“I am enraged”, thundered Joe Brolly, over the weekend. This, dear reader, would not normally be news: Enraged is, after all, Brolly’s default setting. It is the quality which makes him such a watchable GAA pundit, at his best, and such a tiresome one at his worst. He is always enraged about something or other.
In this case, though, the target of his rage is interesting. For once, it is not cynical Tyrone defending (I’m with you on that one, Joe), but Fine Gael’s alleged shift to the right:
Fine Gael start their lurch to the right. Disgusting to see this. The attacks on our trans friends are exactly like the attacks that used to be mounted on our gay & lesbian friends. I am enraged. Leaders must lead. https://t.co/pZrkzRMT8M
— Joe Brolly (@JoeBrolly1993) April 2, 2023
This particular lefty panic – that Fine Gael is in the midst of morphing into some kind of blackshirted falangist tribute act – is not confined to Joe Brolly. It is also one which my colleague Ben Scallan, at the tender age of God-I-wish-I-was-that-age-again, can lay a legitimate claim to having begun.
When he asked Leo Varadkar, two weeks ago, about whether violent blokes claiming to be women should be accommodated in women’s prisons, reaction to the Taoiseach’s answer broke down into two camps:
In one camp were people who broadly agreed with both Ben and Varadkar, at least in respect of the latter’s stated view that violent sex offenders with dangly bits shouldn’t be in women’s prisons. This camp, per polling in the weekend’s Sunday Independent, comprises almost everybody except for 11% of the population.
In the other camp – some of whom are presumably represented in the 11% who told the Sunday Indo that they do want males in women’s prison – were those who echoed Brolly’s sentiments above. Varadkar, some claimed, had actually planted our question (I assure you, he did not) or at least, welcomed it as an opportunity to create a “distraction” from the eviction ban.
And from that, over the past two or three weeks, a conspiracy theory has sprung up online amongst commentators of the left: Fine Gael is shifting to the right on trans issues to distract from housing.
This is an interesting theory on two fronts: First, because there is precious little evidence that Fine Gael is, actually, shifting to the right on “trans” issues or on anything else. The Taoiseach’s answer to Ben was swiftly watered down by Simon Harris. The Government remains committed, at least on paper, to expanding the gender recognition act to provide for people under 18 to drag parents into a legal process if the parents object to their changing gender. The GAA is pushing ahead with plans to let biological males compete in the women’s game.
The entire evidence for this alleged “shift” to the right rests on some reporting in the Independent that backbench Fine Gael TDs worry that they are out of step with public opinion. That’s what it takes to “shift to the right”, these days: All you need to do is worry aloud about the wrong things, and suddenly Blessed Margaret Thatcher, peace be upon her, is making room at her right hand to await your eventual presence at the great banqueting table in the sky.
The second problem with it is that politically, it doesn’t make much sense: It would appear to be based on the notion that people are unable to hold two political opinions at once – and that someone who is upset about housing on Monday will suddenly cease worrying about housing on Tuesday once they hear that Fine Gael TDs have raised transgender issues at a parliamentary party meeting. That is how little they think of voters: you can be turned from thoughtful opponent of Government housing policy into rabid transphobe based on one reported comment from Charlie Flanagan.
This view of voters is persistent amongst the Irish left, and the Irish media establishment (forgive me, I repeat myself).
You see it on a range of issues: The things that cannot be discussed for fear of “stoking up” the wrong kind of “sentiment”. Immigration is the classic issue here – even discussing it civilly risks turning voters into the Walking Dead, so it is best not to discuss it at all. The war in Ukraine is another example – regular readers know my pro-Ukrainian fundamentalism, but the fact is that those who view the war as less than straightforward have basically been shut out of all discussion on the subject for fear that even discussing the Russian point of view, such as it is, might provoke people to agree with it.
An interesting question, I think, is this: Why does mere discussion provoke such anger? Why does Brolly feel “outraged” at the prospect of as much as a debate on these issues?
The answer, I think, is that the progressive view of history itself is being challenged: For years, the working and default assumption has been that “the arc of history bends towards justice” – the basic idea being that the onward march of progressivism is unstoppable and irreversible and that once a battle is won, it is settled forever. On the transgender issue, that assumption is now being challenged: A great lefty social reform, in this case the gender recognition act, is in some – not great, but some – danger of actually being reversed.
If that can happen there, then goodness gracious, it could happen anywhere. And everything you fundamentally believe about the world in which you live and your own role in history is suddenly challenged. That, I think, is why progressives – such a massively dominant cultural hegemon in western society – are constantly outraged and angry. They feel under siege in their own castle.
Anyway, for the avoidance of doubt, Fine Gael is not shifting to the right. I’ll believe they are the day I see Simon Harris say that politics is about more than just empty emoting on instagram, and not one moment sooner.