With McDowell as Leader and Other Short Paragraphs

[This hilariously long post appeared originally on Disillusioned Lefty. Note that the phrase 'this blog', which pops-up regularly, is nothing more than a subtle, convincing reference to that fantastic blog]

A novice when it comes to politics, and Irish politics especially, I ventured into some of capital’s many bookshops this week in search of enlightenment. With a recommendation from one of Waghorne’s very critics, I bought The Boss, and have since delved deeply into it to great satisfaction. I had in mind also a book called Breaking the Mold, a recent biography of the Progressive Democrats which was reviewed favourably when released. To my disappointment, I learned that the book is not currently available, but happily its publishers are considering reprinting it. With the PDs polling at a mere 2% as McDowell took-over, before injected new sense of energy which moved to party up to—a probably ephemeral, I think—6%, the story of the book seems fitting to the story of its subject.

Which brings me to Richard Waghorne, who republished three recent articles on the PD leadership: two from the oft-ridiculed Irish Daily Mail and one from its affiliate Ireland on Sunday. The readers of this blog who also find the time to comment regularly have lower opinions of Waghorne than I do, so I say this at the risk of provoking them: Waghorne’s articles are amongst the best I read on the PDs and their purpose.

Even before Mary Harney stood down, it was often said that, in the next election, the PDs would be fighting for their own political survival. Indeed, Richard repeats the claim, which I think is one worth expanding on. Strangely, I haven’t yet seen anyone try. The statement, I think, needs to be made more specific: the PDs may well have to fight for their survival, but it should be asked and answered (preferably before the election) what result exactly would constitute a critical blow to the party? Until there emerges an accepted answer to that question, just about any deflation in the party’s performance could be described by some as fatal. I’m entirely unqualified to do this, but I’ll throw out some ballpark estimates. If the PDs can remain in government, they will have survived, no matter their performance. If they are forced to sit it out in the opposition benches, a fall below 4 seats would be, if not fatal, then comatosing. Again, an unqualified, and ballpark speculation. And I made-up the word “comatosing.”

In his Ireland on Sunday piece, Richard concludes that, if McDowell is to be at all successful, he must demonstrate his political will more than anything else. More on that soon, but I quote the passage presently for another reason.

McDowell may have indulged himself in a little Latin yesterday, quoting Virgil to declare that ‘fortune favours the brave’, but if he’s the intellectual he’d like us to believe he is he’ll know that Machiavelli, that great strategist of power politics, added to Virgil’s words by emphasising that fortune only dictates half of man’s fate – the other half is a matter of will.

Having read this, Simon of the Dossing Times, opined that Latin’s very presence in McDowell’s speech, or indeed his vocabulary, could well be the reason the PDs are in the struggle oft-spoken of. Of intellectualism, Simon claims, the general population are suspicious. Usually, this blog would delve into the meaning of intellectualism, the qualification of the word ‘intellectual’ and what relation Latin might have to the two. To those who read this blog for reasons pertaining to those discussions, I will disappoint you by moving on, but as I will soon always say: reality first if possible, philosophising second. I replied to Simon’s post at the time, and its content is such which I think deserves repeating.

The Progressive Democrats aren’t aiming to form a government themselves, as Richard highlights, they don’t even field candidates in most constituencies. They are a niche party, appealing to the often-snooty middle-classes and, despite what Richard might say about their actually being better for the poorer, I expect they are intent on remaining as such.

The snooty, you’ll find, applaud Latin phrases and feel rather smug when they understand them. In any case, that the PDs are a party aimed decidedly at the middle-class raises a further few points. First, that there were articles suggesting Tom Parlon might have become the leader of the Progressive Democrats is strange, to say the least. One suspected such would have proved political suicide, at least towards its current target market. Then one learned that Parlon had in his Laois Offaly constituency a quarter of the PD’s ordinary members, which is even stranger and, given that Parlon is essentially politically out-of-sync with the rest of the party, is probably something about which the PDs should worry. Second, to return to the original question posed, for the PDs to survive, as it were, would it suffice for the PDs to hold onto their snooty middle-class seats, thus holding essentially what they aim to represent?

In each of his articles, Richard highlighted the enormous impact the Progressive Democrats had on the economic policies of both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. He suggests that the intellectual victory was so convincing that the Progressive Democrats are no longer original, and therefore redundant as far as economic policy goes. Waghorne underlines, in essence, two paths down which the PDs should travel if they are to claim out of redundancy, and - to exhaust the cliché - into radicalism.

Economically, the PDs must essentially expand their existing policies of enterprise and such into other areas, such as transport, energy and health. At this end of the debate, what strikes me is that those activists who align themselves against the PDs claim that McDowell and Harney are already privatising everything from healthcare to Dáil Eireann itself, while those who tend to support the PDs wish only that the party would get-on with the enterprise approach for which the party claims to stand.

As a glance at the experience in neighbouring countries shows, public services simply do not work when the government is both paying for the service and actually providing it itself. Now nobody wants to start cutting people off, but there is a real opportunity for a courageous leader to break the mould of failing services by opening up the actual provision of services to the efficiencies of innovative independent enterprise. The government can still pay the bill, but let’s not pretend any longer that they can manage the business. Making that basic distinction between payer and provider is the shortcut to efficiency and it’s a tried and tested model for reform that could be applied across the board. Nothing would do more for buses and trains in this country than opening them up for the next Michael O’Leary and as the most energy vulnerable country in Europe we simply don’t have a choice any longer when it comes to competition in the energy market.

I think that in this, the PDs have something by which to go, at least as far as retaining their current voters goes. If the PDs hope to branch out into other areas, as Richard suggests they should, it is his second suggestion that should be followed. That area is Law & Order, and necessitates the political will which I mentioned while introducing the paragraph about Latin and such. If we are to imagine (for the sake of convenience) that, say, half (even a quarter) of the Irish Times’ readers are snooty voters who will consider voting for the PDs, it is the Irish Independent reader that the PDs might win over by addressing the apparent rise in crime.

Admittedly, I don’t read the Independent very often - but my mother does. And what concerns does my mother raise? It’s crime, it’s always crime. Whether exaggerated or not, the Independent runs a few stories a day about scumbags getting suspended six month sentences for some horrid attack on some poor old lady, or something. That this is the guy’s 42nd conviction, or something, is what gets the mother riled-up. Whether this is a genuine problem or not, I don’t know. I did see an article in the current issue of Magill which questioned whether crime was in fact on-the-up, as they say, but I didn’t read it. Politically, it doesn’t matter, one way or the other. The Independent will report these incidences, and my mother’s will continue to ferment. If McDowell was seen to do something - something genuine, even if the problem isn’t such - he and his party would have the vote of my mother, and I imagine, many people’s mothers.

But where McDowell really needs to get busy is with the most critical set of targets of all – the country’s burgeoning criminal underground. This is where McDowell – if he is prepared to raise his game and take on his critics – could really mark out space for himself. At every level of the criminal justice system in this country stands a well-funded, ideologically driven criminal rights movement that works tirelessly and shamelessly to reduce convictions, reduce prison time, and convince us that its not criminals who are to blame for crime but ‘society’, ‘inequality’, or ‘exclusion’. At a time when many in the public debate have lost the ability to make basic distinctions between right and wrong and to blame the aggressor not the victim, McDowell can and should take on those making excuses for criminals and wake up to the growing reality of a crime problem that for far too long he himself has minimised as a passing storm when in truth it is in danger of becoming a permanent fact of life in Ireland.

On becoming leader, I saw McDowell urged Fine Gael supporters to vote Progressive Democrat this time around to avoid a government within which a lefty-party, the Labour Party, sit comfortably. It may an effective strategy in some senses. It’s something that would pull, saaaay, me towards the McDowell and Co. I don’t think voters like me are not in great abundance though. By focusing on Crime & Punishment, I think McDowell would convince a lot of those people who would usually vote based on local issues for local candidates irrespective of their party to vote for his party based on a broader populist issue. Enough, in any case, to ensure the survival of the Progressive Democrats, whatever that might be.