ie-politics

It's all about being in Government

There's an interesting piece in the Sunday Business Post under the headline "Greens shun watchdog role" that summarises the party's relaxed attitude to the latest revelations of the Mahon Tribunal as indicative of a shift away from the role of the "watchdog" of Fianna Fáil in government.  Instead the emphasis is placed on implementing the party's own policy agenda.  Party insiders justify this stance on two grounds: the PDs blew their political credibility and their electoral base by pretending to be Fianna Fáil's "moral guardians" but perpetuated them in office; and the experience of Green Parties in government elsewhere is summed up as agree the programme and do the business.

Will the rank-and-file of the Greens be content with this quite modest role for the party if and when things get a lot nastier between Ahern and Mahon?  Just how much policy will they be able to deliver given that the party controls only two government departments?  Much of the government agenda will still be driven by forces and ideas quite hostile to Green politics.  This might take a little longer to manifest itself but I suspect that unease among the membership is bound to spread.

The Labour Party also appear sto be honing a much more focused and business like approach to its own future role.  The Inside Politics column in the Sunday Tribune reports that a new senior adviser with a reputation as a hight flier has been appointed to Eamon Gilmore's office.  A party TD is quoted that the role of the adviser will be "government".  Assuming the current Dáil goes to full term, Labour will have been out of office for almost fifteen years and there is little doubt that many of its aged parliamentarians are desperate for one last chance.

In the same Sunday Business Post article a former adviser is quoted echoing the sentiments of a more pragmatic approach to government:

I think they’ve learned from Labour’s obsession with the whole ‘standards’ thing. There’s not much evidence that voters care much about it. [Labour’s election in] 1992 could have ushered in 15 or 20 years of centre-left government, but we threw that away over something nobody can quite remember now.

There are many people in the Labour Party who are frustrated that the Greens are occupying the space that Labour should be in - that is in government with Fianna Fáil.  Such a view also seems to be found among senior trade union leaders.  I've recently been reading Saving the Future, a very readable if largely uncritical account of Social Partnership and SIPTU leader Jack O'Connor is quoted as saying  that Labour's decision not to go back into government with Fianna Fáil in 1994 was "a disastrous decision".  This is most likely due to the apparent preference many trade union leaders have of "doing business" with Fianna Fáil.  The book's authors quote O'Connor as saying that this type of pragmatism "allows the broader labour movement to influence the direction of government policy to the extent that they could ameliorate the worst effects of what the other side was contemplating". 

That is a powerful enough reformist argument and is commonly articulated.  It's usually accompanied by swipes against Fine Gael and the rather spurious argument that the social republican roots of Fianna Fáil make that party more objectively open to the influence of labour.  The real flaw in the argument is that Labour will always be in a junior and subordinate position, trying to react to an agenda set by more powerful political forces.  Instead of obsessing with how to get back into government with Fianna Fáil, Labour should look to ways of broadening its potential electorate.

Green Party members - Just Say NO!

At the time of writing this post we don't yet know what the contents of the  programme for government that has just been agreed by Fianna  Fáil and the Greens.  But regardless of its contents the membership of the Greens should nevertheless resist the lure of the spoils of office on this occasion.  First of all the Greens are not needed to put together a governing majority.  FF, the rump PDs and a few independents can do this easily, especially if someone from the opposition benches can be persuaded to be the new Ceann Comhairle.  Therefore the Greens will have little leverage over the general direction and tenor of government policy and especially over crunch issues that may arise.  The obvious point is that they can leave the government without precipitating its fall.  In other words they are surplus to requirements in terms of the minimum winning coalition scenario.

More importantly going into office means that the Greens will help to bring about a dominant party system that will guarantee that Fianna Fáil will be in government forever.  As Terry Prone put it "Fianna Fáil wants to be the cherry-picker party, permanently in full-term government with an ever-changing bowl of cherries".  It will be almost impossible to conceive of any government that doesn't have Fianna Fáil.  Having that party permanently in office would make our political system fundamentally uncompetitive and if you can never "throw the bastards out", our democracy will suffer a legitimation deficit.  People will wonder what's the point in voting if the only difference the election makes is who will partner Fianna Fáil?

The Greens should bide their time for another while.  Local elections may produce more candidates to contest the next general election.  The Greens are a good campaigning party.  Why not build on this and align with other progressive forces and build a progressive block that can be a serious alternative to coalitions that are inevitably led by conservative forces, be they FF or FG?  They won't be alone in this endeavour.  There will be many members of the Labour Party similarly inclined and it might even dawn on some rank-and-file Sinn Féiners that it's time to make up their mind if they want to be part of this. 

Celtic Tiger Mytholology Redux

When it comes to evaluating recent Irish economic history the one thing that irritates me most is when slashing taxes and deregulation are cited as the factors that initiated and sustained the booming tiger economy.  The Irish model is frequently cited by neo-liberal commentators critical of the perceived rigidities of the failing social democracies of 'old' Europe.  Domestically that line is most vigorously pushed by the PDs and their old ally Charlie McCreevey.  There were many factors that contributed to the Celtic Tiger and other commentators emphasise different elements.  An example of this has appeared in The Globalist where Brian Beary highlights the importance of government economic planning and states that the Irish economic boom was far from miraculous. 

Beary also notes the role of social partnership and in particular emphasises the role of the NESC.  This is a useful corrective to the triumphalist narratives of neo-liberalism but let's not get carried away here and create a counter-myth in the process.  Yes, the role of the NESC was important in generating elite consensus about the need to try something new, even if that new departure was the sort of thing that small, successful open market economies in Europe had already being doing for decades.  Ireland had a lot of catching up to do.  There was an atmosphere of crisis and failure by the time the key NESC document A Strategy for Development was published in 1986.  Early next year Charles Haughey was back in power and the "Tallaght Strategy" garnered sufficient political consensus to push through a new attempt at brokering a new deal between government, unions and employers.

There were many things that were not exactly planned but happened fortuitously enough.  The Irish state was in a position to have some key institutions that were flexible enough to turn that newly formed political consensus into concerted action.  Nigel Boyle, in a fascinating paper delivered a few years ago makes much of how Fás, which he describes as "the Swiss Army Knife of the Irish state", played a critical role in driving key reforms in the labour market. 

The definitive account of the political economy of the Celtic Tiger has yet to be written. In the meantime Peadar Kirby's Celtic Tiger in Distress and George Taylor's Negotiated Governance and Public Policy in Ireland ought to be required reading for anyone trying to make sense of our recent past with a view to creating a coherent and critical narrative on economic policy.  Garret Fitzgerald was absolutely right when he claimed in Saturday's Irish Times that the opposition's silence on the economy during the last five years cost them the election.

Must smaller governing parties always suffer an electoral backlash?

As far as the history of Irish elections is concerned the answer is a resounding yes.  But is that inevitable?  Are there better ways for smaller parties to conduct themselves while they are in office that might help them avoid being punishment in the subsequent election?  I raise this question in the context of a possible Fianna Fáil/Green Party coalition.  I am not advocating that the Greens "deal with the devil" as Ciarán Cuffe put it but this kind of "minimum winning coalition" is far more likely than a Fianna Fáil/Labour alliance which would have too many surplus members.  The theory of minimum winning coalitions of course assumes that politicians are only interested in dividing the spoils of office - a fair assumption in the case of our own ruling party. 

Cuffe was wondering whether doing such a deal would "be worth it after being spat out after 5 years, and decimated as a party".  (Actually, to be pedantic for a moment, decimation would only result in losing one in ten seats, which they don't have!).  His colleague in the Dáil, John Gormley, recently remarked that he dreaded another five years in opposition.  But such is the zero-sum nature of power in our system that prominent Greens are thinking aloud the possibility of doing the deal with Fianna Fáil.  Which brings me back to the question of whether the voters would take their revenge on the Greens.

A smaller party should consider a different positional stance in relation to how it operates in government.  The temptations of office are very hard to resist in the winner-take-all Irish system.  Opposition parties have no role to play in our system other than to constantly declare their contrary stance to everything the government does.  It's not like in federal systems or other more decentralised polities where a party, not part of the governing majority at the centre, might at least rule a big city, province or county.  So ambitious and talented politicians will be tempted to try to get some power to implement some of their agenda. 

The Greens could possibly enter into negotiations with Fianna Fáil and find that there would be no bending by the bigger party on highly symbolic issues like the Shannon stopover flights by the US military and the Corrib gas pipeline.  But they may find that they could achieve some concrete objectives in areas like energy conservation and public transport.  Green Party leaders could then ask the party membership to endorse a programme for government on that basis.  This is where general positional stance is important.  They don't have to constantly extol each and every aspect of what the government of which they are a member does.  The party could continue to advocate for its other policies as a distinct party even when its parliamentary members might have to vote in ways that are seemingly contradictory because it was part of a governing majority.

Obviously the bigger party would probably bridle at this semi-detached stance but it too would want to continue in office and avoid being seen to start a row that could precipitate an unnecessary election.  The smaller party would need to have effective public spokespersons to explain what they were trying to achieve as a political organisation campaigning to maximise its influence in the pursuit of its long term goals.  Very often non-ministerial politicians can do this job most effectively, e.g. Michael McDowell as PD Chairman during the early years of the FF/PD alliance.  If the leaders of the Green Party were open about the fact that they needed to take office to pursue some of their agenda but still reserved the right to take a an independent and critical stance that would fall short of bringing down the government, then it's just possible that the voters might understand and appreciate such a stance and not "decimate" the party at the next election.

Labour Becalmed

I heard Joe Costello, comfortably re-elected in Dublin Central, use this expression on the radio to describe the stagnation of Labour over the last three elections.  This was a very bad result for Labour and the party continues to be the worst performing social democratic party in Europe.  Securing just about one tenth of the first preference vote makes you pretty damned irrelevant when nearly seventy per cent of the electorate votes for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.  It is inevitable there there will be mutterings of discontent against Rabbitte's leadership, blaming the leader for rescuing Fine Gael at the expense of his own party. 

I would also be critical of the leadership strategy but it would be based on organisational and policy failures and wouldn't focus solely on an electoral strategy not producing the desired result.  A few extra seats might have put Labour into office and the leader would have been praised for his canny tactics.  My own discontent would not have been so easily assuaged because going into government would not alter the objective reality that Labour is stagnating organisationally and is failing to find a voice that addresses the concerns of the voters. 

Plotting to get rid of the leader is an irrelevant distraction when the party needs to have an internal debate about its identity and how it will organise and renew itself in the future.  It might make more sense to have a leadership contest in the context of such a debate if there are different perspectives represented by different candidates for the leadership.  I am more than ever convinced about the necessity of developing a coherent critique of the economy that makes the link between economic insecurity, pockets of poverty and failures of collective provision in areas of social policy.  Forget about electoral strategy.  That's it for another five years.  It's a question of getting back to basics on the fundamentals of policy, organisation and party identity.

On a personal note my own blogging activities have been 'becalmed' due to my mother's illness and my visits to the hospital.  I was not always at home to watch the TV campaign coverage but I had a distinct impression of a very boring and contentless election campaign.  My Mam died peacefully on polling day.

Homeless Tories and other morbid symptoms

I watched Dispatches on Channel 4 on Monday night.  Entitled Toff at the Top, Peter Hitchens, who describes himself as a "moral and cultural conservative", presented a withering critique of the Tory leader David Cameron.  Basically it's a story of the extinction of choice in British politics, where the main opposition party has been hijacked by an elitist club of political careerists and PR men.  Far from wishing to fight New Labour, Hitchens believes that Cameron has sought to copy New Labour's methods and adopt most of its beliefs. The adversarial tradition of British politics is dead and Parliament has become the private property of conformist social, cultural and moral liberals. As a result, Hitchens believes our political system is being degraded and the very foundations of our democratic system are under threat. 

To his great credit Hitchens manages to remain a model of calm and not practically pass out with apoplexy and rage like the way most reactionary commentators do when dealing with the perfidies of permissiveness and social liberalism.  I must say, as someone rooted in the culture of the left and a one time enthusiast of the insurgent Bennites of the early 1980s, I have some sympathy for Hitchens - probably because it's a mirror image of what many of us feel about Blairism. 

Sinn Féin: Party of the Left?

Why the question mark?  Because I believe that the political outlook of Sinn Féin is at best ambiguous.  A left-wing political stance co-exists with other elements and we cannot be certain about how the party will evolve in the future.  Perhaps I should start by making my own position clear; if Sinn Féin could be part of a putative Progressive Block that could displace the dominant duopoly of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in the political system of this Republic, I would be optimistic about the success of such a political project.  In other words if Sinn Féin, as it operates in this jurisdiction, could become part of a broad left that could credibly bid for power, I would be happy.  But in considering this possibility we need to combine optimism with scepticism.

In the totality of its outlook and activities Sinn Féin is, fundamentally, a nationalist political movement.  It may well, for a host of tactical and strategic reasons, want to position itself as a left-wing nationalist party.  Sympathetic academic commentators like Dr John Doyle of DCU would explicitly reject the fact that Sinn Fein is an "ethnic nationalist" party and would instead seek to link the party's nationalism with anti-colonial struggles and the anti-globalisation movement (see this previous post).  This is not a stance the party is likely to emphasise when on fund raising jaunts to the US.  While the party as it operates in the Republic is locked into a an ideological stance that is undoubtedly left-wing, at other times and places Sinn Féin will want to be seen as more centrist and accommodating.  This is especially so in the kind of consociational democracy of the type Northern Ireland is set to become. 

Fundamentally, being a nationalist party means that Sinn Féin will refuse to accept that there could be an irreconcilable clash of interests where the party would have to choose one mutually antagonistic interest over another.  I raise this issue as a belated response to a very interesting post over at the Cedar Lounge Revolution.  Furthermore I also raise this in the context of a 'progressive' block emerging as a left force after the next general election.  The nationalist character of the party makes me a little sceptical about whether Sinn Féin will form part of this block.

This is apart from the rather separatist caste of mind of the of the party in terms of its broad political culture  - the 'ourselves alone' element of Sinn Féin, as it were.  Apart from involvement in the peculiar institutions of the Belfast Agreement, the party has shown few inclinations to enter into co-operation and dialogue with other political forces.  On the other hand there are some grounds for optimism that Sinn Féin can eventually emerge as a more normalised political party.  As everyone knows Sinn Féin was a subordinate element of a tightly controlled military movement.  That kind of centralised command and control structure is not so easy to operate once the party operates in a more open political system.  A comparison with the Workers' Party is instructive here; its democratic centralist, Leninist discipline broke down under the impact of electoral success and having to operate as a 'normal' parliamentary party.

Then there is the argument that if it thinks it ought to quack like a duck and generally take on the appearance of a duck, then it perforce behaves like a duck.  Sinn Féin, in the Republic at any rate, may well become locked into a rhetoric of left politics where its leaders and activists are increasingly likely to justify their stances within the norms of a broadly left wing ideological and strategic framework.  This is why it's important to start thinking about how to give this as yet notional progressive block some substance after the next election, regardless of who is in government, and not waste time on which existing party can lead it or not. 

The Politics of Letting Go

There have been some very good posts from the lads at the Cedars recently all on the subject of Labour and the left.  Ben at Dublin Opinion has presented us with a subtle and nuanced view of Labour's history and the lessons that may be derived therefrom.   Michael Taft has just weighed in with an important and significant contribution looking at Irish political alignments through "a different prism". Those and a post from the highly astute and always interesting Mark Schmitt at  TPMCafe give me an incentive to write about both blogging and left political parties. 

Let's look at Schmitt's points first.  His starting point is the ever tighter control exerted over the American political campaign - "the candidate, the process, the message have to be planned out, and the game plan executed with total discipline".  Schmitt says that

In a politics that is all about discipline, the “gaffe” -- which is by definition a lapse of discipline – is everything, and campaigns live to catch the other side in a gaffe and to avoid the slip themselves. Such a politics is uninspiring and unengaging, and ultimately hugely narrows the range of choices and options available in the political arena. Because it seeks to limit politics to that which can be managed, it is inevitably a smaller, narrower politics.

Schmitt notes that a significant counter-trend has emerged in this decade which he terms "the politics of Letting Go".  It has been fuelled in part by the Internet but in part by the inherent limits of the tight-discipline model.  Letting Go involves self-organized politics, in which some large portion of the campaign is allowed to exist, even encouraged to exist, outside of the control of the campaign itself. Blogs and the associated 'netroots' are a huge part of it.  Schmitt says that Letting Go takes a lot of daring, given the culture of politics as discipline.  But the rewards are great because the political culture that will develop over time will be less risk-averse and more open and daring.

A similar Letting Go would be of great use to what Michael Taft, for illustrative purposes, calls the "progressive block".  At this point we are all focused on the next election and what happens to the different components of this block, who will be in government, who remains in opposition.  What will we do when we get this election out of the way?  I believe that the left needs to start setting our own agenda and not simply react to that set by our opponents.  The whole Labour tax debacle proves that point sufficiently. 

It is important for those of us in and around the different components of the block not to get sidelined into wasting time over partisan trench warfare when we should be trying to figure out how to break the hegemonic duopoly of Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael.  I'm not suggesting that it will be easy to put our partisan sentiments entirely to one side (I too would be sceptical, to say the least, about Sinn Féin) but it's more important to start thinking and talking about the policy and strategy that could turn a purely notional progressive block into a reality that could challenge for power. 

What form would Letting Go take in an Irish context?  For some bloggers I suspect it might take the form of a more concerted effort to start some kind of netroots movement of like-minded commentators and activists to see how we could shift the terms of the dominant political discourse.  I can see a possibility where Internet-based activity crosses from the virtual to the real political world, especially in bringing like-minded activists together on particular campaigns and issues.  I'm not saying that we can just ignore the realities of party politics and replace it with some kind of virtual or 'viral' politics but the two can and must co-exist if there is to be any chance of political renewal of the left.

How will the parties react?  Michael Taft is right when he says that the PDs provide a good example of how a party can publicly discuss future options that lie outside its current alignment.  Party leaders may even see distinct advantages in Letting Go.  The great thing about Letting Go is that it does not require a party stamp of approval.  What goes on in the netroots and elsewhere may be 'off message' but could ultimately strengthen the position of the left parties. 

Tell us what you mean

There's a very critical op-ed piece in this morning's Irish Times written by Donncha O'Connell, dean of law at NUI Galway.  He describes the package of anti-crime measures approved by the Cabinet on Tuesday including provision for extended detention of suspects for up to seven days, judicial guidelines to be applied in the context of bail, drawing adverse inferences from the exercise of the right to silence by suspects in custody, and provision for increased sentences based on prior convictions as "rebottled wine". 

Michael McDowell has delivered the curse of the answered prayer to an Opposition clamouring for "more of the same but sooner" and excited his own battalions in the run-up to the PD pre-election conference.

Everything is reduced to the battle of the sound bites and while "while the chorus of party political agreement will be passed off as a reflection of common sense, it is, in reality, an unthinking, media-driven consensus that is doomed to fail".  The question is posed "is all of this a solution in search of a problem?"  O'Connell acknowledges that that "there is a worrying rise in violent crime orchestrated by what are loosely called criminal gangs" but that "more of the same laws do not, however, constitute an effective solution".  One problem I have with this piece is that O'Connell gives us no clue how to quantify or distinguish between the the actual increase in certain types of crime and what the media-driven consensus contributes to this allegedly distorted picture. I've no doubt he's largely right about the media, it's just that I'd like to see some evidence and research.

O'Connell refers to the panel on the Frank Luntz Week in Politics programme recently where people were worried by crime but admitted no direct experience of it. He then expresses disappointment that the very politicians who once declared that they would be radical or redundant "don't lead by isolating the root causes of crime, applying radical solutions instead of pandering to the second-hand fears of those who admit to having no direct experience of crime". 

My second problem with the article is that the author gives us no clue to what he believes are the root causes of crime.  While he makes a general point about preferring leadership to "followership", there is no reference to a substantive alternative to the macho posturing and populism that he condemns.  Apart from some vague references to "area of criminal injuries compensation, victim advocacy in trial processes and the less glamorous area of restorative justice", that's it.  Like O'Connell I am uneasy about the unthinking whittling away of essential civil liberties.  But I would like some alternative perspectives that deal with fundamental causes of crime and what a reformed criminal justice system would be like.  If anyone could point me towards such alternative body of thinking or practise I'd be grateful. 

The Dangers of Opportunism

Opportunism.  Now there's a word that you don't hear that often nowadays.  Marxists had a rich lexicon of abuse for their political opponents, especially for those parties that were considered nominally of the left.  Being a supporter of the Labour Party I don't use the term in that sense.  Rather I want to make the point that putting short term electoral considerations above being honest and consistent with fundamental principles is likely to lead to longer term damage.  Raising this in the context of objecting to Labour's proposals to cut the basic rate of income tax from 20 per cent to 18 per cent can make one sound both pompous and cranky but I'll take the risk. 

A friend of mine emailed me from work this morning, declaring he was not too impressed with Rabbitte's "tax stunt".  He then went on to say:

I'd always imagined that the best way to help the less well off was for the state to use tax revenues to fund targeted programs to help them out of poverty traps and by improving overall social infrastructure. Obviously not - handing them back a tenner a week is the way to improve the situation and build a fairer society!

Ouch!  This is from a guy that goes out of his way to find reasons to vote Labour.   Let's get down to basics here.  Is it to be Boston of Berlin?  Do we uphold the European Social Model or do we not?  In his latest book Europe in the Global Age Anthony Giddens summarises what he takes to be the essential core elements of the model:

• a developed and interventionist state, funded by relatively high levels of taxation;
• a  robust welfare system, which provides effective social protection, to some considerable degree for all citizens, but especially for those most in need;
• the limitation, or containment, of economic and other forms of inequality.

Relatively high, not punitive, levels of taxation.  Ireland has one of the lowest tax burdens in Europe and there is no responsible economic case for lowering them while trying to fund public services equal to the best in Europe.  To delve back into the Marxist lexicon again, I'm all for the primacy of politics over the dead hand of economism but not when it comes to further narrowing our tax base.  You simply can't credibly promise to spend more and tax less.