That’s such a crazy idea… it might just work! The Green Party canvass opinion on Lisbon amongst their members… August 14, 2008
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.trackback
Perhaps it is of a piece with a governing party which eschewed a stance on the Lisbon Treaty when the ‘leadership’ failed to get a sufficient majority to express party support. The curious, albeit inevitable, sight of Green Party representatives campaigning on both sides of the issue was the result. And even had the party gone on to support the Treaty outright it is hard to believe that – say – Patricia McKenna would have turned her back on a life time of euroscepticism (although a curious sort of euroscepticism when one recalls – as noted before – that she supports QMV on climate change issues).
Yet, consider the news on Wednesday in the Irish Times:
THE GREEN Party has sent an e-mail to its 2,100 members seeking their views on how the Government should deal with the Lisbon Treaty in the light of the referendum defeat.
It’s oddly heartening that a governing party might actually, y’know, consult its membership. And the email goes:
We would be interested to hear your views on how the rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in the referendum should be handled by the Government.
There is a bit of space now over the summer to discuss this. Your views will be passed on to our Policy Group on Europe.If you could summarise your views in one A4 page it would be very helpful since we could get a high level of response to this request.
To prompt your thoughts, the key questions would be:
What do you think the future of the Lisbon Treaty should be?
What were the issues that you believe the Irish People had greatest concern about in the recent referendum?
Could these issues be addressed in any way to address voters concerns and if so how might they be addressed (i.e. by means of protocol, declaration etc.?.)
Or if you have any other views on the matter please feel free.
If it’s that easy…
Mind you, it also seems to indicate a complete lack of ideas as to how to proceed on the issue in the broader political context. Or rather a realisation that this is – if not precisely a problem, certainly a difficulty. There are some who might relish the position the Green Party has found itself in after a political lifetime of playing the euro-sceptical card. But I don’t really see it that way. There are others – perhaps in another famously and still fairly euro-sceptical party – who may well be thanking their lucky stars that they weren’t invited into this coalition of all the talents and left in the position of having to square the circle.
And comes the news that McKenna is not to contest the Dublin European Election constituency. Leaving the way forward for Deirdre De Burca, should she so choose (oh yes, and be selected for the role).
In a way McKenna is quite refreshingly honest, in this taken from an interview in Hot Press (which I hope to get my hands on asap) as when she says:
“If I ran for the Greens, I would be asked to toe the parliamentary line . . . and if issues arise in relation to militarisation and Lisbon . . . to stay quiet in the European Parliament,” she said.
“But I would, as I have done in the past, have to speak out. How would party members feel about me making things difficult for members of the Government? I would feel a hypocrite and realise that I am just the same as all the rest.”
Hmmm… Not necessarily the ‘parliamentary’ line so much as the party line. A subtle distinction, no doubt. But one that makes all the difference. It’s all gone a bit askew for her inside the Green Party. A less than stunning performance in Dublin Central (and I speak from experience when I say that her campaign was pretty low level on the ground last year) at the General Election, the sight of the party going into government, last month she lost out a nomination for Cabra-Glasnevin at the local elections and now this.
But then as an acquaintance of mine within the GP noted, for her the comforts of opposition are indeed just that… comfortable. I admire her consistency, but the party she was once one of the leading members of has changed, and not necessarily for the worse.
What do you mean “and not necessarily for the worse?” Every single change I can think of that the Green Party has undergone has been very much for the worse.
It has abandoned its anti-war principles, sold out on environmental issues like incinerators, Corrib and Tara, and it now participates in a very right wing government. McKenna has her peculiarities, but she represents pretty much all that was best about the Greens. The other high profile members of the party nowadays are just Fine Gaelers who like bicycles and yoghurt.
The sins of the Green Party… shall I count thee?
Well first deviating from Marxism. Secondly deviating from Marxist-Leninism. Thirdly deviating from the thoughts of Trotsky. Fourthly deviating from the CWI line. Fifthly… Nah… I jest. Sort of.
Mark P, it depends on what you want with a party. If you want a full programme implemented then you, or I, are bound for disappointment. If you want some of a programme implemented then the choice is government or not. I’m frankly glad that there is even a very mildly progressive voice in the current government, I’m even more glad that the GP is marginalising the residual influence of the PDs. That said I’m disappointed that they haven’t halted colocation, etc, etc. But I’m glad that, to take a couple of issues at random they’ve instituted a process to implement procedures to ensure a Tara like situation wouldn’t develop again, that they’ve put climate change directly at the cabinet table and a number of other issues, for example, small but useful, junk food advertising or somewhat larger more than rhetorical support for offshore energy. It’s very limited stuff. Absolutely. They have clearly shed a lot of previous programmes. No question. That’s for you to decide, as indeed you have, whether it is good or bad, but for me in their limited way they’re making some small progress.
And it’s the only way those issues are going to have a whisper of permeating into the society.
I think that’s gibberish, to be perfectly frank.
The Green Party used to take some reasonably progressive stances on some significant issues. Now it has abandoned all of that, and no amount of continuing waffle about climate change (without any significant action of course) or fiddling with rules about fast food advertising (a more trivial issue I can barely imagine) in any way compensates for that.
Your continuing desperate attempts to find something “progressive” or “left wing” about the politicians representing certain parties never ceases to amaze, and amuse, me. Gormley, Sargent, Ryan, Cuffe et al would be just as happy in Fine Gael as they are in the Green Party. The only things that distinguish them from their coalition partners are their vague affinity for bicycles and yoghurt and their relative naivity and lack of competence.
McKenna has her faults, but she represents the last gasp of the actually progressive strand of the Green Party. That wing of the party has now been comprehensively defeated. To refuse to recognise that as a defeat, as a serious step backwards for leftish Greens is, in my view, to delude yourself.
Mark P, it may well to you, but it cuts to the heart of the old division between how much can be achieved by stepping back or how much can be achieved by engaging and what are the suitable venues or means of engaging. There are many views on how leftish Greens or others should progress. I’d have preferred a left alternative involving SF/GP/Labour, but actual politics as distinct from aspirational politics made that a non-starter, and will I suspect do so again in 2012. So. What is the alternative? Or rather what is the reality? Leftish parties will enter government on various terms. I can only hope in such a circumstance then that parties will think long and hard about what those terms constitute. I wasn’t amazingly happy (if you look back) at the terms the GP went in, but in the context of their main policy plank it made sense (even if we put all other considerations aside).
I – obviously – disagree that the GP has abandoned all progressive stances, but by their lights they’ve put their main policy stance, dealing with climate change front and centre to the point that it is now an accepted (albeit limited) aspect of budgetary considerations. If carbon levy are introduced during the lifetime of this government would you consider them merely waffling?
As regards desperate attempts by me regarding politicians, I’m curious as to which you mean? I can’t recall, indeed I generally try to avoid, discussing individual members of parties which I would broadly give my support to, those parties hardly being a secret (and the odd fact also being that I find something to like in parties that straddle the opposition/government divide). And talking of politicians I like, and indeed parties I like, well, heck, I like Joe Higgins and members of the SP enormously having worked with them in the past. But a crucial distinction for me between my views and that of the SP is that I believe (as noted above) that engagement is a better option than not on an issue by issue, opportunity by opportunity basis. I understand the principle behind your stance and admire it, but don’t share it.
Still, I’d always hope that you’d do me the courtesy of accepting that I take a different view of such matters…
I was a founder-member of the party, and I have to say I identify more with Mark’s sentiments than WorldbyStorm’s. The party wasn’t founded in order to “implement some of a programme” — by “shedding a lot of previous programmes”.
What has happened is that the Green Party has gone into coalition by abandoning any of its non-negotiable demands. After the 2002 general election the Greens, with the same number of TDs, could have knocked on Fianna Fáil’s door and offered themselves up: “Just give us Environment and Energy and we’ll give your government a nice popular green tinge with no more price to pay on your part. We won’t make awkward demands or hamper your style. Promise!”
Thus the Greens could have made the same achievements (if you can call them achievements) five years earlier. But the Greens in 2002 still retained too much of their old principles and practices to do that.
Obviously, some people think that the change in the GP in the last few years is for the better, but not me.
If you want some of a programme implemented then the choice is government or not. I’m frankly glad that there is even a very mildly progressive voice in the current government, I’m even more glad that the GP is marginalising the residual influence of the PDs.
As if the PDs matter…
They have clearly shed a lot of previous programmes. No question. That’s for you to decide, as indeed you have, whether it is good or bad, but for me in their limited way they’re making some small progress.
What about the price paid for that “small progress”? Abandoning honesty was only part of the price.
Oddly I don’t disagree with your analysis, just that the alternative is for the Green Party to remain outside of government and with no (instead of some) measure of state power. It is that simple. Where one falls on either side of the line is according to political stance and belief. To me it is marginally better to have the Green Party in power than to not. Just as it would be marginally better for either SF or Labour to be in power than not. Because, and following on from your point about the PDs, well clearly they did matter – they managed (albeit by pushing an open door) to influence the direction of government policy across this last decade specifically and previously in the late 1980s. And that was a small political party. Neo-liberal economics is – or so we’re told – the dominant economic ideology (as a blanket statement questionable in my mind, but that’s another days work). To me, and others, climate change is a much greater issue than neo-liberalism (obviously) and one that has to be addressed immediately – and that’s maybe, just maybe worth the price.