Two stories – very different stories – caught my eye yesterday for the same reason. The first story is an economic one, about taxation. Ireland is on the verge of agreeing to abandon its 12.5% rate of corporation tax, and sign up to an international agreement to set our corporate taxes at a minimum rate of 15%.
Now, this may be a good, or a bad thing. Certainly, as recently as two years ago, Government TDs were convinced that it was a bad thing, and were going so far as to taunt international colleagues that they were in possession of a veto, and would not hesitate to use it. Here, for example, is Neale Richmond, in 2017:
Urge away, we've a veto https://t.co/HqLX8oKHGX
— Neale Richmond (@nealerichmond) September 26, 2017
And here is Fine Gael, in 2016:
A senior Fine Gael figure says corporation tax is an “absolute red-line issue”.
Fine Gael MEP Brian Hayes, who ran Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s re-election campaign, told the Irish Independent that if corporation tax rates are threatened then Ireland should follow Britain out of the EU.
“That is the absolute red line issue. If any attempt is made to cajole us, as far as I’m concerned, we’re out the door,” he said.
Now, to be generous, it is possible that Fine Gael and the Government were wrong before, and are correct today. Perhaps the new rate of tax is in our interest. Perhaps it is good policy. But it is certainly at least somewhat surprising that we are doing something in 2021 that we were threatening to leave the EU to prevent, just a few years ago. In fact, it is more than surprising – it is astonishing.
What is more astonishing, of course, is the complete absence of any real political controversy around this u-turn. You will not hear, or read, in the Irish media, any journalists or politicians bringing these old statements back up. There have been virtually no articles expressing concern at what – just a few years ago – would have been seen as a national catastrophe. Once again, the Irish consensus has shifted, almost overnight, with no debate, one hundred and eighty degrees. Without, of course, any need to consult the voters on the matter.
The second story is not economic, but cultural. Consider this section from an article in the Irish Times about unvaccinated soccer player:
Despite the Irish camp being severely disrupted by Covid-19 since Stephen Kenny took over in September 2020, and despite Callum Robinson only recovering from a second bout of the virus last month, (and considering his manager is a genuine risk of suffering from underlying conditions if infected), the West Brom striker openly refuses to be vaccinated.
Robinson, sitting in front of the FAI hash tag ‘We Are One,’ would not give a reason for his stance when questioned on the matter yesterday afternoon in a small, stuffy room that contained 26 other professionals.
The striker, who has 18 caps for Ireland, the most recent being an inspirational impact off the bench against Serbia last month, inadvertently hijacked a Repeal the Eighth campaign cry.
There is, according to most international experts, no medical reason why the player, Callum Robinson, needs to be vaccinated. Unlike me, with my two doses of moderna, he has natural antibodies against Covid. He also, more pertinently, has an absolute legal right to decide to take, or refuse, a vaccine. Yet look at how the article is written: Robinson “openly” refuses. In a room with 26 other people, indeed, which, we are told, is “stuffy”. Even his arguments, we are told, “hijack a repeal the eighth slogan”. What you are supposed to think about Robinson is clear: He is a danger to himself and others. The poor journalist himself, in that “stuffy” room, was under threat.
Both these stories have one thing in common, and it is that they are prime examples of the way the Irish establishment, and to only a very slightly lesser extent, Irish voters, operate. Decisions and positions in Ireland are rarely arrived at through a thorough process of national debate and discussion. Instead they appear, fully formed, almost out of nowhere, as a national consensus. Five years ago the consensus was that the corporate tax rate was sacred. Now, out of nowhere, the consensus is that giving it up is the mature and right thing to do. On vaccines, somewhere and somehow it was decided that those of us, like me, who got the jab are upstanding and moral, while those of us who did not are threats to the tribe, with whom it is perilous even to breath the same air.
Neither position, of course, was arrived at through any kind of national effort at rational analysis. Instead, they reflect Ireland’s single biggest problem: Groupthink. It infects almost every area of public life.
Before Ireland was a Republic, it was a colony. Before it was a colony, it was a tribal confederation. Our Republic, after centuries as a colony, reverted very swiftly to a tribal culture. As a nation, it is uncommonly important to us, for some reason, that everybody behaves and thinks in a similar way. For almost all of the century of our independence, this trait has lead to our biggest disasters. Dissent in Ireland is unwelcome. Naysayers are shouted down. Those who argue against the prevailing winds are regarded as contrarians at best, and oddballs at worst. As a people, even to this day, we obey the tribal urge to turn our faces away from the modern day harlots and fallen women, whether they be unvaccinated extremists, or eurosceptics, or people warning about Government spending. It’s in our blood.
In 2008, when the last great disaster befell us, there was a moment of post-fall clarity. “Yes”, the media said, “too many dissenters were shouted down. There was a Groupthink problem. It should never happen again”. People like Morgan Kelly (remember him?) briefly became national celebrities – the naysayers we had wrongly silenced. He was even allowed on RTE, multiple times. Then, of course, he vanished, never to be heard from again. Almost all of the “soft landing” people, though, are back and as popular as ever. We collectively decided that groupthink was no longer a problem.
Well, it’s happening again. It has never, in truth, stopped happening. And in this country, with its bizarre obsession with respectability, it probably never will.