To watch Neale Richmond – normally an assured and confident politician – make a horrendous political flub on television this week might, if one was a cynic, lead one to think that it might not have been a flub at all. Here was a Government Minister, and a highly regarded one, linking the referendums due to be held in March directly to immigration at the very time when immigration is becoming a political issue of concern for the politicians:
It is fair to say that the two referendums that are to be held on March 8th are not on issues that are especially close to the Government’s heart. From day one, the impetus for them has not come from the Government – at least the FF and FG parts of it – but from the sort of NGO/lawyerly/Labour Party wing of Irish politics, which has been demanding them for some time. From the delaying of the referenda, to the wrangling over the wording, to the lack of any obvious enthusiasm from Government for them, one might well get the impression that the outcome of the campaigns is not the highest priority amongst politicians in the Dáil sitting to the Ceann Comhairle’s left.
What’s more, there’s a school of thought which says that if these referenda could be turned into a stick to beat the Government with, on issues like transgenderism and immigration and a general wider sense of discontent, then that might suit the Government just fine. The referenda are to be held, remember, just a few months before the local and European elections. This both provides an excuse for the political parties to spend very little money backing the referendum campaigns, and also provides what might be called a political pivot point: Give us a kicking on March 8th, and then you’ll feel better about voting for us two months later.
It is also a way – again, if you’re thinking in an entirely Machiavellian way – to have a full and open debate on immigration without any attendant political consequences. A crushing rejection of the family amendment, if the debate became linked to immigration, would create political space for the Government to move to the right further on immigration than it already has: The days after such an outcome might well be filled with sorrowful Government politicians talking about how there is clearly great public concern over the issue, and how the Government must reluctantly take steps to restore confidence. Having that happen after a campaign in which the liberal NGOs, the most pro-immigration groups, are likely to have taken the lead in the “YES” campaign would likely suit the Government even further.
After all, they’ll ask: Who got us into this mess?
All of this may sound nonsensical, but it was a view expressed to me this week by at least one senior party activist in Fine Gael, when asked to explain Richmond’s strangely pro-active decision to make immigration a topic in the referendum. There was no suggestion that it was deliberate – more a sense that perhaps subconsciously, Government figures would not mind immigration being on the ballot just so long as they personally are not on the ballot at the same time.
Richmond’s comments have a real practical impact on the debate: In an ideal world, the YES campaign would have sought to portray any linking of the referenda to immigration as the kind of misinformation and disinformation which all decent people should abhor, and which all decent social media platforms should censor. We can expect some of this rhetoric regardless – but it will be almost impossible for it to succeed, now that a government minister, of all people, has legitimised it in a very public way by linking increased immigration directly to the outcome of the votes as a positive reason for voting YES. Anyone on the NO side of the campaign who seeks to raise it can now point to the fact that it was not them, in fact, but Minister Richmond, who first raised the issue.
All in all, if you were to try to devise a way to let the public blow off some steam on the issue of immigration, but at the same time give the public no practical way to actually make an impact on immigration, could you really do much better?
But perhaps your correspondent is simply getting cynical in his advancing years. Time will tell.