Hungry left-wingers waiting for a feast that never arrives
Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, the Labour Party needs a major change of tactics, writes Liam Weeks
IT may not have been on many screens over the Christmas, but the cinephiles among you may recall the 1970s surrealist film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
Winning an Academy Award for the best foreign language film in 1973, Luis Bunuel’s masterpiece was a satirical attack on the bourgeoisie, the kind of people in Ireland who buy The Irish Times and vote for the Labour party.
The narrative of the film revolves around a group of six bourgeois individuals constantly attempting to dine together over a meal that never arrives. There are a number of different episodes involving their attempts to eat, but just when they think their meal is about to be served, the diners are interrupted, and their efforts to satisfy their appetites thwarted.
Whenever I watch this film I am reminded of the efforts of the left in Ireland, still waiting for its own meal ticket of leading a government to arrive. There have been numerous moments when the left has been gathered at the table, in the forlorn belief that its time has come, from 1967 when Brendan Corish declared the ‘Seventies will be Socialist’, to the Spring Tide of 1992.
However, on every occasion they have been denied their meal, often by incidents of the left’s own making, as they continue to play second fiddle to the civil war parties.
The first mistake of the left came at the critical election of 1918 that shaped the Irish political system, when Sinn Fein won a massive electoral mandate. Labour chose not to contest this election, absenting itself from the dining table altogether, and thereby allowing the nationalist agenda to shape the future politics of the country.
The myth then was constructed that ‘Labour must wait’. They never thought it would have to be for this long.
But the wait should now be over. This ought to have been the decade when the left realised that its time had finally come.
The policies of the hegemonic centre-right failed during the so-called Great Recession. The dominant party in Ireland, who so for so long had captured many of Labour’s natural supporters, collapsed.
The time was ripe for the left to profit, and so Labour and Sinn Fein had their best-ever election results in 2011. But Labour committed its age-old mistake of propping up a centre-right party in government, and was punished by its new-found supporters five years later.
In spite of this, 2016 was still the greatest ever election for the left in Ireland. With the civil war parties for the first time winning between them only a minority of votes, the left combined won about one-third of votes and seats in the Dail. This was more than either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael.
And yet, after the election it was Independents who seemed to hold all the aces. Newspapers ran with headlines such as ‘Independents’ day’, with little to no mention of the left. Why? Because the various actors on the left had once again failed to get their act together, and this is why they are all absent from the dining table, still hungry, still in opposition.
Between them, in 2016 Sinn Fein won 23 seats, Labour seven, the AAA-PBP six, Independents4Change four, the Social Democrats three, the Greens two, and there were about nine left-leaning Independents.
In total, 54 seats, and yet it meant little difference for the left, as Fianna Fail and Fine Gael continued to rule the roost.
But why is this the case? Why is the left seemingly unable to pool their efforts to achieve a common goal?
When I first studied political science, we were taught that Ireland historically had one of the weakest levels of support for the left in Europe.
The reasons given were his- torical, including the pre-eminence of nationalist issues, subventing any class struggle that elsewhere pushes leftist parties to the forefront; the pre-industrialised nature of the economy and the lack of a sizeable working class, traditionally the backbone of support for the left; the moral authority of the Catholic Church, who preached about keeping reds under the bed; and the high levels of emigration, removing who, in any other jurisdiction, would have been natural left-wing voters.
These reasons combined resulted in Labour being known as the Cinderella of social democracy in Europe. Indeed, at one stage in the early 2000s, Ireland was one of only three countries in the EU in which there was not a left-led government.
But these historical factors have almost all now disappeared, and yet the left remains a Cinderella, in servitude to her two ugly sisters.
One additional reason given for the weakness of the left was its tactical mistakes, particularly those of Labour.
Within the left, ideological debate often took precedence over organisational strategies. Numerous attempts to form alliances between left-wing parties failed, and Labour instead preferred to work with the centre-right parties in government.
While the majority of factors inhibiting the left have abated, this one of tactical ineptitude has not.
The left needs to realise that it is only by working together that it can ever hope to change Irish politics and society in a manner to its tastes.
Granted there are differences between the various actors, but it is their disharmony and fragmentation that has allowed Fine Gael and Fianna Fail to profit, even though the support of the latter two has consistently been in decline since the 1990s.
In other countries, such as France and Italy, it was only by forming an alliance that the parties of the left were able to oust the right from office.
These alliances took the form of electoral pacts, where the parties of the left transferred votes to each other and stood agreed candidates. This ensured that the left vote was not split, and allowed them to maximise their seat return.
In Australia, one of the few countries to use a similar voting system to ourselves, there is even a self-styled ‘preference whisperer’, who arranges transfer pacts between minor parties that enables them to win seats with small first preference votes.
At recent elections in Victoria, for example, this strategy saw the Transport Matters and Sustainable Australia parties win one seat each with a combined vote of less than 2pc.
If the left in Ireland replicated these tactics, not only could it win more seats, but this would persuade voters that they are a genuine governing option.
This in itself would have a knock-on effect of generating more support for the left. Despite its seeming irrelevance in opposition, the parties of the left continue to attract strong support in the opinion polls. Despite the economic recovery and the revival of Fine Gael’s fortunes, the figures still indicate that the left combined has more support than any party.
Ireland has experienced much change in the past few decades. The country has been liberalised to an extent not deemed fathomable just a generation ago when the vast majority of voters were weekly Mass-goers.
In spite of this change, the political landscape seems frozen in time, still controlled by two relics of a civil war from a century ago.
Some of the media commentary in recent years has been on these two parties pooling these resources. But that would change nothing.
For those who desire change, the focus instead should be on a coalition of the left. This would have the potential to revolutionise our politics, but, if they continue to plough independent furrows, the left will remain adrift, like the bourgeoisie, waiting in vain for a meal that will never arrive. Dr Liam Weeks is director of the MSc Government & Politics at University College Cork
‘Politics seems frozen in time, controlled by two relics of a civil war’