There is an elephant in our kitchen, a glaringly obvious truth around which our politicians skirt. It is that there is now no difference of any significance between the main political parties. Politics becomes more than a mere game only when it is about something. In today's Ireland, it isn't about anything. This is not doing us any good, writes Peter White.
From January 1922 until December 1993 the country and its political parties divided on the Treaty which had set up the State. Fianna Fáil, which held power for most of that time, managed to remain "a slightly constitutional party" never quite accepting the foundations of the State and allowing dangerous ambiguities which had long-lasting and disastrous consequences.
All this came to an end in the Downing Street Declaration of December 15th, 1993, when Albert Reynolds brought his Fianna Fáil party to accept the Treaty of Michael Collins. His Fianna Fáil predecessors had failed to embrace this reality and his successor has yet to acknowledge the enormity of this political leadership. In the same short-lived government, Reynolds rid his party of other key policy differences that separated Fianna Fáil from its old enemy. Fianna Fáil is now essentially "Fine Gael".
The split that defined our main political parties may have sealed over in 1993 but our political structures have drifted on as if nothing had happened. This has led to a growing disconnect between politics and policy, between what people vote for and what they get.
Politicians have a dual role. The primary one is that of bringing about the changes that they judge will benefit their country in the future (and leave their footprint). The secondary but necessary role is the hard slog of getting elected. The successful politician combines substance with the electoral game.
At a time of crisis, we concentrate on hard policy choices. As a result, when a country faces a major turning point, remarkable people rise rapidly to meet the political needs of the day. Where there is no greatly perceived need for change, we concentrate on the game rather than the issues, the expedient rather than the principled, the shifting sands of cynicism rather than the granite of hard moral choice.
For reasons long left behind and now irrelevant, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are committed to opposing each other. Consequently, the shape of our political game does not mirror any underlying reality of policy. This leaves very small parties in a position to wield disproportionate influence. Politicians of all parties and those who comment on the game take it as a given that government formation is about what you can do, not what you should do.
At a whim, we could have had a Labour-dominated Fianna Fáil government. With just a few more seats, the PDs could have had a third term of setting the agenda from a tiny base. As it happens it is the Green Party with its 4.7 per cent of the vote which is now in poll position. There is no pretence that government formation is about anything other than crude maximisation of office.
The electorate does not get the policies for which it votes. Of the 166 TDs elected this summer, 129 of them are Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. Their indistinguishable policies overwhelmingly won the election to parliament but not to government.
There was no serious pretence of policy difference between the major parties in the recent general election. Indeed, the main opposition block took the extraordinary step of throwing in the towel on the economy, indicating that the government was doing a splendid job and it would like to see this continue but with just a change in personnel. Yet, it has been plain for some time that the economy has overheated, that Ireland has been losing market share and that "a correction" has been looming.
The opposition felt that the truth was a little too gloomy for a nice summer campaign and so decided not to challenge the government with any force.
They did the same in 2002 when the issue was an irresponsible explosion in public spending; then, the opposition felt that promised goodies would be more appealing than truthful leadership and so they were poorly positioned to complain when the government raised taxes after the ballot boxes closed.
With politics now exclusively about the game rather than substance, all parties have allowed market research to be their master rather than their tactical device. This cowardly approach has perverted politics. Instead of looking over the hill, facing realities, mapping out a path and encouraging people to follow towards a tomorrow, our reactionary professional electables spend their resources listening to yesterday.
It is not even the yesterday of our whole society; it is only what the middle classes wanted yesterday. Every political manager knows that there is little value in pitching messages at loyal supporters or virulent opponents. Messages are best aimed at those voters who are most likely to switch vote. These floating voters are disproportionately to be found amongst the more prosperous citizens. The more materially comfortable voters tend to be the most frivolous in their flick of the pencil at the ballot box.
Political parties therefore probe middle-class wishes, tap into their fear and greed and tailor wish-lists accordingly. That is why public policy is riddled with a vast array of middle-class rip-offs, transfers from the general exchequer to those who are already doing pretty much okay.
How else can we account for free third-level fees, mortgage interest relief, health insurance tax breaks and the raft of little schemes that will remain impregnable to those who live at the edges.
The tragedy is that all is not okay and there are two other elephants in the kitchen. Both threaten national interest and middle-class comforts in the longer term.
First, we have lost the edge we had as a competitive trading nation and so we have lost the share of world trade we had seven or eight years ago. A strong global market has kept our boat floating but when there is an international downturn, the effect on Ireland will be particularly acute. From 1993 to 2000, our dramatic rise in productivity led to a boost in exports and remarkable economic growth. Since then, the drivers of our economic growth have been the construction industry and consumer spending . . . hardly the economic activity upon which a trading nation depends.
Second, it should concern us that the divergence between rich and poor is more marked in Ireland than it is among our European partners. The CSO's Measuring Ireland's Progress 2006, published on April 30th, noted that "in 2005 Ireland had the second highest GDP per capita in the EU" but also that "the proportion of Irish people at risk of poverty, after pensions and social transfer payments were taken into account, was 20 per cent in 2005. This was one of the highest rates in the EU 27 . . . The effect of pensions and social transfers on reducing the at-risk-of-poverty rate was low in Ireland compared with the other EU 27 countries".
Politicians and their managers should now be looking at how to entice and lead the electorate to accept the sort of measures that would make Ireland a successful trading nation which respects all its own people, a cluster of communities proud to look in on itself and out on the world.
It is not as if there is nothing about which we could build a substantial conversation.
Peter White runs a public affairs consultancy. He was Fine Gael press secretary from 1984 to 1993