Getting the pitch right for political football

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

I see the irrepressible Frank Flannery has arrived back on the scene to share his irrepressible thoughts on the political world with a public that, sadly for him, is very repressible.

Anyway the gist of Flannery’s theory is that the Coalition parties have three months to play their way back onto the pitch or else they will find themselves dead in the water when the next election arrives.

The theory sounds alluring but, like everything in politics, there are flaws.

It is true that Fine Gael and Labour need to regain control of the agenda. Not just by reason. They really need to catch the scruff of the neck. And like everything else the sooner they do that the better.

If you look at the overall performance of the economy – which is the main determinant for everything – you can’t quibble that the coalition has been successful there.

They have taken Ireland out of a bailout programme and regained sovereignty. On top of that, at a time when the Eurozone is on a slippery slope, the Irish economy is posting the kind of growth figures that get a waving green flag in Croke Park.

Sure, we are coming from a low base. Sure, we are benefitting because of our parallel ties with the strong dollar and sterling economies of the US and the UK. But they are the breaks, and we are catching them at the moment.

You look at other indicators and most of them are pointing in the right direction. After four years of CPR some life has finally been breathed into the construction industry. There are definite signs of consumer confidence with spending much more solid than in previous years. And the type of economy we have now is much more balanced than the boom-then-bust model based on property speculation. A lot of the growth has been on the back of exports and services.

But then there are a few warning signals that we should be paying more attention to.

New house building is a very slow beast to rouse back into life. In the meantime there has been a bottleneck as people seek homes but find that the supply of existing stock is very limited, thus forcing the prices upwards.

Government advisers tell you it’s not the same now because the banks aren’t lending wantonly etc etc. But you can still have history repeating itself albeit on a slightly more modest scale than before.

Back to the initial point, the big indicators are good.

So why has the Government failed so abysmally to benefit from it? Well, for one it does seem that economic recovery happens in a way that has a trickle-down effect. So sometimes it takes a long time for Joe Public to feel the benefit. For a while, senior Government Ministers were crowing the Harold McMillan line that “you have never had it so good”.

And the answer to that particular proposition was….wrong.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.