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Cowen Under Attack from the Opposition
Read more about: Bertie Ahern Resigns, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Irish Election, Irish Politics, Labour Party, Lisbon Treaty, Polls
Today’s Humbert Summer schools has the opposition berating Cowen and attempting to frame the narrative for the upcoming election run-in. In her speech (wonderfully titled Brian Cowen and the Riddle of Cleopatra’s Nose)
Then, Brian Cowen enjoyed huge public and media approval and was received in his home county as a conquering hero. That has all now turned to ashes. From a height of public confidence and the adulation of his own Party he has sunk to nearly the lowest point, hero to zero in just 100 days.
Not entirely true, for the narrative of decay in Cowen’s government is - at this stage - confined to observers, opposition politicians and political commentators and not the polls. Even as they were losing Lisbon the government retained support levels that were capable of winning a General Election. The more people see Brian Cowen, the more they are reserving judgement or giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Yet that could all change and today’s speeches reflect that fact. Already September 15th is the deadline for departments to get their list of cuts back to Brian Lenihan and his mandarins in Finance. This is going to bring to a head the idea that Cowen was behind this mess all along, or at least give the opportunity to hammer home a narrative visible in parts for ages.
The title of her speech is a play on this theme, powerless to hold back forces he unleashed - Cowen must face the consequences and voters must choose not to back a man with such terrible foresight and judgement;
So I come to my title today. Cleopatra’s legendary beauty drove men to distraction and war. This led the French philosopher Pascal to pose a famous question: “If Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter, would the whole face of the world have been changed?”
So is history made by ordinary human factors and actions, or is it determined by deeper currents which individual effort is powerless to hold back or propel forward.
And this is where the opposition are making their pitch, Enda Kenny was next to the podium after Joan Burton and he went even further;
Brian Cowen was able to conceal the worst from himself and the electorate because the property tax windfall disguised just how badly the public finances were doing. He was able to convince the public that he was a tough-talking action man, when in fact he was slavishly colluding in Bertie Ahern’s policy of appeasement. Of caving in to one vested interest after another. Of surrendering the future to buy the present. In good times, you can get away with that. In tough times, appeasement comes home to roost.
In the vein of today’s announcements, signalling the start of an election campaign and a de-facto vote on Kenny’s capacity to lead Fine Gael to higher office Kenny outlines a Fine Gael priority list for government. At least it is not opposition for its own sake.
· An Ireland where people have to look up the word ‘Quango’ because
they don’t know what it means;
· An Ireland whose healthcare system is used as a case study in
excellence in every medical school in the world;
· An Ireland that values hard work and enterprise – and is free of red
tape, bureaucracy, duplication and intrusive pointless regulation;
· Where people in responsible positions are fired or demoted when they
fail to serve the citizen. Where accountability is a function of daily
life;
· Ireland as a world leader on environmental protection (including
flood protection) exporting expertise and environmental products
globally;
· An Ireland that cares for the people on the edges, not an Ireland
with a harsh sense of entitlement, whose attitude is best summed up by
the cosmetics slogan: ‘Because I’m worth it’.
All of it aspirational but all of it most likely to form the basis of the forthcomign platform for the local elections. There is a great deal of vagueness there - who doesn’t want world class healthcare? who doesnt want accountability in daily life? The touch of l’Oreal is a nice one but what is happening here is a lesson learned the hard way from Lisbon - get in early and frame the debate. Fine Gael and Labour are coralling the ground on how to view the government and Kenny is even beginning to put the skeleton of a policy position in place. Whether it works is an interesting point - we must wait and see.
Am I alone in feeling mounting frustration with the main opposition parties and the complete absence of any alternative policy ideas emanating from them? Instead, they rely solely on personal attacks on members of the government. Would someone please tell them this is not effective politics? Evidence: the results of the last two general elections. Fine Gael and Labour are like two children on either end of a political see saw, constantly moving up and down but going nowhere.
As for these abstruse references to Cleopatra’s nose and the scattering of googled literary references politicians tend to litter their speeches with these days, presumably to try and make themselves sound well-read or intelligent or both - though thanks be to heaven they’ve let up on Humpty Dumpty and Alice in Wonderland for a while - it’s not clever and it just sounds contrived and trivial.
We’re not stupid, us ordinary folk out there. We know there is an international crisis and we also know that as a small open economy Ireland will take the brunt of it. Yes, the government have a lot to answer for and I for one have little sympathy with them. What matters now is how they respond to the difficulties we are in - I think that is what most people care about, especially those who have lost their jobs or who can’t get any jobs or who are facing huge hikes in energy and transport costs and their mortgages and are genuinely worried about putting bread on the table for the next couple of years.
I suspect that like most people I’d like to hear what alternatives ideas/policies might be purused to get us through the tough times ahead in some sort of reasonable shape, and some sort of constructive intelligent critique of existing government policies, rather than a pseudo intellectual treatise on Cleopatra’s nose.
Regardless of Cleopatra, what we don’t want is a repeat of Blair’s new world Labour. When are people going to learn? The developed world hangs on the gold standard threads of a few very wealthy, very greedy, immoral and unscrupulous people. These people have reincarnated themselves over the ages. They control world world money markets, they control debt, they control politicians. Get real, market led democracy does not serve the interests of the many but of the few. It is only by coming up with an alternative that allows the people to flourish within any given community that has some moral structure at its base. Compassion has existed for centuries (we know this from how people buried their dead). All the different tried and tested politic has had its problems. The world needs to get rid of spin and reacting and advocate bringing back real thinking. Put the genuine back into politics. Also you seriously rich people, there must be some moral individuals amongst you who will lead by example by paying your tax like everyone else. The because ‘I’m worth it’ is indeed getting tired. On that point I agree. Freud would turn in his grave at how his ideas on unconscious desire (born from a genuine need to treat people with serious mental distress) have been used to propagate the most selfish of human desires, that of making lots of money.