It is probably a bad idea to write an analysis of the day’s referendum results having just listened, as your correspondent sadly has, to the commentary on those same results presented to the public by the taxpayer funded national broadcaster.
On RTE, the conventional wisdom, as it always does in Ireland, congealed quickly: The people, the poor unfortunate people, were just confused.
The Government, per Alison O’Connor of the Sunday Times, draped in mourning shade of bright pink, had completely failed to explain the benefits of its referendum proposals to joe soap, and across the country poor hairy baboons coming down from their mountain mud huts had walked into polling booths and cast a “no” vote because of their unenlightened state. Over at Dublin Castle, Miriam O’Callaghan – a “proud feminist” – had encountered a taxi driver this morning who had voted “no/no” because he did not understand what he was being asked. Miriam nodded sympathetically as she imparted this information to Regina Doherty, who nodded sympathetically in return. “We could have done more to make it clear”, she said, in the manner of a teacher worried that little Tommy still wasn’t sure of his six times tables.
It is ever thus with official Ireland: there are only ever two explanations acceptable for political outcomes: Either the public has resoundingly endorsed the views of their betters, or the poor public has been too ignorant to truly appreciate the views of their betters. Were these referendums on some EU treaty, by now we would already have had the calls to hold them again and explain them better. True disagreement with the establishment is never acknowledged – either you’re smart enough to agree and vote yes, or your little pea-brain is too small to understand why you should have voted yes, in which case the blame lies with your betters for not explaining it to you at your intellectual level. Thus we can expect Government Ministers to face a slew of questions about “communication” today.
Who can blame them really? They thought you were smarter than you are, and if there’s blame to be had, it’s just that they overestimated the public’s intelligence. Taxi drivers cannot be expected to understand things the way Miriam O’Callaghan does, after all.
If the establishment in this country wishes to talk about communications, though, then let’s talk about it: This campaign began with a taxpayer funded NGO, the National Women’s Council, publishing an argument for a Yes vote in the country’s flagship newspaper that claimed that the constitution mandates the Government to “oppress” women. That was a lie. A taxpayer-funded lie, told to the public.
It continued with repeated insistences that the phrase “durable relationships” was clear, even as the Government had legal advice from its own attorney general making clear that the phrase was anything but clear. That was a lie, parroted by the entire cabinet at one stage or another.
On RTE the other night, the Tánaiste seemed to suggest that that the referendum on the family could not permit polygamy because “polygamy is illegal”. Even the hairiest baboons in their mountainside mud huts know that he was lying, since the constitution is superior to all legislation.
The real issue with these referendum campaigns, I’d argue, is not that the public did not understand them, but that the Government did not understand them. There was a sense throughout the campaign that Government didn’t really understand itself why it was holding these votes, other than as a box-ticking exercise because liberal Ireland, from its unassailable redoubt in the gender studies department of UCD and its fortress in the NGO sector, told them it must have them. The referendums were favoured by progressive academics, and since everything favoured by progressive academics is good and praiseworthy, Ministers went along with it.
Poor Heather Humphreys was put in charge of the Fine Gael yes campaign – a staunch Presbyterian from the borderlands asked to lead a campaign to downgrade the status of marriage. No wonder she spent the campaign hiding as far from the capital city and the press corps as she could manage. There is nobody in Fine Gael who thinks that these referenda were her cup of tea.
Over on the Fianna Fáil side, Thomas Byrne was put in charge as punishment for whatever he’s done to annoy the Tánaiste this time, and promptly delivered one of the most clueless performances in the recent history of Irish politics in a debate with Peadar Tóibín, seeming not to understand the very basic questions Tóibín was asking him.
Sinn Fein, of course, did what they always do: They sided with the NGOs half-heartedly because the worst thing you can be in Leinster House is suspect in the eyes of Orla O’Connor of the NWCI. Across the country today, it is their voters, in working class areas, who are giving the Government the biggest kicking. Sinn Fein, as it is on so many issues, is completely out of touch with its own support base, even as it ponders why its polling has stalled.
The biggest questions, however, should be reserved for the aforementioned NWCI and its associated panopoly of taxpayer funded lobby groups who were the true driving force behind these referendums being called. The National Women’s Council of Ireland is funded almost entirely by the taxpayer to represent the views and concerns of Irish women. As we have learned today, it does no such thing. Women across the country have rejected its argument. So why, pray tell, does it continue to receive funding?
If you listen to RTE today, and probably to voices across the rest of the so-called “mainstream” media, you will hear repeatedly that the poor voters just didn’t understand what they were being asked. That, like much of the Government’s campaign, is an utter lie. The truth is that it was the politicians who didn’t understand – why they were having these votes, what the point of them was, or why people had the concerns that they did. We were asked to vote on these proposals because they seemed progressive, and that, as ever, was enough for the crowd of ninnies that this country has the misfortune to call a political class.