Where’s the urgency among our politicians?
WEEK three in the ‘Big Brother’ house and still nothing has happened. If politics often looks like some strange reality TV show, then the torpor which has descended on our elected representatives since we went to the polls back on February 8 means the scenes of boredom from ‘Big Brother’ are the ones that most immediately spring to mind.
But at least some parties are doing something and showing their base that they’re not concerned with backroom deals and politicking.
Step forward Sinn Féin and its plan to hold a series of mass rallies this week, including tonight in Dublin’s Liberty Hall. Why? Well, nobody really knows. Certainly, following a series of public relations disasters since the election, it desperately needs to get its message back on track.
According to Mary Lou McDonald: “The people voted for change on February 8 and Sinn Féin is determined to deliver on the desire of the people for a government of change.”
But that still doesn’t explain why a series of rallies – including one in Newry on the other side of the Border – will, in some Damascene moment, suddenly convince Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to start wooing it into a coalition.
As former Justice Minister Alan Shatter pointed out: “I don’t think there is any precedent in Irish politics for a political party that has got 24.5pc of the vote holding a series of rallies to demand that they are part of government.”
In terms of the bigger picture and the party’s stated aims to use these gatherings to force the two main parties into talking to it, it hasn’t a chance. But they are an undeniably good way of energising its supporters.
Few people in Sinn Féin would thank me for pointing this out, but the only other politician in recent memory who continued to hold rallies even after an election was Donald Trump.
In fact, there are certain similarities between the Sinn Féin surge and the
Trump victory. Both relied on simple phrases. In Trump’s case, it was ‘Make America Great Again’. For Sinn Féin the mantra has been ‘Change’.
It also tapped into a vast reservoir of public resentment which the political establishments had completely missed. And guess what? They’re still missing it. While Sinn Féin busies itself with its own version of a tiki torch parade, the leading, centre parties should have had a plan in place.
Even before the election was held, you didn’t need to be Nostradamus to figure out which way it was going to play. The Sinn Féin result was unexpected in its scale, but not in its essence.
Even before the first polling card was dropped into a ballot box, it was always looking to be a coalition between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, with the Greens holding the coats as the junior members of a three-way coalition.
While the parties bicker and play their own version of Lannigan’s Ball, stepping in and then stepping out again, public irritation is growing at a wild rate and who could blame them?
Everyone accepts that we are going through an emergency at the moment; but as far as the political classes are concerned, it is an emergency with no urgency.
An opinion poll last week showed that nearly 50pc of the population would vote for any government which would do something, anything, to alleviate the housing crisis. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil picked up just short of a million votes and the onus is on them – and whoever else they can muster to make up the numbers – to stop their interminable bickering and do what they’re so well paid for, to get back to work.
But the quotes unnamed TDs over augur well.
According to one Fianna Fáil source: “Half the party will vote against going into coalition with Sinn Féin, the other half will vote against going into coalition with Fine Gael.”
That is just not good enough. It’s also precisely the kind of parochial arrogance which has turned so many people against the two parties.
Nobody other than a vestigial rump of either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael cares about their Civil War enmities – to borrow a phrase so popular with Sinn Féin, that’s all in the past.
But what unites every Irish citizen, regardless of who we voted for, is a genuine concern about the future.
If anything, the situation has worsened since the election. We still have more than 10,000 homeless people. Patients in our hospitals still languish on trolleys.
Then, in news which will come as a surprise to precisely nobody, it emerged that we endure the fifth-longest commuting times of our European neighbours while Dublin is now the 17th most congested city in the world. The housing crisis has from numerous the weekend don’t become so bad that even Naas is now considered part of the capital’s commuter belt.
There may be more jobs available, but it doesn’t feel like an improvement when people have to factor a journey of one or two hours to get into work, with the same unlovely prospect facing them when it’s time to go home.
These are the painful realities of life in a country where the disconnect between the people and the political classes has never seemed so profound.
On top of that, Boris Johnson is living down to all our worst expectations. His sabre-rattling with the EU has become noisier in recent days. His decision to sack the popular Julian Smith as Northern Ireland Secretary sent shivers down the spine of all sides. Further, the fears that he could rip up the Withdrawal Agreement as he goes to diplomatic war with the EU are real and genuine.
That leaves us, once again, at the mercy of a UK/EU cat fight. These are the issues, not whether some ancient rivalries between the two main parties can be put aside for the greater good. And that is the crux of the matter – people vote for politicians to be public servants engaged in the greater good. Not for them to engage in a car-park standoff over who gets the most ministerial perks.
To the politicians, the people say this – get together and sort it out, and then start building houses. This paralysis is good for nobody.
While the parties bicker and play their own version of Lannigan’s Ball, stepping in and stepping out again, public irritation is growing at a wild rate