Telling it like it is at the Irish Times? or how the left shouldn’t be afraid to praise where praise is due.

An odd article in the Irish Times [sub req’d] at the weekend by Eddie Holt. Holt tends to buck the general trend in the IT for all things centrist or conservative and opens a window on the sort of paper it largely used to be in the dim and distant past i.e. the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was, and to some extent remains on the left side of the balance sheet and to my mind his finest hour was as TV critic (rather like Shane Hegarty who came after him – perhaps Holt played John the Baptist to his Jesus, nah, perhaps not). There he was witty, incisive and accurate. A genuine pleasure to read.

Some years back he moved onto pastures new in his weekly column on a Saturday where he plies a fairly standard leftist diet. Broadly anti-Bush, pro-secular, concerned with the media, cognisant of the trials and tribulations of the world of work both public sector and private, in the past rather anti-Republican, why yes, seeing as you ask, not a hundred miles away philosophically from this very spot in some respects. However, being on the left while often good is not always sufficient.

In his latest column we’re treated to a critique of Bertie Ahern’s New Year’s message and in particular the phrase “Throughout our history Ireland has demonstrated by word and deed our commitment to the due dignity of the individual.” Holt points up the platitudinous nature of that sentence by pointing to the instances where the individual has been sorely undermined by the state. And fair enough. But then Holt states that “Strangely, Bertie Ahern’s latest platitude sounds as cavalier as his past declaration that he is a “socialist”. You might expect a socialist to emphasise communal aspects of society over individual ones. Not Bertie Ahern, however – he has typically chosen to try to be all things to all people, stressing individuality when it suits him and communality at other times”. Alright. Or perhaps it’s possible to be both a socialist and an individualist, that two seemingly contradictory positions can be held. Or more realistically the meaning of such terms in the rhetorical discourse that is the traditional New Year’s message is best taken with a significant grain of salt and a return to the real turkey and ham – or quorn depending on choice. Come on Eddie, we don’t really expect much more than that for a New Years message, any more than we expect a truly honest account of a grooms characteristics in a best man’s speech, and really, would we thank him for it either? The controls are set for four months of much more serious political discussion. In any case Ahern is a populist centrist politician. He pitches left, he pitches right. There is no great philosophy there, but so what? (Incidentally in yesterday’s Irish Times [sub req’d] Fintan O’Toole argues that Enda Kenny lost credibility – or ‘blew it’ when he engaged with a heckling Dick Roche during the debate on the Ahern payments controversy. O’Toole says “In a painfully revealing interview with Mark Hennessy in Friday’s Irish Times, Enda Kenny preened himself on getting good focus-group reactions to his stances on issues such as the statutory rape controversy and the age of consent. He added, damningly: “It is not easy to have the same sense of outrage and passion about economics, or whatever else.” If you can’t feel passion and outrage about social and economic justice, how are you going to offer voters a real choice?”

Wrong question. Enda Kenny doesn’t feel ‘passionately’ about those issues – although I have no doubt he cares about them – because he is, and let’s be clear about this, a fairly unideological centre/centre-right politician. No more no less. As well ask the birds to float down from the trees and become fish as expect him to channel that anger or that energy on those issues in the way O’Toole seems to demand (Gerry O’Quigley – who would have a similar background to at least some on the CLR, and who made some very thought-provoking points I’ve been meaning to respond to about the Workers’ Party and after, and will soon – on the always interesting ie-politics deals with the same column in greater depth).

So it’s not that Enda Kenny, who is by all accounts a personable and decent man, blew it but rather that Fintan is in the position of setting his expectations, even in the face of all previous evidence way too high… And if O’Toole expects any future Labour/FG government to act anywhere close to his expectations he’s set for even more disappointment).

Still, speaking of all things religious, Holt really becomes exercised when he discusses Pope Benedict XVI and say’s “Mind you, Pope Benedict XVI, in his New Year homily in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, described peace as a “gift to invoke with prayer, a task to carry out with courage, without ever tiring”. Peace, he added, can only be achieved if individuals’ human rights are respected. He stressed that there can be no excuse for treating people as “objects”.” and goes onto say “However, in a speech last September at Germany’s University of Regensburg, Pope Benedict had jeopardised peace by quoting a long dead Christian emperor who said the prophet Muhammad had brought the world only “evil and inhuman things”. After all, in Muslim societies to insult Muhammad is among the gravest crimes possible…Which is the real Benedict? Which is the real Bertie? They can’t, after all, have it both ways.”

Well look, me and Pope Benedict have some serious differences of opinion on a broad range of issues. But – and I’m entertained to find myself in the position of defending him, and voluntarily at that – this is I believe the same Pope Benedict XVI who travelled to Turkey within recent months, encouraged it’s accession to the EU, prayed in a mosque and generally accounted for himself with a degree of dignity and respectfulness that did him some credit.

In any event here we have a clear example of the educative results of a global storm of outrage. Pope Benedict, perhaps unwillingly, perhaps with massive reservations or perhaps not, managed to modify his stance on a particularly troubling issue for all of us with an interest in the future of Europe and it’s relations with a significant minority population on this continent. I see little to condemn in that and a lot to applaud. Sure, he remains essentially a conservative figure, I hold no hope that his period as Pope will usher in Vatican III (although some of the noises about contraception in the developing world are encouraging). But credit where credit is due. As the leader of one of the great monotheistic religions his visit to Turkey was a good days work.

Now there is a terrible tendency in discussions and arguments – particularly, but not exclusively on the right – to see change as indicating ‘flip-flop’ and it’s opposite as indicating rigid principle, to view multi-layered opinions or even contradictory thoughts as indicating insincerity or confusion. But the truth is that changes of opinion are to be welcomed by progressives if those changes are progressive. And while the sort of rather hackneyed populism of Ahern can often be gallling his basic points are neither innately contradictory nor cause for outrage, indeed now more than ever the left has to forge a socialism which understands individualism because that individualism (whether faux-individualism or not) is like the genetic code of the society we live in. The left should also be extremely wary of indulging in such a glib and counterproductive categorising. Moreover contradiction can often indicate complexity or can be a catalyst for same.

So what’s it to be? The simple comforts of a world where the battle lines are nicely drawn up and where ‘our’ guys are the only repositories of truth while ‘their’ guys are insincere and shifty? Fine, if the facts fit the bill, or if the cause is sufficiently important. But poring over New Years messages, and ignoring one positive set of consequences after earlier negative statements, or hoping that centrists will act like radicals, doesn’t seem to me to necessarily be the way forward.