The Cedar Lounge Revolution

XPD is a spy novel by Len Deighton …
The title is the code used by the Secret Intelligence Service in the novel to refer to assassinations it carries out, short for “expedient demise”.

So, all announce themselves well pleased with the outcome of the disestablishment conference of the Progessive Democrats this weekend. And there are many who will be satisfied with this outcome. It’s a bit like an inversion of the old cui bono? Everyone, or almost everyone does. At least at first sight. But then one looks a bit closer at the outcome and one begins to wonder… was this thought through properly, and if not why weren’t certain questions asked?

Got to say, the meeting itself sounds like it was, to borrow a phrase from Frasier, a hoot. Harney swung into action before the weekend exhorting her supporters to turn up to ensure that the dissolution motion was carried. Which sounds like, to me anyhow, that they weren’t entirely clear that it would be carried. What a disaster – eh? A party that didn’t want to see it’s Parliamentary representation sail off into the sunset. And a party with the word ‘Democrat’ in its title at that. That would have cause some interesting cognitive dissonance. So before you can say meeting packing…

Coaches full of party activists arrived from the O’Malley stronghold of Limerick and Cork as well as the Galway support base of Grealish and Cannon. ‘‘They’re shipping them in,” snorted one activist from Young Progressive Democrats.

Again, that doesn’t seem to me like a party leadership confident that things were going their way on the ground.

And then there were the speeches. By all accounts there were many, most along the lines of ‘…a sad day colleagues, but time to wind up the party, a party with two Senators, two TDs and a raft of councillors and a membership with close to half of it enthused enough to continue, because…well… er…’.

It’s an interesting question. Why did they decide to give up? Sheer embarrassment? Why no. According to Ciarán Cannon, erstwhile leader of this legion of the Fianna Fáil mudguard:

…the ‘‘cold hard statistics’’ showed that the PDs had not once increased its share of the first preference vote in an election since it was launched.

He said that PD support had dwindled from a 15 per cent share in its first election to 2.7 per cent in 2007. ‘‘This is a downward trend that one would expect to continue and, rather than allow the party limp on and fade into oblivion, it’s important to honour the legacy, be proud of what we have achieved and bring the party to a dignified end,” he said.

Which begs the obvious riposte, why didn’t they cotton on earlier that the nation, or at least this part of it, found them unlovely and unlovable and just throw in the towel earlier. If not, well, 2002, then last year after the election would have done the trick. But no answer was there forthcoming.

One almost has to laugh at the report that:

Des O’Malley, the party’s founder, sent a message to the conference adding his voice to the list of senior figures calling for an end to the PDs.

O’Malley said the PD’s demise was ‘‘a grievous disappointment to me but it is a situation I have to face up to’’. He paid tribute to colleagues Bobby Molloy, Pearse Wyse, Maureen Quill, Liz O’Donnell, John Dardis, Peadar Clohessy ‘‘but above all I salute Mary Harney’’.

Chutzpah or once more embarrassment? You decide.

And the other justifications for dissolution merged into a sort of mush of valedictory feel good rhetoric. Mary Harney said:

…there was ‘‘nothing dishonourable about opening a new chapter’’ and urged supporters not to continue the party ‘‘only to be ridiculed’’.

Adam Ant once famously argued the opposite, that ridicule is nothing to be scared of. Where were the PDs Adam Ant? Step forward:

Limerick businessman and former national executive member Tadhg Kearney [who] said that people felt let down by a parliamentary party that seemed to regard its membership as ‘‘a peripheral supporters’ club, rather than full stakeholders in their own party’’.

And noted that:

…with the PDs out of the picture, the only coalition options for Fianna Fáil would be Labour, Sinn Féin and the Greens, whom he described as all parties of the left, ‘‘or, in the case of Sinn Féin, the extreme left.

Oh, I don’t know Tadhg, I’ve made that case over at the Irish Left Review, but with the current crop of Young Turks in Fine Gael I’m not so sure. Incidentally, interesting that he saw Fianna Fáil as the party in pole position.

But despite that the vote went 201 to 161 for dissolution. On those numbers there’s still a pool of PD supporters that if they worked together might cause some headaches. But I can’t see it happening. And so the PDs depart into the electoral sunset with only some housekeeping duties remaining before being wound up entirely.

Let’s name those who are most happy, in descending order. And then for a little balance those who might reasonably be somewhat less sanguine.

Well, starting at the top, and I mean the top, the Oireachtas representation of the PDs are delighted. And why wouldn’t they be? The second and third stages of their electoral rocket – the councillors and general membership that is – sufficed unto the day to see them safely home… to the Oireachtas. Their careers either safely parked – Harney leaves the Dáil at the end of this term, the others are in a lather of anticipation about their new political homes.

Grealish, we are told is away to Fianna Fáil. I use the term ‘away to’ in the sense that I mean ‘practically there in all but name’. Of course. Likewise Fiona O’Malley. Cannon is weighing up his options but most think he’ll jump to Fine Gael. The Business Post reported that:

Although a Taoiseach’s nominee, he said there was a precedence for nominees to cross the floor to join the opposition, but stressed he had made no decision.

Hmmm… not the sort of thing I’d want to build my future career upon. He’d better get some pretty cast iron guarantees from FG that he has a future in the event of the Taoiseach deciding to withdraw his predecessor’s largesse to a political formation that no longer exists.

And Harney? Well, irony of ironies after reading the entreaties from the great and the good in the media… consider this sample text from Stephen Collins… ‘The party has limped on since the election, which saw it return to the Dáil with just two seats, but it never had a viable future’. Well, with friends like that…

Still, it seems that such analyses might have been a tad overhasty. As the Irish Times notes today:

The demise of the PD organisation raises questions about Ms Harney’s political mandate as a senior Government minister and casts some doubt on the coalition.

Ms Harney has ruled out running for the next Dáil, but she told RTE radio this afternoon that she would like to continue in her Cabinet position.

And there is the small matter of the current coalition being an arrangement signed between the Progressive Democrats, the Green Party and Fianna Fáil. Sure, that’s technical stuff to a degree, but these are uncertain times. The scope for mischief and the further attrition of her already poor standing remains. One can already hear the charges made by Fine Gael and the rest of the Opposition about her status.

No, seriously, one can already hear them.

“Looking to the future, it is now the case that Mary Harney will be an Independent TD sitting in Cabinet. Fine Gael has made clear in the past its opposition to the health policies adopted by this Minister and Government,” said Enda Kenny.

“It is now important that Brian Cowen clarifies the position of status of the soon to be Independent TD Mary Harney as his Health Minister into the future.”

And if one looks into the future perhaps the best she can expect is a much shorter tenure in Health than anticipated and a decline into anonymity as a government supporting Independent – should she choose to remain onside. Which she most likely will. Hardly the crowning point of her career.

So perhaps a mite more uncertainty there than might have been expected even three or four days ago. But still general content.

For the Opposition there is considerable joy. This really is excellent news for our second largest party. One of the major barriers to coalition building is now gone. The hated enemy and rivals of Fine Gael are gone (former PD Senators excepted should they choose to do the decent thing). Fianna Fáil has lost it’s explicitly right wing outrider. The ramifications of that I’ll deal with in a moment because what is good for Fine Gael is probably bad for Fianna Fáil.

For the left, probably an equal measure of that joy. They gone. Great!

Problem is only one party is likely to benefit in the short term from this, that being the Green Party who see their power within the Coalition, perhaps soon to be a newly minted FF/GP coalition, increased. But bitter the irony that this comes at a time when the country is sliding into economic rack and ruin. So the additional leverage is probably all for naught in a Coalition where the guiding principles seem wedded to those enunciated by Harney and Co. over the years.

In the longer term, again I refer you to the Irish Left Review piece, this is far from an unmixed blessing for the left with competing parties of the left vying for a place with Fianna Fáil and government building with Fine Gael complicated by the fact that the GP remains in government and is therefore – at least currently – anathema and Sinn Féin are… well… Sinn Féin and therefore anathema. Fun times ahead.

For Fianna Fáil, as noted previously, this may also be a mixed blessing. Sure, some of them have come home. As no doubt older hands might have argued they always would – eventually. But some of them haven’t, and there’s likely to be a bloc of new Independent councillors and party members with some animosity as regards FF out there. Where will they go? This surely isn’t the rigid party discipline of a Sinn Féin. And then there’s the no small matter of FF’s latest poll ratings which are dire and although mostly a function of the Budget may also owe some slippage to one B. Cowen whose ability to attract the urban working class and lower middle class in the way that his illustrious predecessor did is very much an open question. The PDs performed a vital role of prising away elements of the middle class who otherwise would have defaulted to FG back to FF – albeit indirectly. Cowen can only hope that 23 years of voting that way has worked. But wait… what was it Cannon was saying about the PDs attractiveness? Which make me a bit suspicious. Did anyone in FF think this one through, did no-one say, ‘hold on a second Mary, perhaps it would be better, all things considered, to keep the show on the road for another year or two…’. And if not, why not? This opens up their flanks on their right and centre just as they’re coming to the realisation that they may have suffered, unseen to this point, their left flank collapse. And all of that is good news not merely for Labour and Sinn Féin, but more immediately for Fine Gael.

And so we come to the poor old footsoldiers, those who worked hard to see their men and women make it to the Dáil. We know how that went. Where are they to go?

According to the Business Post:

Some PD councillors have moved to the independent benches, and those who don’t join the ranks of independents are likely to be scooped up by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

One might reasonably enquire as to whether there is another formation waiting in the wings to take up some of those councillors. I don’t think there is, or at least not one that can move swiftly enough, but Tadhg Kearney isn’t far wrong when he argues that:

Kearney said that the public needed a liberal party like the PDs now more than ever, with a recession and the onset of higher taxes.

The reality is that really there is no such need with a political establishment on the centre and centre right which is foursquare behind the currently prevailing consensus on what should be done. But the perception is slightly different, and there will always be those, 2.7 per cent and falling, who would like an explicitly right wing liberal party.

The one big question is whether theres is someone, or some group, willing to set up business in that particular niche? And the other questions? Didn’t anyone stop to think how this would impact on the structure of the current coalition? Didn’t anyone wonder whether this was to the benefit of our largest governing party? It’s all very odd when one considers it, an almost hasty rush to the exit by those who should know better, including a Cabinet Minister, when the act of going through the exit was seen as the main event rather than what happens next.

You know, if I had to place money on it I’d have said the party that most benefited from this turn of events was Fine Gael. But I can’t bring myself to believe it was as a result of a deliberate strategy. So let’s just chalk this one up to luck. Or perhaps the reality is that – rather like the more extreme theories surrounding the assassination of JFK – there were just so many suspects that we’ve just witnessed the Irish political equivalent of the grassy knoll, one crowded with shooters. Strange times.