Tánaiste gives the Opposition a Covid opening

REMEMBER the old one about the American billionaire’s angry injunction to his staff after his old buddy is floored by a heart attack? “Don’t just stand there – go and buy a hospital,” he thundered. It came to mind as Labour leader Alan Kelly issued a broadside to Government on Monday as it looked dangerously as if Covid-19-stricken Ireland was headed for Level 5 lockdown. He urged avoidance of Level 5 in favour of the State buying private hospitals to provide a decent level of intensive care units, which are strangely lacking in this country.

It was a lucky strike by the Labour leader who is, like all the opposition parties, trying to find a level as this pandemic is once more at a crossroads. The authorities may be about to lose a fretful and plague-weary public, which would help the opposition gain some support.

Against that, this one is complex and people could just as easily take against politicians – attacking the Government simply for the sake of it. The reality is that opposition is almost as tricky right now as government.

Months of almost cross-party solidarity definitively broke down on September 15 when the Government falteringly, and in rather unfortunate circumstances, unveiled the ‘Living with Covid Plan’ supposedly to take us to next spring. The opposition, led by Sinn Féin, unleashed a major broadside.

But it was aimed largely at “how the message was communicated” and it took advantage of slips by Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, and a less-assured performance by the Taoiseach Micheál Martin. The incidence of virus figures going up and up again in Dublin proved a godsend in helping the Opposition.

For better or worse, we have inherited the Anglo Saxon way of doing politics – which is adversarial. Many will have it that without opposition there is nothing in democratic politics. Up to the 2016 general election, it was always clear-cut. The opposition sat opposite the government and kicked, kicked and kicked them. Then the Balkanised Dáil complicated things for Fianna Fáil, which became the opposition and the “coalition enabler”, under the confidence and supply.

The advent of Covid-19, hot on the heels of another inconclusive general election on February 8 this year – and straddling a prolonged coalition-making process – made things more complex. National crisis made unduly partisan opposition politics appear cheap, nasty and harmful.

But six months after the first “all-in-thistogether” lockdown, an easing of strictures, and the wallop of a second Covid-19 wave prompting a second big lockdown, things are very much up for grabs. The Opposition know that being part of a united front is the medium-term road to ruin via invisibility.

By yesterday it was clear there was no advantage for the opposition to back the Nphet medical experts in seeking an abrupt Level 5 lockdown. Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald noted the nation just had no stomach for it.

But just as on September 15, there was another side-bar godsend. It was Tánaiste Leo Varadkar’s vicious and rather personalised attack on the Nphet experts on RTÉ television as he explained why Government shot down their advice. Again, it was not the message, but how it was put.