Political World
Floating a grand Coalition – or filling the silly season?
World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com
The last week saw the prospect of a grand coalition floated and an end to Civil War politics – so is it a silly season story or is there a real prospect of the unthinkable happening in the Irish political context?
This grand coalition between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael has been called for by the left for generations now – to satisfy a claimed need for the ‘realignment’ of Irish politics into left and right.
I have long held that the simple left and right division no longer has purchase in Irish politics. We live in a settled democracy with an increasingly complex society. The distinction between middle and working class constituencies are now as clear as they were.
The problems confronting society will increasingly move away from creating jobs to searching for jobs for people, in a world where anywhere between 20 and 40 per cent of current jobs won’t exist in a generation’s time.
It is clear there must be alternatives offered to the current policies of the Government. We have seen the huge desire for that in the Labour Party in Britain where the old-fashioned left-winger Jeremy Corbyn has raced ahead of his rivals – three identikit New Labourites.
But this is the problem with the left. The slogans sound good, but the maths just don’t add up. It’s all very well promoting a message of anti-austerity but when you boil it all down, it still needs to be paid for by somebody.
When you get to the end of the rainbow promised by anti-austerity parties you miraculously find a pot of gold, which has just appeared out of nowhere, and will provide all our needs.
Corbyn’s ultimate argument is for grand scale quantitative easing, in other words printing of money. There is a thin divide between a stimulus like that and a pyramid scheme.
The other flaw with the left-wing approach is that the thinking has remained static for fifty years or more. Centre and centre-right and centre-left parties have reshaped their messages and their approach to address the more complex needs of more complex societies, as circumstances change and the social and cultural outlook evolves.
When I listen to some of the megaphone megalomaniacs roar and shout, it’s the same kind of rhetoric I heard on college campuses a quarter of a century ago. The politics apply to circumstances that have not really pertained in Europe since the 1950s.
That said, let’s have a look at Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Of the big four, you could say without fear of contradiction they are the closest ideologically. There may be some quibbling on details but their economic policies are very similar.
Indeed Fine Gael has essentially continued the harsh economic programme introduced by Fianna Fáil in 2010. Sure there are differences but they take too much explaining and are ultimately not core.
Fianna Fáil is a republican party and its views would be more strident on the Irish language, on the North, and in promoting a particular form of Irish identity.
That said, as we have seen, it would be wrong to portray Fine Gael as a monoculture Redmondite party – it has its own republican wing, of which party leader Enda Kenny would probably belong.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
Academically, politics is described as a science. But in the real world, it’s more of an art – and one of the big decisions a Government has to make is to decide when to call an election.
Will they see out the full term, or will they go early – either to mitigate the damage they will ship, or to secure a victory before things go awry, or the economy takes a dip, or some kind of controversy erupts?
Timing is everything.
And there’s a bit of art to that – not to mention a lot of luck. If you call it early and win big, you’re a genius. If you call it early and lose, you are the political version of the village fool.
Charlie Haughey was a poor judge of the public mood. Twice he called snap elections and on both occasions they backfired. Haughey succeeded Jack Lynch as Taoiseach in late 1979 and did not – technically – have his own mandate. He tried to remedy that by calling an election in 1981. But it recoiled. Ray MacSharry warned him not to hold it during the H Block hunger strikes when republican prisoners were dying each day. He did not listen to the advice and found himself out of office.
After his return to power in 1987, Haughey tired of presiding over a minority government that kept on losing votes in the Oireachtas (the opposition won nine private members motions).
So he called a snap general election and it backfired. Fianna Fáil lost seats and had to broker a coalition deal with the Progressive Democrats and his long-standing political adversary Dessie O’Malley.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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World of Politics with Harry McGee
I was cycling down Mount Street in Dublin on Tuesday. It’s a wide esplanade that links the Grand Canal with Merrion Square. The street is a mixture of fine Georgian buildings and modern office blocks.
About half-way down is the office of the International Protection Office, which deals with asylum seekers who have arrived in the country.
Needless to say, the office has been overwhelmed in the past year. Besides an estimated 80,000 refugees who have arrived from Ukraine, there have been about 20,000 people from other parts of the world who have arrived into Dublin (mostly) claiming asylum.
The numbers peaked around Christmas, but they have been falling a little. In January, more than 1,300 people arrived seeking asylum but the numbers fell back to 831 and 858, in February and March respectively.
They are still huge numbers in a historical context.
So back to my cycle on Tuesday. I knew that some asylum seekers were camping outside the International Protection Office, but I was taken aback by how many. There were six tents lined up on the pavement directly outside. Then on the ramp that led down to the basement carpark on the side of the building, there were about another 20 tents.
It looked like what it was, a refugee camp in the middle of Dublin’s business district. If you pan out from Mount Street, you will find tents here and there in nearby streets and alleys. There were a good few tents in an alleyway off Sandwith Street about 500 metres away.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
God that was a dramatic and historic weekend in England, wasn’t it? So much excitement, so much change, so much hype, so much out with the old and in with the new, and what looks like the coronation of a new leader. Yes, the local elections in Britain were something else weren’t they!
Apologies for not going on about King Charles III but the contract I signed when I became a lifelong republican forbids me to discuss the topic!
I know the British local elections sound a bit boring by comparison, but the results were stunning.
The Conservatives lost nearly 1,000 seats, the British Labour Party gained almost 500 and both the Lib Dems (with 350 gains) and the Greens (gaining over 200) also had amazing days at the polls.
It was Labour’s best day since 2002 but its victory was only partial. The Greens and the Lib Dems actually made gains at the expense of Labour in more affluent areas, and in parts of Britain where there were high numbers of graduates.
It was in the Red Wall constituencies in the North of England where the Labour recovery was strongest. These are working class constituencies with pockets of deprivation where people voted for the Labour Party forever. But all of those constituencies voted for Brexit and then voted for the Tories in the next general election. Labour is now winning back some of those votes.
Local elections are classified as second-tier elections which essentially means – from a national perspective – they are not life-or-death affairs, and not everything turns on them. Of course, it’s really important to have good local representation. But they are not an amazing weather vane for who rules the country.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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