When those seen as bearers of a new hope retreated the electorate settled for the safest option
ONE OF the curses afflicting Irish politics has been the imported nature of the commentary, which has insisted that a progressive politics inevitably breaks down into right and left.
Socialism, everywhere it happened, was a bourgeois imposition, born of the guilt and guile of self-serving elites who sought to dominate “the masses” by pretending to be on their side. On the Irish left, and in the weave of leftist commentary, this syndrome is visible also, complicated by the fact that, since there was never an Irish industrial revolution, there is no Irish working class.
Thus, the “left wing” voices in Irish society are almost invariably the overeducated progeny of the well-heeled, whose politics are the ideological equivalent of kicking their fathers in the shins. This is broadly true of the Labour Party, and overwhelmingly true of leftist voices in the media. Socialism Irish-style is almost exclusively self-interested paternalism, an ideological noblesse oblige seeking to dismantle Irish social and existential norms while hiding behind a pretend concern for “the most vulnerable”.
Once again, after the election, we awake to the lectures of those who have arrogated to themselves the right to define what “radical” means. Indeed, even before polling day, when it was clear that Fine Gael would lead the next government, we were being warned about the consequences of electing another “right-of-centre” administration, as opposed to endorsing “radical” perspective.
In fact there was no shortage of “radical” options, with roughly 40 per cent of candidates being Independents, and with Sinn Féin, alone among the outgoing Dáil parties, proposing debt repudiation as a serious option. Many voters were won over by such perspectives: in one sense, this will be the most “radical” Dáil in living memory, with nearly a quarter of the seats filled by Independents or members of parties who argue for drastically different ways of doing things.
But can we look at this array of alternativism and say that it arises from a coherent appetite for left-wing politics? And even where a connection can be made between the professed socialism of the candidate or party and the voter’s stroke, can we say that what has apparently been endorsed offers any cogent proposal for setting Ireland to rights? No and no.
Debt repudiation, for example, is not a left-wing solution, but a technical, ideologically neutral response to the problem of untenable debt. Many candidates in the election stepped up to the stump to denounce the “establishment” approach, but none articulated a convincing go-it-alone alternative – a coherent Plan B that was not hooked up to some half-baked socialist solution based on “redistributing” wealth.
We cannot say, then, that people have rejected the repudiation option in favour of, say, some vaguely intimated renegotiation fudge. What appears to have been declined is the combination of repudiation and leftist policies offering no prescription for how Ireland might sustain itself after we burn our boats along with the bondholders.
For a brief moment in advance of the campaign, it appeared that, for the first time in my lifetime, some coherent alternative, perhaps even one suited to Irish circumstances, might indeed set up a stall in this election.
For nearly three years, the Irish public had been subjected to an unforgiving and relentless education in the finer points of economic self-realisation. Although the general understanding of the roots of our difficulties remained superficial, there was, over those three years, a growing awareness of the part played by the failings of the existing political model. It seemed that, out of this new consciousness, some new voice would emerge.
And it did. The defining moment of this election occurred not in the campaign but in the last days of January, when it was announced that Democracy Now, a would-be political movement dominated by a handful of high-profile journalists, had miscarried.
This moment was fateful because, by then, the leaders of this movement had insinuated themselves into the public consciousness as bearers of a new hope – a hope that past mistakes and wrongdoings could be overcome and that real options could be expressed in reasonable terms – albeit, it is true, not entirely free of the vacuous leftism that Irish people instinctively mistrust.
Then, having drawn the hopes and desires of the Irish people to themselves, these men decided – for eminently practical and sensible reasons – to withdraw and return to the sidelines. By briefly confusing their role of commentating with that of representing, they led the people on towards the glimmer of light they indicated somewhere up ahead. And then, by their retreat, they implied something else: that things were not as bad as they had intimated, or that things were beyond redemption.
After this, the election became a matter of settling for the safest option: a secure administration to continue the work of the last – free, to an extent, from the shadows and stains of the past.
Although it did not field any candidates, Democracy Now was the defining force of this election. It took the hopes and dreams of the Irish people and subjected them to a controlled explosion in the public square.
Let us not bemoan our lack of radicalism or failure of nerve until this betrayal has been understood.