A vote that exposes the Coalition’s endemic sloppiness mixed with a sprinkle of arrogance
POLITICAL defeats can be useful, if the vanquished ones use the salt and ashes they find themselves dining on as a learning experience.
The bad news for Coalition parties that, within an hour of the count’s beginning, were pulling out the knives and settling into each other, is that they resemble the infamous French Bourbons who forgot nothing and learnt nothing.
The Coalition Throuple are in a state of delayed shock because, in theory, a referendum on exorcising de Valera’s views on Mum and the home could not go wrong.
The Government’s fatal attraction was also informed by the ongoing wistful dream of that generation of politicians to recreate, just one more time, the Camelot that was the Marriage Equality Referendum.
Unlike the current referendum rout, on that balmy Mayday in 2015, Ireland passed the referendum by a resounding margin of
‘It bore a closer resemblance to Toy Show The Musical’
62% to 38% with a high, 60.5% turnout. As the result emerged amid song and sunlight, thousands of people gathered in the courtyard of Dublin Castle and politicians and drag queens danced together draped in Rainbow banners amid scenes of widespread jubilation.
Leo Varadkar, Helen McEntee and the rest looked like the future then, as the then-health minister, who had come out as gay during the campaign, said ‘the overwhelming Yes vote makes Ireland a beacon of light’.
As Leo added, ‘It’s a historic day for Ireland: a social revolution’, the country also basked in the applause of the world, which is still very important to an insecure State.
Even the Taoiseach Enda Kenny – who started his political career supporting Liam Cosgrave and would never have expected to be doing such things – said the referendum turnout showed the ‘palpable movement’ of people wanting to be involved.
The then-US vice president, Joe Biden, tweeted: ‘We welcome Ireland’s support for equality #LoveWins’, and Hillary Clinton said ‘well done’, while in a typically astute move, Simon Harris opened the Dublin count centre which allowed ministers to experience the rare delight of being photographed beside thousands of cheering young people.
The problem, of course, is that once you have had that moment of perfection, you can never have it again. And no matter how much they have sought it, governments have never secured that Camelot of modernity, light, youthfulness, and Rainbow flags again.
Instead as the dust, debris and bullets started to fly this weekend, Friday’s referendums bore a closer resemblance to Toy Show The Musical.
It had been an expensive, ill-thought-out production that damaged everyone who touched it, for as Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín perceptively observed, an Opposition that declared their support for the referendum were equally ‘marooned’ from the people.
This included Sinn Féin for, as Mary Lou McDonald fled from the Government’s embrace faster than the departure of James II from the Battle of the Boyne, all of the carefully planted lines about Government ‘solo runs’ could not disguise the blunt reality that, once again, Sinn Féin found itself on the wrong side of its working-class base.
Labour and the Social Democrats will, by contrast, have been glad not to have been noticed.
Ultimately, those who have to learn lessons with the utmost urgency are the Government parties, for they are the ones being pelted in the stocks.
The rare good news in that regard is that at least the Sadducee’s tomb of this misbegotten frolic provides them with a learning opportunity for the general election. But given that no one from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens (or Sinn Féin, Labour, and the Social Democrats for that matter) showed the basic respect for democracy that consists in showing up for the official result, their ability to learn those lessons is questionable.
To be helpful, though, we will note that this referendum provided the three Coalition parties with the perfect case study in their ongoing political failings.
The crucial vice this Coalition suffers from is an endemic sloppiness mingled with just a sprinkle of arrogance.
This has created a tendency to step on completely avoidable political garden rakes in a manner that cannot be underestimated.
Nothing epitomised this more than the clever suggestion that we remove mothers from the Constitution two days before… Mother’s Day.
The referendum also unveiled yet another example of the Coalition’s increasingly dangerous detachment from the people.
The main symptom of this now-chronic condition is a susceptibility to virtue-signalling, and that’s something to which working-class voters, especially, are increasingly hostile.
As No campaigner Senator Michael McDowell colourfully observed on yesterday’s Anton Savage Show: the high-water mark of Woke activism and virtue signalling has been reached.
The problem also for the Coalition is that in its separation from the public, it has become unwisely dependent on NGOs such as the National Women’s Council (NWC) to tell it what the people are thinking.
Unfortunately, the people believe the NWC is a group of upper-class, Southside Dublin dominated, Sinn Féin-led, ideological Janissaries who are utterly detached from their experiences.
Clever politicians realise that virtue-signalling is an overrated and dangerous pastime that generally irritates a populace that prefers to be left alone.
This interfering Coalition doesn’t realise that.
The sole exception, perhaps, is Fianna Fáil, which headed for the hills once the whistle was blown and displayed a signal lack of enthusiasm for the fray.
The campaign itself provided one final critical lesson for the Coalition in the sense that it was an accidental dry run for the general election.
When it came to this ill-begotten referendum, the Coalition fought it as a house divided.
The Greens called for it, Fine Gael led it and Fianna Fáil disappeared from it.
The only moment of unity was in defeat, when all three parties were blamed for it.
The tangled-up Coalition Throuple can, when it comes to the now on-rushing election, do what they want after any vote.
But if they go into the next election for a second rerun as a house divided, their post-election options might be a lot poorer than they would be if they decided to take a chance on hanging together.
However, the ferocity with which they are already digging the post-referendum political knives into each other suggests this might be yet another lesson they will be slow to learn.
‘The only moment of Coalition unity was in defeat’