My Latest Delusion
Irish local election results always depress me. Every single time, I allow myself brief moments of optimism in the days before the poll. Insane delusions take hold and as the vote looms, I begin to entertain crazed notions such as “Maybe that really good local candidate has an outside chance” or “Surely this time the electorate will give a good kicking to both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil”. My fundamental failure to properly understand local politics leads me to strange thoughts like “Perhaps those guys who got exposed on national TV as fundamentally corrupt won’t top the poll”.
Without fail, I am disappointed. Most of my fellow voters are a breed of human that I don’t really understand. All the best candidates where I live get only a few hundred votes each and are eliminated in early counts, as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael continue their reign of dominance over local politics. The politician that everybody knows is corrupt, of course, tops the poll. Congratulations to the successful candidates and I guess I’ll be seeing you next in about five years’ time.
Something else that invariably disappoints me after elections in Ireland is the failure of left-wing parties to make any significant breakthrough. The elections this time around were no different. Sinn Féin’s support collapsed and they are set to lose a third of their County Council seats. Further to the left, both Solidarity and People Before Profit have gone into decline and will also lose some of their seats, of which there were not that many in the first place. The Social Democrats will be happy but the 2.3% of the vote they got in the local elections is not exactly a ringing endorsement from the electorate.
Certainly, the Green Party made a significant breakthrough, but it is not clear whether they should be considered a party of the left. Their new star Saoirse McHugh certainly thinks they are, stating she would resign from the party if they entered coalition with Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. But this is a party whose leader Eamon Ryan happily served in Cabinet under Bertie Ahern, supports water charges and to this day defends the bank bailout. In any case, even if we do take the Green Party as being of the left, the 5.6% they received in the local elections (at the time of writing) is perhaps more indicative of their true support than the 12% they got at the European elections, where the performances of Cuffe and McHugh exceeded expectations.
All in all, as per usual, it was not a great day for the left. It would appear that one of the main reasons why this is the case is the low voter turnout, particularly amongst working-class people. This is undoubtedly the reason behind the fall in support for Sinn Féin, Solidarity, and for People Before Profit. I’m convinced that if the elections were held again tomorrow and all those who didn’t vote cast a ballot, and all those who did stayed at home, the result would be radically different.
I suspect that one of the main reasons many do not vote is that voting often makes little difference. This is especially true for local and European elections, where successful candidates have limited power once they enter what are fairly democratically constrained systems. Parties that seek to challenge the status quo must be able to make a realistic pitch that they can change things for the better and such a pitch is difficult to make concerning local and European levels of government.
But the poor showing of the left is usually replicated at General Elections, where the scope for pursuing meaningful change is at its highest. Part of the problem here is that the left has been unable to present itself as a credible alternative for government. At General Elections, a vote for a left-wing candidate is one cast in the knowledge that it’s very unlikely to be a vote for someone with any chance of entering government. This shouldn’t put people off, but it does.
One way to counter this perception would be if all the left-wing parties and independents formed an electoral alliance. If the parties of the left were to form a pact, they could credibly present themselves as a viable alternative to the status quo parties of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.
To an extent, this has been tried before. The United Left Alliance was a coming together of the smaller far-left parties that quickly fell apart due to internal squabbling over how decisions should be made. The current Solidarity/People Before Profit alliance is the successor to the ULA but this alliance is not really making the inroads that it needs to. What is required is a much broader alliance that encompasses the far-left, the centre-left, and everything in between.
It could be based around some very simple shared principles; a commitment not to enter government with FF/FG, a public house-building program, tackling climate change in a way that does not harm ordinary people, and increased taxes on the extremely wealthy. I believe such a program would resonate with the majority of citizens, if not the majority of active voters.
The Right2Change policy platform at the last General Election was a step in the right direction but I am thinking about a cohesive alliance, one that would include active coordination and cooperation with the aim of maximising the left-wing vote, rather than a simple policy pledge like Right2Change. Under such an alliance, one could envision, for example, the Social Democrats not running a candidate where they might take a seat from Sinn Féin, or PBP not standing where success would be at the expense of Independents4Change. Where parties do compete against each other, giving a second preference to another party in the alliance would be strongly encouraged.
Alas, such an alliance is extremely unlikely to materialise. Which is a shame, because it could benefit all involved.
Sinn Féin, since Mary Lou McDonald assumed leadership, has sought to position itself much closer to the centre-ground in Irish politics and it appears to envision entering coalition with either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. If we include the last Presidential Election, the electorate have rejected this strategy twice now. Hopefully, senior figures within the party will conclude that moving to a crowded centre ground will not prove fruitful. An alliance with the revolutionary left would indicate that Sinn Féin is serious about providing a real alternative to the status quo.
Far-left groupings such as PBP/Solidarity and Independents4Change currently look to have zero chance of having their policies implemented. A broad left-wing coalition that included them would actually give some of their policies a realistic chance of becoming law and would make them appear serious about wanting to govern.
The Greens and the Social Democrats would have less reason or need to commit political suicide by entering coalition with FF/FG and would have much more of their policies implemented in a left-wing government than in one they formed with the status quo parties.
There are other benefits. There would be the potential for all parties in a left-wing alliance to increase their seat numbers if an effective vote management strategy was pursued earnestly and with diligence. More fundamentally, a cohesive left-wing alliance would force the parties of the left to acknowledge the reality of the current socio-economic situation. Centre left parties such as Sinn Féin and the Social Democrats, in a grouping that contained more radical elements, might be forced to confront the fact that capitalism needs more radical and deeper reform than they currently countenance. The far-left, in such a grouping, might face up to the fact that an overthrow of capitalism is not currently on the horizon; the best hope for now is that it be reformed in such a way that the havoc it unleashes be sufficiently restrained. The Green Party would be forced to “poverty-proof” their agenda, ensuring that the poor don’t suffer from the much-needed transformation to a truly sustainable economy.
Such an alliance would divide Irish politics into two main blocs. A left-wing alliance comprising Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats, Solidarity/PBP, the Greens, and various left-wing independents on one side, and a right-wing one bloc of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, and some right-wing independents on the other. An added bonus of having a unified left would thus be that it would be much more difficult for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to continue the charade that there is any real difference between them. Similarly, a party that was left-wing on paper but refused to join a broad left-wing alliance would face much closer scrutiny of their intentions.
Without some form of broad alliance, the fate of the left in Ireland is to either remain in opposition, or to enter coalition as a smaller partner to one of the status quo parties. We’ve seen too much of both outcomes in Ireland. Neither will deliver the change that is needed. On the other hand, a left that was somewhat unified in purpose and policy, might deliver actual political victories. This might even result in the re-engagement of people mostly apathetic to politics, but who are, of course, its primary victims.
So there we go, only 4 days after the election and I’ve started with the delusions again.
