Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

A number of people are talking about their hopes for the British general election this morning, and when one considers how little control we have over events in Britain, I am tempted to think it is a futile exercise to be offering opinions on what we hope might happen. I will say this. It is a good time for us to reflect on the unsatisfactory nature of the often binary choices before electorates on either side of the water as we look out. Political leadership of a quality kind is in short supply. There is no heroic, obvious British Prime Minister to emerge. There are dangers whichever way one looks if one is wise and mature in one's politics.

It seems to me that very often what we are faced with now is a coalition or a coincidence of interests between the intentionally and recklessly selfish on the one hand and the unintentionally selfish on the other. On the left, one sees an inconsistency, a lack of respect for life itself, a well-meaning, perhaps idealistic, but negative individualism, and on the right, one sees a selfishness that one can associate with a culture that is increasingly unconcerned about drug-taking and all sorts of life choices that end up harming others. There is a real need for better political leadership on all sides, and I would be very slow to express a preference as to the outcome of the election.

One thing I think I can say with certainty on another subject is when confidential files that contradicted Beijing's claims about the voluntary re-education, so-called, of hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities were handed over recently to the international consortium of investigative journalists, we saw a catalogue of horrors and depravity. In fact, what those files reveal is that it is actually possible to put a price on the value of human life. We are doing it ourselves in Ireland and Europe, because there is a real and quantifiable risk that our foreign policy stance with respect to China is nothing more than a Potemkin village of righteous indignation empty of meaning and devoid of moral courage. The same could be said for the European foreign policy stance with respect to China, in particular its treatment of the Uyghur population.

At official level, people are not standing up to the bullies, especially if they are the kind of bullies we can trade with, generous bullies who buy our beef or whatever it is. What we effectively do is write them strongly worded letters appealing for them to heed the norms outlined in various human rights agreements or covenants, but bullies do not respect reason. They listen with indifference as their victims or even their friends plead, even with the greatest of eloquence, for mercy. The unavoidable interpretation we must now give to how we are continuing to conduct our bilateral and international relationship with China, specifically in the context of the barbaric treatment of the Uyghur population, is that we just do not care. The €17 billion in goods and services that is the worth of our bilateral trade can be set against the one million Uyghurs affected by brutal Chinese state repression.That is a value of approximately €17,000 that we place, or do not place, on every Uighur whose life has been destroyed or who has been tortured or brutalised by the current regime in Beijing. Even as we criticise Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, Donald Trump or the Democratic Party candidate, whoever that may be, we need to take a close look at the moral quality of our politics here at home.