John Gormley: The Latest Eoghan Harris Acolyte?

Has Eoghan Harris done it again? John Gormley has said that he is “open to the concept of a national government”, something that Harris has been pushing, as discussed here previously. However, Gormley speaks only for his own party when he says

I don’t think it would be responsible for any party to say that this isn’t on the agenda

Gormley said that Fianna Fáil was not very interested in a national government, but then again neither was Fine Gael nor Labour, partly due to the past treatment of Fine Gael by Fianna Fáil. When I read Harris’ call for a national government (and by the way, we might be better saying a government of many parties than a national government lest we be accused of partitionism) I put it down to his usual hyperbolic style; no-one could take his references to being in a revolutionary situation seriously, I thought.

More fool me. Gormley makes it quite clear that elements of the government are in the grip of mounting hysteria.

We’re in a situation now that we need to think outside the box, to think the unthinkable because we need — all of us as politicians — to put the national interest ahead of our own political careers. Frankly, if Fine Gael and Labour feel that they want to take over the country — well, if they keep going on the way they are, they may not have a country to take over at all.
When it comes to these financial difficulties the Government and the opposition are going to have to work together.

He also warned the opposition that the eyes of the international financial world were on the Republic, and that they should be aware of damaging its reputation. Incredible. I was going to compare Gormley to Cassandra but of course Cassandra’s predictions were actually correct. The boy who cried wolf is another possible analogy, though again, he was proven right in the end. And, as noted by CL in the comments here panicky academics are raising the possibility of the IMF taking over and imposing 50% wage cuts. What is going on? There may well be a gap in the public finances because the government has squandered the income generated during the boom years, and because of the inadequate tax base, in large measure due to the government’s refusal to properly tax those most able to afford it, especially speculators of various types. But the idea that there is not the money in the economy available to significantly plug this gap seems to me silly. We don’t need a government of many parties: we need the political will to take the money from those who have not been pulling their weight, and getting super-rich on the backs of the rest of us.

That seems to me to be the message that 120,000 people were making loud and clear on the streets of Dublin on Saturday. In a country where there are individual citizens likely to be worth more than the two billion Euro the levy is designed to cover, surely we can find an alternative? The new TASC blog has this document from the TCD Pension Policy Research Group calling for the tax system to be used to find the funds; The Workers’ Party has produced a document calling for a range of state interventions (a stimulus package if you will), including an economically and environmentally friendly state programme of insulating houses, putting building workers back to work, while saving families money in the longer term. Harris talks of this being a revolutionary situation comparable to that faced by the Jacobins. Let’s take him at his word then. The Jacobins introduced forced loans on the rich. What is the problem with us doing the same? We could make a serious dent in the fiscal problems faced by the state, while ensuring that as few people as possible are hit. We might even find allies in unlikely places. Fianna Fáil Transport Minister Noel Dempsey has said that those (i.e. bankers) who gambled with Ireland’s economic reputation are guilty of

no less than economic treason…people should pay a price for that

I couldn’t agree more.