Green Party candidate for the Dublin Central by-election, Janet Horner, has a message for voters. Especially for you, the blokes:
“I know what my policy platform is,” she said. “I don’t think that Dublin Central needs more hard-men figures coming in, trying to engage in a confrontational, robust way.
“I think we need people who are solution-focused, who are collaborative. I think we need women.”
Let the record show here that it is Horner, not this writer, who has “gendered” the divide of which she speaks. It is she, not I, who is associating “confrontational” and “robust” as masculine traits while associating the (presumably more flattering in her mind) “solution focused” and “collaborative” with the fairer sex. Assuming of course that using the term “fairer sex” does not make one confrontational or robust.
But since Horner has decided to make these terms gendered, let’s discuss them.
We should start with the point of democratic politics which is, believe it or not, division. That’s the whole point. Politics is supposed to “robustly” divide us and lead to “confrontation” that is resolved peacefully, at the ballot box. “Consensus” is the functional opposite of democratic politics, where debate and division are eschewed in favour of a borg-like arrival at a common position. If the country could simply be governed by solution-focused consensus, we would have no need for elections at all.
Second, we should note the reasons that confrontational politics was designed in the first place: Not to encourage conflict, but to prevent it. The basic idea is that we all argue as robustly as possible for our case, and then – rather than, as in eons past, taking up arms against each other – we agree to abide by a common mechanism of conflict resolution. That being elections, where the majority decide on a course of action.
In a political system designed – as democracies are – to arbitrate conflict, having robust and confrontational figures engaging in robust conflict is a fundamental necessity for the system to work.
Third, and forgive me from entering the realms of the theoretical, conflict is necessary for governance. The point of politicians – the only reason we have them – is to steward, manage, and re-direct the permanent government. I will return to a point made in previous pieces: If we had no Dáil or Seanad, and simply let the civil service run the country, not much would change day to day. The point of politicians is to engage in conflict with the civil service on behalf of the public to redirect it away from error and direct it to pursue policies popular with voters.
If we simply had consensus and “solution focused” politics, we would only need to screen civil servants for those qualities, and let them get on with it.
But enough theory: Let’s talk practice.
Is Horner really saying that the problem with Irish politics, where every major party broadly agrees on every major question, from housing to crime to migration to health to the EU to the Gaza war, is that we have too much debate and conflict?
I would counter that: if the Dáil needs anything at all, what it needs are more articulate voices who can engage in conflict with the current consensus. Even if you are a supporter of that consensus, you should wish for this, as it is debate and engagement that strengthens arguments and sharpens the focus of politics.
Horner is making clear to us what she would be: Another left-wing automaton bleating the same dreary stuff we already get from consensus-focused female politicians as diverse and varied and multicultural as Ivana Bacik, Holly Cairns, Helen McEntee, and Jennifer Carroll MacNeil. She would be another voice in favour of doing things the way they are done now, but with more funding for research into petro-masculinity or whatever you are having yourself.
I write this not as an endorsement of his ludicrous candidacy, but if it is a binary choice, then yes: Give me the celebrity crook over this.
Give me a politician willing to say things like “scroungers” over a politician who will faint at the use of that word rather than engaging with the argument. Give me one who is sweary and outrageous, over one that tuts like a clucking hen because somebody online said something she didn’t like. Give me one who is willing to call things nonsense, rather than have a fainting fit over how everything she doesn’t like is xenophobic or homophobic or transphobic or arachnophobic or whatever.
Micheál Martin and Simon Harris need to be challenged. Not, I add, because of my own ideological disagreements with them, which are many. No – because them being challenged aggressively and fiercely should make them better and more accountable public servants.
That’s a job that requires a confrontational hard man. Because, God knows, the consensus based ladies are making what my father would have called “a bollocks haimes” of the job. Sorry, Ms. Horner, but we have too many like you already. Not too few.