Sir, – Louis Fitzgerald (Letters, March 19th) is right to highlight the danger to our democracy created by elected politicians living in an echo chamber of advisers and NGO advocates that seems to separate them from the views of party members, party voters or the wider general voting public. Maybe this may explain the recent referendum fiasco. Mr Fitzgerald does not speculate as to why politicians increasingly show such disdain for the views of mere party members and voters.
Could it be that modern politicians (and their advisers) are actually acting rationally in their own interests in a political world that now includes the lure of European and international jobs for the top politicians and handy sinecures in NGOs for their less exalted colleagues and advisers, should the electorate inexplicably cease to appreciate them? Could it be that these politicos are as aware as they ever were of the views of the grassroots, but they just know that the game has changed and their long-term careers are best served by embracing the predominant elite philosophical monoculture, however ridiculous, safe in the knowledge that there is no penalty for being completely wrong, so long as you are wrong in unison with the whole establishment?
Did any Irish politician suffer for talking up the ridiculous housing bubble that bankrupted this State back in 2008? Did any US or UK politician suffer for cheering on the Iraq war in 2003?
Maybe more deselection of representatives by local party members, or recall elections, as they have in the US, might readjust the balance of power between the ordinary citizen and the political elite.
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Something must be done. The referendums were surely the last straw. – Yours, etc,
TIM O’HALLORAN,
Dublin 11.