a bit more, the new coalition will find it harder to deliver a deal-especially if Fianna Fail plays the republican card. Rogues gallery: In the new Irish coalition government Bertie Ahern, John Bruton and Dick Spring are united against republicanism and for the fake peace offered by the Sinn Fein's political strategy of relying on Reynolds (with Clinton's help) to pressure the British was a disaster even before Spring got Reynolds. The "Framework Document", now delayed to early in the New Year, will be wholly within the terms of the Downing St. Declaration of 1993. Bruton got his reputation from his hardline monetarist policies in previous coalition governments. He is a unionist to his Blueshirt boots.
Limited powers British withdrawal and self-determination for the Irish people as a whole were never part of the plan. Former Fianna Fail leader Reynolds may be right in his forecast of some kind of all-Ireland body with executive powers. But this will confined to tourism, regional development and agriculture - areas in which it makes sense to co-operate anyway.
In return Dublin will agree to changes in Articles 2 & 3 of the Constitution, the effect of which gle because they still hanker after a military victory.
Provocation
The almost too-casual approach of RUC Chief Annersley, "predicting" the IRA ceasefire will last until Easter is virtually an invitation to a rematch which he believes the British can win, given the damaging effects on the IRA of long cease-fires. The same provocative approach can be seen in the aggressive patrolling in Belfast of the hated Parachute Regiment and the continued harassment of Republicans.
All the Sinn Fein rhetoric about ending British rule cannot conceal the reality that the decisive forces shaping a settlement are at present some hue of unionist. The majority party in the Coalition Government, Fine Gael are the direct descendents of those who backed the partition settlement of 1921 and used British guns to defeat the Republicans in the Civil War.
It is more than a historical irony that they should lead the Dublin side in what the British confidently expect will be the new partition settlement. Putting on a brave face and claiming it as the first step in British disengagement will simply confuse and demoralise the base of the Republican Movement.
But a turn back to armed struggle will not solve the political problem faced by the Republican Movement. What the past 24 years have demonstrated -apart from the fact that the IRA cannot be defeated militarily - is that the British cannot be driven out by force of arms alone.
But this impasse of Republican politics is above all an op portunity. Both the London and Dublin governments are weak and unstable. Neither is any position to make any likely settlement stick.
Major's reliance on the Ulster Unionists is the product of the chronic divisions in the Tory Party (and in the ruling class as a whole) on the European Union. More importantly, it mirrors the political crisis in the whole British State.
The British demand that Dublin recognises its sovereignty over the six counties appears completely at odds with the long retreat from empire -Hong Kong and Gibraltar being the two latest examples.
The Tory right limits Major's ability to throw even the smallest bone to Dublin while his preferred solution - a devolved government in Belfast - risks stirring up secessionist feelings elsewhere in the increasingly less United Kingdom.
Tories trapped
The Tories find themselves trapped in a situation where advance or retreat risks bringing the 200-year old edifice crashing down. The "Irish Question" was the occasion for some of the biggest splits in the British ruling class in the last century and it would be surprising if it doesn't figure in the break up of the British state.
Likewise in Dublin the installation of the new pro-British government under John Bruton and the apparent stabilisation of the economy gives the impres sion of stability.
But the ruling class remains deeply divided over the introduction of divorce legislation and the need to regulate the law on abortion following the Supreme Court decision a couple of years ago on the "X" Case.
Winning changes to the constitution will not be easy with Fianna Fail in opposition and the government led by someone as unpopular as Bruton. It is on these questions that Sinn Fein will pay a heavy price for its reluctant support for women's rights and its identification with the reactionary and clericalist Fianna Fail.
But there is no other way to independence and self-determination than by the linking forces who fight for national independence with struggles for workers and women's rights.
Our task in Britain is to build the withdrawal movement and to support the right of the Irish People to self-determination.