Listen to the people who saw through the posing
WALLOPS are meant to come with sore and bruising effects, the trauma of the impact not readily forgotten. Establishment Ireland, though, is moving on already from the message delivered by the electorate only five days ago.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is lecturing the United States about the tragedy blighting Gaza. His Cabinet colleagues are clambering into business-class seats and flying out of trouble to a weekend of harmless photo opportunities.
By St Patrick’s Day, the dramatic statement made by the Irish people in routing two shallow referendum proposals will be slipping further out of their thoughts.
The capacity of the Government to process what should be a resounding warning is remarkable. The same goes for the phalanx of NGOs that did its bidding, and the bien-pensants left aghast at people rejecting constitutional amendments that were about feelings rather than substance.
The mistake they have made is to neatly box off opposition to their needless, costly referendums.
They were defeated because the plebs didn’t understand.
Nonsense
They were defeated because a latent, orthodox Catholic vote rose up to defend the Ireland of Éamon de Valera and John Charles McQuaid.
They were defeated because Ireland is rife with racists, a silent army of far-right haters rejecting enlightenment in favour of a dark, hostile land.
It’s nonsense, of course, but blaming the Catholic Church is a favoured tactic. A newer one, eagerly pursued too, is citing the influence of the far right.
All of this presumes the public can be led, as unthinking as cattle, to do the bidding of interest groups, religious bodies and malign agents of destruction. God forbid that people would think for themselves, and reject insubstantial proposals, and do so on International Women’s Day, too.
There was a chorus of off-therecord briefings in the hours after Saturday’s humiliation pinning the blame on Leo Varadkar for the timing of the vote. Whoever decided it was guilty of tacky tokenism befitting this entire, mortifying gimmick.
If the Taoiseach and his ministers and the wider machinery of the establishment are serious about actually absorbing the reasons behind the vote, they would have started by having the common decency to have a representative in Dublin Castle for the official announcements on Saturday evening.
The failure to do so was meanminded and classless. And it hasn’t got any better since then.
The admission by some backbenchers that they campaigned for Yes but voted No is a fair reflection of the misfiring state of this administration.
It’s been suggested that the prospect of an election at any time this year has receded as a result of the defeat, but the Government can cling on until next March and the latest possible date, and it won’t matter a damn if it remains set against actually listening to people.
The first step should involve accepting that voters informed themselves last Friday and voted accordingly – but that will involve the Taoiseach and his team accepting that on this issue they were wildly out of touch with public sentiment.
This was a vote that simply didn’t address an urgent need in Irish life, and that this apparently wasn’t understood should be astonishing.
But it’s not, because there are other issues that confirm as much. One is immigration, and in particular the desire among the public for a system that is compassionate, fair and rigorously maintained. Local communities protesting against the use of facilities to house refugees are instantly tarred as racists. The wisdom of physical protests can certainly be debated, given the risk of infiltration by actual racists and extremists, but the fears and desperation of places that have suffered for years from under-investment and neglect eventually manifest themselves.
Small towns across Ireland have been demonised for protesting, as if they are hotbeds of bigotry when in fact they are flashpoints thrust into notoriety by the failings of the State.
The response of the State to the displacement of millions of Ukrainians was unmoored from reality from the start, and it is dreadfully unjust that a policy built on wishful thinking has seen ordinary people at the centre of ugly controversies – while those fleeing war are caught in the middle.
The notion that general unease with the Government’s handling of this area somehow nourished a far-right vote last Friday is risible, but it was a claim made early and often by some analysts.
Charade
Equally dumb is the claim that religious dogma propelled people into voting booths.
It’s unclear who is supposed to be orchestrating this revival of overwhelming Church influence on Irish life, but that there is such an active mobilisation of fervent Catholicism in Ireland again will certainly come as news to those attending echoing churches every weekend.
It’s easy to pick fights with ghosts, and that was one of the underlying failures of these cackhanded referendums. Being seen to face down the conservative forces that long ruled the country was irresistible for many, inside and outside Government.
Ghosts don’t answer back – but people do. And they saw through the posing, the cynicism, and the vacuousness of this charade. They should be heeded. If not, then more brutal judgement awaits.