A jaundiced eye is cast upon the events of the weekend… January 24, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.trackback
Have to agree with Harry McGee of the Irish Times when he raises some basic issues as regards the events of the weekend and what is about to happen next.
What we are seeing is collusion on a grand scale between Fianna Fáil, the Green Party, Fine Gael and the Labour Party over the Finance Bill. That some of these are more or less unwilling participants doesn’t detract from that.
McGee has harsh but not incorrect words for the Green Party over their own positioning in respect of the Bill and the Election.
Telling, was the news that they had been conducting back channel communications to Fine Gael for months and also, entertainingly, that they’d been rebuffed by Labour. Fair dues to Labour.
Up to a point.
The positioning of the Labour Party is particularly lamentable given that within weeks they are most likely to be implementing the terms of a Bill that say they do not accept but that they will do nothing to stop.
So both [Labour and Fine Gael] will facilitate the passage of the Bill (which both really really want to see going through) and then both will have the luxury of voting against it. In collusion with the Greens (and relucantly) Fianna Fail.
I would love to think that this almost perfectly cynical demonstration of what is called realpolitic would be of some benefit to the left and further left, that people would see this particular display of ‘principle’ and resile, but I doubt it.
And here’s a thought. Leo Varadkar was interviewed in a puff piece in the Sunday Tribune magazine over the weekend. His hero?
Micheal O’Leary…
Ah…
Though Leo who has taken to heart some of the more pointed criticism remembered to throw in a line about how he wished he [O'Leary] would ‘tone it down a bit’. Or words to the effect.
O’Leary wouldn’t be O’Leary if he toned it down. That’s what makes O’Leary. That’s what made Varadkar.
That’s a leading representative of the party our nominal social democrats are about to enter coalition with. Though on the evidence of this week’s work ‘nominal’ is the word.
I wonder what people on the Left felt listening to Roisin Shortall’s comments about “the ragbag” of candidates from Sinn Fein, ULA etc on television last night?
It was some rant, nicely set off by how totally Fine Gael’s Olivia Mitchell agreed with it.
Here’s the link for those who didn’t catch it:
I saw it on Dublin Opinion, Conor put it up. Very disappointing. Even if one can understand there might be certain ideological differences the sheer lack of respect for sincere and hard working leftists from SF (though her gripe was intriguingly different there), the SP, SWP, etc, etc was very hard to take.
Incredibly disappointing to see that coming from a Labour representative. Though perhaps that merely betrays my own naivete. ‘Ragbag’? You’d expect that from Michael McDowell perhaps but not an ostensibly left wing politician.
I’m also intrigued as to why, with the government on the ropes and the Greens having withdrawn, why the Finance Bill has to be passed anyway.
Or why Labour has to agree to it given that FF and FG would have the numbers anyway. By acting like this they are removing a great deal of meaning from the election. Because if the party are OK with the Finance Bill, and its deflationary aims, its cutting of disability benefit and blind pensions, its cutting of the minimum wage, why are we having an election at all? Because Brian Cowen is a silly man?
On what basis should we vote for Labour now? And I say this as someone who’s voted for them most of my life. But supporting the Finance Bill as a cynical measure so they can rip into a disarrayed FF pronto in the election seems pretty shocking.
And if ULA supporters want to insert the ‘what would you expect from an ass only a kick’ argument here it’s very hard to argue with them.
There’s also the case that a majority of voters were against this precious Finance Bill and they are effectively being disenfranchised by this grubby ready up.
Labour appear to be taking the lead from the political hacks who persistently swore that FF would benefit electorally from their ‘tough decisions’ when the voters recovered from their attack of false consciousness. They didn’t because the austerity measures are unpopular but Labour are now going down the same road. Has nothing been learned from the fun years of 1982-1987?
Whenever you hear ‘maturity’ being invoked in Irish politics, it’s a sign that someone is going to do something terrible.
Saw that too with a sinking feeling. And I thought the 18% tax promise in 2007 was just a blip.
On the other hand they’re playing to an electorate who gave 41% first preferences to FF in 2007. They haven’t gone away you know. I’m guessing Labour’s strategy is not to frighten the horses and setting themselves up as the ‘sensible left’ is one way of doing it. Disappointing.
Harry McGee is making great observations these days. I say that as one who complained to him about how captured he and his fellow pol corrs were in the Bertie days.
Got to agree, his blog is good.
I think you’re right, they the LP are playing it very very safe but there’s a real danger in that. We’re already seeing some of FFs greener support go to SF so they’re getting caught between FG and the left. Don’t know how well they can hold that. If the next poll dips below 20% it will be interesting to see if their rhetoric radicalises or what….
It will be hard to vote down the ticket after ULA and SF to Labour with the Labour ‘leaders’ playing the red scare card.
In the current climate it would depend on the individual LP member, no?
Not that Labour are strangers to the red scare:
http://www.limerickcity.ie/media/1970%20springboks%20tour.pdf
http://politico.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6246:fascism-in-limerick-&catid=234:nusight-politics&Itemid=761
Looks like Labour will become slaves to the “s” words,strong govt.stability,serious economics.No room for socialism.People like Noel Browne,Jack McQuillan,Tony Gregory,Jim Kemmy,and latterly Seamus Healy are just a ragbag.FG are serious politicians like the LP.
Wasn`t Olivia Mitchell so smug when she dismissed FG needing any support from FF?What a sense of entitlement.As FF are the nation and FG are the state bring them together to form the nation-state
Well that’s it. Just as the WP were a ragbag in their day, etc.
Again it comes back to courtesy. She simply couldn’t say, ‘look the gaps between us and the ULA or SF are too great to bridge at this time. We disagree with their approach and they with ours. An alliance or working relationship is impossible as of now. End of story.’
But no, it’s the old entitlement thing in a different form, they have to go one step further to prove just how ‘polite’, just how ‘respectable’ they are.
She didn’t know where to look when Ferris started going on about Democratic Left etc
The elephant in the room is the mass middle. That’s the reality every party has to get past. You can’t do anything if you’re not in government and if Labour are to have any chance of picking up the last seats in rural constituencies they’re going to need FG transfers. The corollary of Feardorcha’s comment is that it will be easier to vote down the ticket after FG to Labour.
Not a great prospect for the left but as they say ‘you can only dance with the girls in the hall’. The silver lining is that if you think the last four years of government were bad wait until you see what the next four are going to bring. It’s a real poisoned chalice that FF are handing over and we haven’t seen the half of it yet. Better off building in opposition like FF are going to.
‘You can’t do anything if you’re not in government’
I think the anti-poll tax campaign in Britain, the battle against water charges here in the 90s, the struggle to win the right to access birth control, the GAMA victory etc. would place a big question mark over that statement. I don’t mean to be ultra-leftist or anything, there’s a big advantage in having a platform in parliament, but mass action has led to big victories and changes in the past.
True. It was a bit of a blanket statement. I was thinking more in terms of how the Oireachtas works as opposed to out here in the real world. They may as well rip out the opposition benches (and the government back benches) and sell them for firewood for all the use they are.
To a degree. I often think that the WP presence between 1981 and 1992 was an important one because it served as an object lesson to the right that the more they pushed working class communities the greater a potential response and that stayed some of the worst elements of the push back from the right.
Limited of course, and far from optimal, but during the Thatcher/Reagan period no harm at all.
Then there’s the more tactical approach of Gregory et al who gained even more concrete achievements.
and that stayed some of the worst elements of the push back from the right.
Right, but that was because they were afraid of what they saw as an existential threat from the left (in Communism). Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, though, capitalism has had no use for “social democracy” and that’s why it’s been under sustained assault for twenty years now.
“I don’t mean to be ultra-leftist or anything”
Yes, horror of horrors. Imagine being a ragbag ultraleftist. Chet will be inspecting your LP colleciton to make sure it has enough ordinary working-class content soon.
In an earlier post Mark P claims the GAMA victory is as a result of Joe Higgins, not as the result of mass action.
Platforms in parliament only become meaningful when there’s a mass campaign pre-existing.
Diverting energy into haggling with the incorrigible hacks just leads to a sense of impotence and defeat.
Time to start organising for the mass vigils ringing the Dail as practice for solidarity picketing of the first workplace occupations.
L.Aughable says: “In an earlier post Mark P claims the GAMA victory is as a result of Joe Higgins, not as the result of mass action.”
Hang on a second. That is a complete misrepresentation of what I said. What I actually said was that your line of argument relied upon a dogmatic assumption that:
“Elected representatives cannot, despite the evidence of things like the GAMA dispute, use their positions to encourage extra-parliamentary struggle”
Anyone familiar with the GAMA dispute, and in particular with the events which led up to the workers taking action, would know that Joe Higgins very skillfully used his position in the Dail to uncover the exploitation of the GAMA workers, make it into a major political issue, and encourage the workers concerned to take action.
I did not claim that the victory of the workers was down to Joe Higgins rather than “mass action” but that Joe Higgins was able to use elected office to contribute to that “mass action”.
I realise that it would be easier for you if the people you disagree with would use obviously wrong arguments, but it’s a bit cheeky to attribute arguments to them which they have not made. Do you actually know the background of the GAMA dispute?
The following film may be of some interest, illustrating the utility of elected positions both at Council and Dail level for people who want to encourage working class struggle.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8522850390691204183#
On a different point about GAMA (and not as a dig), have I been correct in thinking that the victory was limited because legislation promised in response to the issues was not passed — or maybe fully passed?
I got this impression from a conference I was at last year where one of the questions from the floor made that point, and if I recall correctly the specific example given was concerning the National Employment Rights Authority.
(Which leads to a more general point, slightly different from the one about mass action and change: that for any desirable situation (change or ongoing), we need a combination of legislation and mass support. For example (and to return to my pet hobbyhorse), there would be significant (leave aside for the moment whether that counts as “mass”) support for CEOs to be paid less than the astronomic amounts they currently, eh, earn, but without legislation to reflect that, it isn’t going to happen.
L.Aughable returns with the anarchist holier than thou attitude we’ve come to know and love, including misrepresenting what other people have actually said in order to justify their own nonsense.
As the video shows, the SP and the GAMA workers skillfully utilised the public representative position alongside mass mobilisation and insutrial action to win (conceding to Tombuktu) a partial victory.
You will notice L.Aughable that it’s Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party, not some self-righteous anarchist, that the workers hoist up on their shoulders at that protest outside the Dáil. You should pause and wonder why that is the case.
Labour have just announced that a deal has been struck whereby they will continue to nominally oppose the Finance Bill while facilitating its passage by helping rush it through without proper scrutiny. They will also withdraw their motion of no confidence so as to avoid disrupting its passage.
In other news, Gilmore and Burton apparently think that the island is populated entirely with complete fucking idiots.
History is on their side with the last one, to be fair.
http://www.fiannafail.ie/content/pages/5098/
O’Leary wouldn’t be O’Leary if he toned it down. That’s what makes O’Leary
Well quite. I’ve said before on here that there’s a good book to be written about the bullying style in contemporary politic, and O’Leary would have to play an important role in any such work. That’s what people identify with: he’s a great big bully who shits on everybody he can and gets away with whatever he can. There’s an awful lot of people who identify with that. Some of these people may actually believe that O’Leary et al can “lead Ireland out of the recession” or whatever: but that’s not really why they like him and invoke him so much. It’s because he’s the enormous bully-figure that they like, and they would like to be.
evening all.
I am starting to get a sinking feeling. If this finance bill is passed then it doesn’t really matter who gets in does it? There will be a change of ringmaster, clowns and acrobats, but the quangos will still be stuffed with FFers and the other FF’ers will be living large on their pensions.
We need those pensions clawed back through retrospective legislation, our gaz fields nationalised, tell the EU to go stuff themselves etc etc. What is the point of a FG/Lab government if they just going to carry out FF finance policies?
@ejh, I’m doing some work on social responsibility and you have given me an interesting angle to think about. Thanks!
The Finance Bill does not strait-jacket the Oireachtas. It can be amended as the legislature sees fit (in principle, anyway; they still have the EU/IMF masters to deal with).
In truth, it was never going to matter who you voted for (at least among the main parties) they were always going to go this route. AS a result, none of them will even dream of amending the Finance bill after it has passed.
-”What Labour and Fine Gael are at is to ensure that the infamous and unjust EU/IMF programme is passed by Fianna Fáil so that they can pretend to avoid direct responsibility for its passage but then claim they have no option but to implement it,” said Clare Daly of the Socialist Party, who is to run in the Dublin North constituency under the ULA banner-
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/0124/breaking47.html
Rabbitte, and Gilmore, have been prattling on for some time now about how isn’t it awful that Fianna Fail and the IMF have ‘tied our hands’ and put us in a ‘strait jacket’-meaning that the next govt. has no choice but to implement the regressive, failed Thatcherite policies of Fianna Fail to which the FB gives effect.
Fine Gael and Labour have abdicated their responsibilities even before the election campaign gets underway. But a real opposition is beginning to emerge; one that opposes the backward, neo-liberal policy of the IMF and EU.-an outmoded reactionary philosophy which is largely responsible for the current crisis.
A small side-effect of Labour’s hypocrisy: a finance bill rushed through like this will be rich pickings for accountants and their clients in the business of tax evasion/avoidance.
Meanwhile, in what’s-the-point-anyway news, did I see that Greek government bonds were downgraded to junk or near-junk status the other day?
[...] to the Finance Bill, as noted by Harry McGee yesterday on the Irish Times website and quoted here… was indeed as he put it when… …both [Labour and Fine Gael] will facilitate the passage of [...]
[...] to the Finance Bill, as noted by Harry McGee yesterday on the Irish Times website and quoted here… was indeed as he put it when… “…both [Labour and Fine Gael] will [...]
[...] to the Finance Bill, as noted by Harry McGee yesterday on the Irish Times website and quoted here… was indeed as he put it when… “…both [Labour and Fine Gael] will facilitate the passage of [...]