Perhaps it was the predictability of the date and the fact that all sides had thrown most of their best shots and dirt before the whistle was blown, but this election to me reeks of utter banality.
Certainly, by way of contrast to the recent American elections, the electoral contest between the main parties is almost completely devoid of substance. The reason why this is so is that the three biggest parties – Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin – are contesting a narrow ground. It is an election mostly about numbers: houses, nurses, Guards, marginal tax rates and mind numbingly on. I shall return to this.
There was a cliché – largely accurate – that over much of the past 60 or 70 years almost nothing separated the American Republicans and the Democrats. Much of what divided them was related to regional and social, cultural and ethnic differences but even that has shifted somewhat with the Democrats having almost completely lost their southern white plebeian support who have gone largely to the Republicans, but have consolidated their hold on the black urban vote.
Economically, neither Trump nor Harris – no more than Simon and Mary Lou – was offering radically different policies, but there was a clear, or at least a clearly perceived, existential choice. Whatever the theatrics and the sincerity of the actors involved there is no doubt but that tens of millions of people cast their votes on November 5 on the basis of what sort of America they wish to see or wish to preserve. Trump stands for one. Harris for a radically different place.
There is no such thing at stake in our own hustings. The last time there was, back 40 years and more, was when the Shakespearian dark lord Charlie faced off with Garret the Good and his anaemic allies in the Labour Party. Fianna Fáil even had a rousing ballad calling on people “from northern hills to Leinster’s doors” to hark to the “ancient cry of freedom” and to “rise and follow Charlie.”
Can you even imagine Micheál Martin having the cojones to attempt to carry that one off? “Rise and follow Mikey.” Where to? A workshop on diversity and integration? Or on how to roll a spliff once he “frees the weed.” Instead, they’ve opted for “Moving Forward Quietly” or something nice and inoffensive on those lines.
And the Blueshirts? What happened to the days when they were promising to kick lads, including the weak-kneed Irregular President, up the feckin’ transom and calling him a bollix for not opening up the possibility of returning to the glory days of the Winter of 1922 when they just shot people instead of “hearing their concerns” and promising to take them on board.
Labour have never been much good at that sort of thing. It wasn’t for no reason that Fianna Fáil’s Seán Lemass once described their leadership as a “harmless bunch of men” when someone was implying that they were Communists.
Now, they just pretend that they were once revolutionary leftists and that they spent the bitter persecuted years of Deeply Conservative Ireland hiding in the back lounges of south Dublin pubs reading dirty bukes that The Bishops would have a lad tied to a lamppost on the Vico Road for possession of and have his backside slapped with a hurl by a crazed revanchist nationalist Chirstian Brother. And worse maybe, if they’d seen Deliverance.
The Labour Party, like the Monty Python parrot, has ceased to exist in my neck of the woods thankfully so I don’t actually know off the top of my head what their slogan is and I have no intention of putting myself to the bother of finding out. Probably something to do with fairness and being nice would be a ballpark guess.
What about the Shinners? For a time they were completely gone over to Change. Then they seemed to have copped on that this was boring the heads of people rather than inspiring them, but they have reverted to default. “Vote for Change” is the cry around the hillsides.
When I were a lad and knocking doors for the Shinners in 1987 we had a thumping great election slogan: “Don’t Get Angry, Get Even.” (Borrowed from the Neapolitan Camorra or Brooklyn Mafia I seem to recall.) It promised to do just what it said on the box. Now it’s all “Oh let’s be nice to everyone. Change.” Enough already. “Revenge by Jaysus.” Put that on the canvass cards.
In a similar ecumenical spirit if I was to be advising People Before Profit I would say that they ought to person up and stake out a separate claim to the rest of the liberal and eco left. Their solution to the housing crisis is partly to take houses that are already there from the people who already own them and give them to someone else, including people who have gone to the trouble of travelling long distances for that opportunity.
So spell it out like mensch, or menschen. Something like a menacing photo of one of Trotsky’s leather clad enforcers of equality and eco fairness from 1920 over the slogan “We Don’t Care How Long the House Has Been in Your Family …..” Just a suggestion.
On a more serious note, there is of course the argument that it is a good thing that none of the likely main components of any government in a democracy is going to do something completely radical and different. Stability depends on them all sticking to the programme. And in the Irish state that means being in the EU Commission’s good books, accepting the dominance of overseas corporations and adhering to a liberal agenda on issues such as immigration, abortion, genderism and so on.
Sinn Féin fundamentally do not differ from the consensus even on what used to be known as the “national question.” Partition is grand once the Taigs are wetting their beaks and helping in running the place. The only difference is the Shinner insistence on an unlikely and unwinnable border poll at some point in the 2040s and that is like 27th on anyone’s reasons why they will pick a party down here.
Left and Right are meaningless really when related to the economic policies of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin as none of them differ on their view of Ireland’s place in the international corporate economy and all accept the need for a high degree of welfarism to maintain social stability. The left will promise higher levels of welfare payments but that has been by and large neutralised as an issue in this election by the recent budget.
Some do counter the acceptance of that consensus by suggesting that there are large existential issues that need addressing and that none of the main parties, nor the smaller ones likely to be asked if needed to make up the numbers, are going there. They are all comfortable in the space framed by that consensus.
Gript has been one of the few to highlight the need for a debate across the entire consensus from abortion to immigration and the profound impact all of this is having and will continue to have on the shape of Irish society. The alternative to the consensus is before the electorate but it is one that is presently mostly confined to the margins.
Perhaps that may change and that it will be reflected in the sort of electoral shifts that were manifested or hinted at to some degree in the local and European elections last June. There is little evidence to date in the campaign, however, that this will be significant.