Government or Circus?

The yawning gap that exists in Ireland between the process of electing a government and what a government is expected to do was illustrated in an almost offhand exchange about the Independent Alliance on the Irish Times’s Inside Politics podcast of last Friday night. The exchange is between Fiach Kelly and Pat Leahy of the Times’s political staff, and begins at 12:25 on the podcast:

FIACH KELLY
Sarah’s right. They are not used to government. They are used to saying ‘get up the yard, get off the fence, let’s put our shoulders to the wheel’ - 

PAT LEAHY
They’re the opposite of government. It’s not just that they’ve been a conventional opposition, but it’s the exact opposite. They’ve never been the sort of opposition that had to prepare, that had to watch what they said because they envisaged being in government after the next election.

FIACH KELLY
They had their ‘Charter for Change,’ which formed the basis of their negotiations over the past number of weeks. This document they drew up about a year ago about their principles – motherhood and apple pie is a generous description of said document. I was speaking to someone in Fine Gael today who said that last week was the worst week of their lives because, at least when they were dealing with Fianna Fáil they were professional operators, they knew how to negotiate. Then you turn around and talk to the Independents and they didn’t know how the system or the government or anything like that worked, at all. So it’s going to be a very steep learning curve for them.

And the question your broken-hearted correspondent asks of all this is: why don’t the media report this? Where are the articles and think pieces that say politics is a profession, like any other, and while getting elected is a key skill, being able to govern is another?

A national politician who is serious about national politics should know how the instruments of government work. He or she may disagree with how those instruments work, and that’s fine. When he or she is in power, he or she will then have the power to make those instruments better. But he or she must know what those instruments of government are in the first place. And it’s quite clear that members of the Independent Alliance haven’t a bull’s notion.

There is a chicken-and-egg situation here. Media claim that they don’t cover these issues because politicians don’t talk about them. Politicians claim they don’t talk about these issues because the people aren’t interested in them. But how can the people learn about them if not through the media?

Yesterday the Sunday Business Post led with a story about an ‘understanding’ between disgraced TD Michael Lowry and Fine Gael in return for Lowry’s support for Enda Kenny as Taoiseach. As remarked upon here earlier, Lowry is like the dog that didn’t bark in the old Sherlock Holmes story.

Why would Michael Lowry support the government? What’s in it for him? The people of Tipperary elected Lowry on the first count in the election because he is seen to “deliver” for the people of Tipperary. What’s Lowry swung for the Premier this time? Why haven’t we been told? Why hasn’t any other media outlet (especially RTÉ) reported the story? Why hasn’t anyone asked the Nemesis of Cronyism, the Minister for Transport, Shane Ross TD, how he feels about a secret sweetheart deal with Michael Lowry?

This tweet from Matt Cooper may help explain why:

Very clever and witty insider column from Shane Ross in Sindo. Hope he continues in this vein every week he is a minister. Transparency.

— Matt Cooper (@cooper_m) May 8, 2016

Extraordinary. A story broke in the US last week about how ridiculously easy a member of the Obama administration found seeding stories in the media. That man wouldn’t ever have to get out of bed in Ireland.

But we have a government now, and they are sitting down to govern. How will they do that? Well, some of those governmental decisions that effect people’s lives and, potentially, the future of the state itself will be decided by a man who won a coin toss. Not because the Taoiseach has had his eye on this or that person’s career and thinks he or she could do a really good job as a junior minister in a particular department. No. It’s because he won a coin toss.

Imagine if, God forbid, you are in court, accused of murder. And instead of a judge, Bozo the Clown walks in and announces that, as a result of a coin toss, he’ll be running the court while Mr Justice Murphy will be doing pratfalls and standing on rakes in Fossett’s Circus for the foreseeable future. Then, with Bozo tooting a horn rather than banging a gavel, the court comes to order and the trial for your life begins.

Welcome to Ireland in the year of the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising. God help us all.

A Government Cannot Be Formed

I, for one, do not welcome our new overlords.

A government cannot be formed, and it’s the people’s own fault. The sooner the political establishment comes to terms with that, admits it and pulls the lever for a second election the better off we’ll all be.

Fianna Fáil have had a merry old time over the past three weeks bullying Fine Gael in negotiations. And now, in the best schoolyard tradition, Fine Gael are going have their fun with that one group in the Oireachtas who are more natural victims than they are – the independents.

All that stuff out of Shane Ross and his bunch about new politics and broad policy outlines is now exposed as what anybody with the intelligence of a toad could see what it always was – nonsense. John Halligan is digging in over his local hospital, which should have every alarm bell ringing for Denis Naughten. Naughton won Roscommon because he knew Roscommon Hospital had to come first. If Halligan gets Waterford – oh, excuse me, your honour, the South-Eastern – Hospital sorted for a cardiac unit, what must Naughten do to deliver for the Ros? Brain Surgery? Head transplants?

It is interesting to note that supposedly the most idealistic of the independents, Deputy Zappone, was the first to row in behind Enda Kenny’s re-election as Taoiseach. It would be interesting to know what exactly she’s been promised in return for her support. Your correspondent likes to think she’s been promised a herd number for a unicorn farm somewhere outside Firhouse or Knocklyon, but chances are the deal isn’t even as substantial as that.

And what of that most mysterious of independents, Deputy Lowry? Deputy Lowry has made no bones about his support for Enda Kenny as Taoiseach, and nobody seems to have a problem with that. Five years ago Dáil Éireann passed a motion calling on Deputy Lowry to resign his seat, such was the Dáil’s repugnance at his behaviour, as exposed by the Moriarty Tribunal. Nobody now seems to have a problem with his presence, to say nothing of his vital vote in electing a government. If everyone and their uncle is getting sorted, what in all this for Deputy Lowry?

The media don’t seem too bothered harping on about this. The media are part of the problem. The media are negligent in their duty in calling these members to account, and saying this is not the way to govern a country. It’s all a game in Ireland’s political Bermuda triangle of Leinster House, the Shelbourne Hotel and Kehoe’s of South Anne Street.

Your correspondent thought – foolishly, as it turns out – that the crash of 2008 would be a learning experience for the country. Instead, it’s been an exercise in becoming more ignorant.

At the nadir of the boom, the standard narrative was that the country had fallen into an economic abyss that would take thirty years to recover from. It took three. So, either the abyss was actually a pothole, or Ireland pulled off an economic miracle so extraordinary it makes the German post-war recovery look like two cavemen fighting over a tusk using the barter system. Or both. Or neither.

There are subtleties to all these things. We don’t subtle in Irish politics. Or thoughtful. Or even vaguely sentient.

Maybe, when the election is called, we’ll bite the bullet. Maybe we’ll show the political parties that there is a reward at the ballot box for proper, intelligent politics. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. The only functional part of Irish politics is that we get exactly the government we deserve. God help us all.

A Second Election is the Only Sensible Solution

Enda Kenny must do the sensible thing. He must go up to the Park and tell the President it’s time to give the wheel another spin.

The strong media consensus that a Grand Coalition between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael was not only the only possible result from the election but that it was the only sensible result from the election has proved to be so much blather.

It would take a seismic change to overturn a political culture that has lasted for nearly eighty years. As it happens, that seismic change happened five years ago, but instead of a radical realignment of Irish politics, we got a return to the Fine Gael / Labour coalitions of the ‘seventies and ‘eighties. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were just as ideologically similar then as now, and they certainly had numbers to form a coalition, but nobody was talking about an FF/FG coalition being either inevitable or obvious then.

Five years on, we have stalemate, as the difference between how elections are run in this country and how governments are formed are clearer than they ever have been. In theory, the voter goes to the polls with the intention of selecting a government for the country. In practice, the voter goes to forty different polls and votes for the candidate that will best represent his or her local area when it’s time for goodies to be handed out.

Hence the impasse. In the past, the dominance of the major parties has been such that the flaw inherent in the system was never exposed. Fine Gael’s loss of a TD for not building a school in Ballycarrick was made up by the gain of a TD who was passionate on the retention of the garda station in Carrigbally. Checks and balances.

Unfortunately, the slow dissolution of the two-and-a-half party system has not been matched by a likewise evolution of political awareness in the electorate. This is partly a western thing; it doesn’t seem that the US electorate are having a particularly statesmanlike moment right now either, while the Tories in the United Kingdom are pointing a gun to their own heads while threatening to shoot the hostage. Extraordinary behaviour.

But the Irish context seems worse, somehow. Not least because the country is so small, and it shouldn’t be so hard to communicate what’s actually happening. For a small country to be independent, the citizens must be more active than they have to be in the big country like the UK or Germany or the USA. In big countries, there will always be enough clever and/or informed people to keep the political show on the road. Here, we need more hands to the mast.

A second election, then, but an election like no other. This second election, if it comes soon, will be the first honest election in God only knows how long. It will be an honest election because the electorate will be eager to know just why it’s going through this all again, and this will involve asking hard questions of the politicians.

Elections are understood to be about what different parties will do if given the chance to govern. This election has been unusual in electing a substantial number of TDs who are not trying a jot to govern, or who cannot muster support because they are independents. It will be interesting see them answer the question of why anyone should vote for them next time out.

For that reason, the Taoiseach should accept that, while the people have spoken, what they’ve said is unintelligible. Therefore, they must be asked again. Enda Kenny bottled a chance at remarking the politics of the country after the 2011 election by coalescing with Labour, rather than forcing Fianna Fáil to support their own policies. It is that choice that allowed Fianna Fáil to rise again so spectacularly.

But now Enda Kenny has that rarest of things in life: a second chance. By calling a second chance he can expose the limits of clientelist system and bring the voting public to a new understanding of politics and what good governance can actually do. The people will see that they must vote for a government, rather than a county councillor with super powers.

For what it’s worth, your correspondent doesn’t expect that happen. Some sort of government will be cobbled together that will pass a budget (Berlin permitting), and then collapse in 2017, leading to the election then. But things will have moved on by then, and the moment will have passed. New politics is difficult for old politicians, after all.

And yet that hope still glimmers. Enda Kenny has a very rare chance to really make history. I hope he takes it while it’s there.

You Can Still Be a Winner in #GE16!

Eight or so days from polling day, and some two months from the 100th Anniversary of the Rising, it seems that Irishmen and Irishwomen are determined to elect the greatest Irish stew of a Government the misfortunate nation has seen. But don’t despair reader – before you pack that Samsonite bag and hightail it to Canada, Australia or where-ever else will have you, knock some bit of crack out of the election at least by trying your hand at elecTeD, the general election 2016 game!

Devised in his simple scholar's hut, or bothán, on plains of sweet Mayo, a friend of the blog has come up with this excellent election competition. Here’s what you do:

1. Pick who’ll be elected in each constituency.
2. Send The Man a tenner via Paypal.
3. 50% of the total pot goes to the winner, and 50% goes to a charity of the winner’s choice. Simple as that.

Don’t fancy them apples? Like your competitions short and sweet? Then take a crack at this one, where you just call the seats for each party. Tenner again via Paypal, and you’re in there.

Entry is open from now until the polls close on polling day, Friday, February 26th. Throw down your tenners now, and get yourself something to cheer in this farrago of representative democracy.