Sir, – Mark Mohan writes (Letters, November 13th) on Sinn Féin’s tax plans.
His letter was prompted by Cliff Taylor’s commentary on the politics of Sinn Féin’s plans to soak the rich (“How will Sinn Féin’s plans to tax the rich affect the economy?”, Opinion & Analysis, November 4th). Your columnist points out that the political calculus for the party is a willingness to hit hard a relatively small number of already heavily taxed higher earners to pay for relatively modest gains for a large number of lower earners.
Politics is a numbers game and this approach makes a lot of political and electoral sense. It has been said that the art of politics is to bribe the electors with their own money.
An improvement on that is to bribe your supporters with other people’s money. And, of course, the narrowing of the income tax base which is implicit in the approach advocated by Sinn Féin reinforces the thought beloved of the Left that its supporters can enjoy the benefits of living in this country without making a contribution to the cost of keeping the show on the road.
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It may be too late now for Fine Gael to learn a simple lesson from Sinn Féin on vote gathering – look after your supporters and don’t pander to those who will never support you.
In abolishing water charges, Fine Gael left disenchanted its own supporters who in large part had paid the charges. They saw the climbdown on water charges as just another example of the political centre kowtowing to the Left which was never going to reward that craven surrender. And Fine Gael supporters who received their refunds were well aware that, through the old reliable “general taxation”, they would end up paying water charges both for themselves and for those who want to pay for nothing.
In short, Fine Gael’s surrender on water charges lost it credibility with its own supporters and was never going to garner the support of those who were vocal in opposition to the charges. That amounts to political self-immolation. – Yours, etc,
PAT O’BRIEN,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.