Our politicians are far from remote — and it’s a good job
As citizens worldwide rally against the ‘elite’, it shows how grounded Irish lawmakers are, says Eoin O’Malley
SNOUTS in the trough. They’re all crooks and cowards. Only out to line their own pockets. Out of touch, they are. Living in mansions, while the rest of us have to graft. That’s our view of politicians. They aren’t popular, which is odd for a group whose job interview is literally a popularity contest.
The big debate on the breakdown of established party politics, which has happened here as much as anywhere else, centres on the argument that most politicians are from a wealthy, metropolitan elite who look after the interests of others in their tribe, ignoring ordinary people.
The wife of the US treasury secretary got into trouble last week for having Instagrammed a photo of herself alighting a government jet. She accompanied the photo with a list of the designer clothes she was wearing, showing herself to be utterly out-of-touch with the lives of ordinary people.
In the UK, the Tory party is replete with the Oxbridge-educated, super-wealthy elite who give their children Latin names. Much of the Labour party there is made of the same stuff. Where the masses make do with two weeks in Spain, they holiday with other elites in the Bavarian Alps, places that will be out of fashion by the time you think of going there.
This is meant to explain the surprising popularity of politicians such as Jeremy Corbyn, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
We’re told Irish politicians are no different. Fine Gael’s failure to do anything about the housing crisis is because there’s a cash bonanza for them and their friends in the high rents. It’s nonsense, of course. With a few exceptions — Charles Haughey comes immediately to mind — Irish politicians don’t live a rarified life free from the toils of ordinary folk.
Look at the holders of the office of Taoiseach. Brian Cowen holidayed, not in the Caribbean but in a caravan in Connemara. Enda Kenny lived in a small flat above a restaurant in Dublin.
Leo Varadkar is exceptional in many ways — very few people his age earn the generous salary he receives. But look at where he lives — a modest-looking apartment block in Carpenterstown, which is probably worth less than what he paid for it.
He’s experienced the same problems many others of this generation have. It was also reported in this paper last week that his partner has to go to the US to get experience to help advance his career.
He could spin it that he’s the negative-equity Taoiseach, who has personal experience of emigration. He wouldn’t be so stupid, of course. He knows it would invite abuse, and he knows he’d deserve it. The thing about Irish politicians is how close to the ground they are, and thanks to the electoral system, have to be.
A few years ago, I heard the former head of the EU Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, speak. His entry to politics happened when he was asked to run for election by the leader his party in Portugal. He said he agreed to run — but worried that he couldn’t campaign because he was doing a doctorate at the time in Georgetown University in the US. The party leader reassured him that there was no need to return to Portugal until after the election — if he were successful.
As it turned out, Barroso got elected without any campaigning — and was immediately made a junior minister.
That wouldn’t happen here. The Irish electoral system is heavily criticised, but it performs at least one important function. It keeps our politicians grounded.
It’s very difficult for an Irish politician to lose touch when, at their constituency clinics, they are weekly confronted by real people, with real problems.
The reason Varadkar wouldn’t be as stupid as to spin a poor-mouth story is that he knows he’s pretty welloff. British politicians who might go to their constituency once a month to open a garden fete don’t get that grounding.
This is a good and a bad thing. One of the reasons we didn’t have riots here, as we saw in Greece during the crisis, might be the accessibility of politicians here. Though the cuts hurt, and some argue were unnecessary or counterproductive, the two crisis governments, the Fianna FailGreen and Fine Gael-Labour governments, were careful to protect certain payments like the pension and the dole.
An out-of-touch elite or the IMF might have seen these as easy targets, but Irish politicians were more attuned to what would be acceptable. The ordinariness of Irish politics is sometimes a problem, though. Because they tend to come from similar backgrounds, there often isn’t the clash of ideas and different perspectives that you want in politics.
If Irish politicians don’t seem to be doing anything to address the housing crisis, it’s not because they’re profiting from it — it’s because they lack the imagination to try something new. The Irish State is used to getting its information from the private sector, rather than gathering it itself, and though homes aren’t being built in sufficient numbers at the moment, there is an ideological mental block stopping politicians from considering more radical ideas.
Their ordinariness also means they often don’t have the skill-set to do what is meant to be their primary job of making policy and passing good laws. Too many former school teachers or community activists mean that there is a singular mindset. When local politics is important for all, nimbyism can successfully block change.
And we sometimes see Irish politicians lack self-confidence. Because they usually don’t come up with ideas, they aren’t great at selling them to the public. Abroad, they sometimes look a bit as if they feel lucky to be noticed. One wonders, was it something of self-confidence that meant Ireland didn’t extract a better deal from the EU during the crisis? They muddled through. We might think our politicians are rubbish, but we’re wrong if we think they’re remote.
‘Most Irish politicians are well attuned to what is acceptable...’