MICHAEL McDOWELL
The need and desire exists but the task will require great skill and for people to re-engage with democracy, writes Michael McDowell
IT should not come as a surprise to anyone that a majority of people now appears to favour the formation of a new political party. Falling satisfaction with the Government, combined with growing evidence that the coalition parties have fallen out of love with each other and have taken instead to the role of partners in a deeply unhappy marriage, triggers the question in many people's minds as to what they would do with their vote if a general election were to be called in the medium term.
Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, the Civil War parties, have many features in common. Ideologically, there is very little to distinguish them — especially in their response to the banking and economic crisis. But perhaps the most important thing they have in common is an absolutely rigid and almost genetic unwillingness to enter into coalition with each other in the manner suggested perhaps 30 years ago by the late and great John Kelly.
If the two Civil War parties were to form a coalition, unless they merged into a single party, it would spell the death of one of them. In a curious form of political symbiosis, each needs the other to survive. At the last election, the Labour Party lost its greatest ever opportunity to become the leading party of opposition, and ultimately the leading party in government, because its leadership chose seats at the Cabinet table at the expense of a transformed future for their party.
Had Labour stayed in opposition, it would at one stroke have seen off Fianna Fail as the largest party in opposition and at the same time created the political space and opportunity to challenge Fine Gael for government at the next general election.
Whether one swallows the story that the decision to go into government was done in the national interest, or whether one believes that the decision was more to do with a conviction on the part of leading Labour frontbenchers that this was their last opportunity before reaching retirement age to become ministers, the fact remains that the decision to form a super coalition, amounting almost to a national government, seems set to cause the Labour Party terrible damage in the medium and long term. Because the Civil War parties are incapable of joining each other in government, middle Ireland is now confronted with the possibility of a Fianna Fail/Sinn Fein coalition after the next election or some ragbag coalition involving Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein and the hard left.
The re-election of Fine Gael and Labour seems increasingly unlikely and their wretched relationship in any event suggests to many voters that a second term would be truly awful.
At this stage, I cannot see any possibility of an overall majority Fine Gael government after the next election. This raises the question as to how Fine Gael, having lost some seats, could find any partner with which to do business.
It seems to me to follow that many people in middle Ireland would support the formation of a new party which would give Ireland the opportunity to have a new government which would not include the Labour Party.
That is what I believe lies behind today's opinion poll. Just because a majority favours the establishment of a new political party does not mean that the majority will necessarily vote for that party. But I believe that there is at least 25 per cent of the electorate which would opt for a new party as an alternative to another term for the present coalition and as an alternative to a Fianna Fail/Sinn Fein coalition backed by the remnants of Labour.
It was on this basis that I said earlier this year that there was “a gap in the market”. It is an entirely different thing to create “a market in that gap”.
It is easy to speak or write about forming a new political party; it requires real skill and experience to bring one about. It also requires a coherent and attractive policy platform backed by people whom the electorate can trust. That is not easy to achieve. It takes patience, planning, timing and judgement. It also requires that citizens re-engage with their democracy. Our future may depend on that. Michael McDowell is a barrister and was a founder member of the Progressive Democrats, a PD TD, Tanaiste, party leader, government minister, and Attorney General