Nobody Wants to be Right Wing

I caught a few minutes of Michael McDowell on Tubridy Tonight on RTE last night where he was being affable and quite funny.  When asked why many journalists called him names like Rottweiler, he just shrugged it off by saying that they are probably reacting against his calling them to account for their "leftist cant".  He rejected the suggestion that he was the most right wing politician in the country by pointing out that he was not right wing at all - "I am a liberal in politics..."- and he claimed he was neither conservative nor reactionary.  In this he is surely right as he does not want to turn the clock back and he clearly has a radical programme of social change and has no interest in having things remain the same.   

So if McDowell is not a man of the right, then do we have any right wing politicians in the country or are they all on the left or, more likely, occupying the very overcrowded centre ground?  There are many politicians who explicitly attack 'the left' without ever identifying themselves as being on the right.  The confusion exists because such locational signifiers as left and right do not mean the same thing at all times and places.  It is true that the left are usually socialists or social democrats who believe in controlling and regulating market forces.  They are also secular and stand for separation of church and state.  In Ireland, the economic dimension of left versus right was never the defining feature of either our party system or how political conflict was waged.  This is partly due to the dominance of nationalism as a mobilising agent and of the Fianna Fáil party as being the functional equivalent of social democracy as far as economic policy was concerned. 

What I am claiming here is that FF, at certain key times in its history, delivered important benefits to sections of the working class, thus ensuring that most working class voters voted for FF rather than Labour.  On the other hand, Fianna Fáil was inclined to back the church and assuage catholic interests until very recently. This gave rise to many people who would have reacted against this conservative position on church-state issues and would have seen themselves as liberals.  Such voters had no natural home to go to, in terms of the structure of the party system.  Some would have gravitated towards Labour, others towards Fine Gael under Garret Fitzgerald and later, the Progressive Democrats.  Fianna Fáil nowadays no longer cleaves to the Catholic Church in the way it once did and, under Ahern's consensual leadership style, does not offend any significant element of the electorate.  This makes them hard to beat.

So back to McDowell who is not right wing.  Except he is on economic matters as he is clearly in favour of leaving things to the market as much as possible and believes that state intervention and levels of taxation should be kept to a minimum.  He may be right wing on the economy but I wouldn't call him a conservative.  Bertie Ahern, despite his calling himself a socialist, is much more of a conservative on economic matters as he really does want things to go on as before, hence his rising anxiety over the receding prospects of another round of social partnership. 

Comments

[Kevin]

Well, in replying to the accusation that he is right-wing with "No, I'm a liberal", he went into complicated waters, as liberalism - depending on the person - could be either left or right. Economically, McDowell is certainly right-wing, and it seems that in economics, liberalism is right-wing. I've read a few things in which in claimed to be a social liberal, which would translate into the left-wing. The whole thing is too 2-D.

[EWI]

So, is he saying he's 'liberal' or Liberal (in the laissez-faire sense)? There really isn't much luck to be had in trying to pigeonhole people these days - the times have changed greatly since the nineteenth century and even the mid-twentieth - which is where the stereotypes associated with these labels comes from.

[simon]

The american media has corrupted the word right and left liberal and conservative. They are all different. You can be a left liberal or a left conservative right liberal or right conservative and all other combinations. But the likes of Al Franklen and Bill O' Reily have made people think Left is liberal and Right is conservative. In the words of Peter Griffen. That grinds my gears.

[wulfbeorn]

I think the exact phrase McDowell used was "liberal radical", which only seems accurate to me relative to the other parties and in the absence of any actually radical liberals. That said, he is one of the most liberal politicians in the country and he's definitely not a conservative. On the other hand, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for me are both fine examples of conservatives. Both are at home in a mixed economy and both will stay on the right side of the Church. You can't really say either of those things about the PDs.

[SU28Piper]

Thank you, it's very inspiring description it might be very polite for students. For example last year when I had a difficult of time at the end of semester with a constant flow of academic assignments and mission, I had a inspiring idea to buy it somewhere and than use online plagiarism. I was so crippled that I did not care for what can begin when my academic work was written by another person. To my greatest surprise, research paper was desirable the price I paid for it. I was so contented with the quality and now everytime i use this service.