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Before yesterday’s budget speech had even been delivered, Sinn Fein TD Mark Ward had delivered his verdict upon it: “Happy buy the election day”, he tweeted.
Looking at the figures, it is very hard to argue with that assessment. My wife and I – both middle income earners – will be collectively better off by over €2,000 next year on the Government’s taxation changes alone. That is before the €250 knocked off our winter electricity bill, and whatever impact things like mortgage tax credits might have. That is, by any measure, a substantial sum of money. Like most taxpayers, we’re not going to be writing to the Department of Finance to turn it down.
Being childless and employed, the welfare payments do not really impact our household, but for households that do rely on them, the increases were substantial. An unemployed couple can expect to be €1,000 better off. An unemployed couple with two children maybe €2,000 better off. Renters will be able to claim another €750 off their taxes in addition to the income tax measures, pushing a couple of middle-income earners in rented accommodation towards nearly €3,000 in goodies. Students benefitted to the tune of €1,000 apiece. Pensioners got an additional €624 a year on their state pension alone, before any ancillary benefits like the electricity assistance. Women going through menopause are to receive free hormone replacement therapy, while couples seeking to conceive will get extended free IVF. If you have children in childcare, then the costs will fall by €1,100 per year. I could go on.
If an election can be bought, then voters couldn’t really ask for a bigger bribe than the one they got yesterday.
As Matt Treacy noted the other day, all of this puts the opposition in something of a quandary – even they, almost universally of the left though they are – couldn’t quite manage with a straight face to call the budget either stingy or insufficient. The only viable political attack on the budget – that it’s a shamelessly irresponsible spending spree that risks future calamity – is off the table for the opposition, who’d all like to be even more irresponsible, and thus would look like psychiatric cases were they suddenly to start demanding fiscal prudence.
In effect, the budget signals the unofficial starting gun on the Government’s re-election campaign, and it should be clear to all by now what the message will be: “Yes”, they will say, “the country has some problems, but those problems are the result of our unprecedented economic success”. Immigration is a problem because so many people want to come here due to how successful the country is. Housing is a problem because of how well-off people are, and how many people can compete for homes. Health is a problem, but we are resourcing it to unprecedented levels. In the meantime, everybody in the country is feeling the financial benefit of the hard work we have put in.
Across the Atlantic, polls consistently show that Kamala Harris has one problem above all others – that regardless of what the headline economic figures may show, people simply do not feel better off than they were when her opponent was last in office. The Irish Government is clearly intent on ensuring that this is not a problem they face in their own election campaign – they want you to feel better off before you cast your vote.
There are many reasons to think that this might work, not the least of which is that it is increasingly hard to see a coherent Sinn Fein case against the Government. On those areas where the Government is politically vulnerable – housing and immigration – that party has little by way of a compelling case that it would do things radically or meaningfully differently, a single housing policy document nothwithstanding. And on cost-of-living questions, it may ultimately have to resort to trying to buy off individual groups with promises of even more spending. It will do all this in the face of an ongoing and costly working-class backlash to its failure to challenge the Government on migration and various “woke agenda” items.
This is the other compelling reason to think that the Government is in pole position to win the election: It has a broadly united front and agenda, while the opposition is fragmented and disunited. The nature of that disunity will benefit the Government – on the one hand it will be facing Sinn Fein, Labour, and the Social Democrats attacking it from the left. On the other hand, an array of independents and smaller parties attacking it from the right. The Government – and Simon Harris in particular – will use this to argue that it is right in the centre ground of Irish politics, charting an economically successful course.
That yesterday’s budget was a cynical exercise in vote buying is beyond any doubt. The problem for the opposition is that if the usual laws of politics apply, then it is very likely to work.
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