In the events surrounding the formation of a government last week, one force was conspicuous only by its absence. The Irish Left has seldom seemed so inert. Labour was no more than a bit-part player, reduced to the futile gesture of voting for a centre-right Taoiseach who could not be elected. The Greens left much of their former radicalism behind, and many of their former supporters literally outside the door.
Most left-wing independents have either lost their seats or, like Finian McGrath, rushed to do a deal with Bertie Ahern. With the resurgence of Fine Gael and the renewed power of Fianna Fáil, the solid, centre-right parties that emerged from the Civil War are now as dominant as they ever were. Given the need in a strong democracy for real choices, this is not healthy.
The failure of the Left is all the more striking because Ireland should now be fertile ground, if not for old-style socialism, then for an ambitious social democratic movement. In an urban, secularised society, much of the conservatism of the past has gone. The national question, which for so long trumped social and economic issues, has been answered. The experience of the last 15 years, moreover, has borne out at least one central argument of the Left. Economic growth does not of itself solve the problems of poverty and inequality or deliver services that enable all citizens to participate fully in society.
The Left's inability to capitalise on these conditions may be rooted in the failure of what is now a middle-aged core of activists to grasp the dynamics of a young and materially ambitious society. But the obvious option of attempting some kind of belated Tony Blair-style modernisation may not be as attractive as it looks. Blair revived the British Labour Party by moving it onto a largely open centre ground. That ground is fully occupied in Ireland by two slick, adaptable and extremely resilient catch-all parties. To have any future, the Left has to be offering something genuinely different.
The task for the Irish Left, if it is not to dwindle into long-term irrelevance, is to develop a coherent critique that genuinely engages with the nature of the Irish economy. That means talking, not just about how money is spent, but about how wealth is generated. It means connecting social justice to innovation, equality to entrepreneurship, and inclusion to productivity. It means making the case that investment in children, in education, in health, in the dignity of people with disabilities, in the repair of broken communities, is not an optional extra, but a key to future economic development. It means appealing not just to the compassion of Irish people but to their enlightened self-interest.
Much of the material for such a critique is available in the analyses that have underpinned social partnership and has, therefore, a wide degree of consensus around it. It is, ironically, a centre ground more radical and challenging than much of the old Left orthodoxy. If the Left can translate that analysis into real, ground-level politics, its years in the wilderness will not be entirely wasted.