The Good Society

I finally get a spare twenty minutes to do a post and it’s way too late to comment on the government’s recent flip in the polls. Well tough, I’m going to do it anyway. It’s hardly a new idea but I am willing to wager that at least some of the recent good numbers for the government lie in the public response to leadership.

I’m not one to go praising Bertie Ahern all the time but it seems that, in retrospect, he played the opposition like fiddles. The opposition leadership never knew which way to pull on the whole saga because their focus groups wouldn’t come to a conclusion.

So they faffed about on the fringes of the issue, sending in party members to do battle—most notably Richard Bruton—and trying to land punches on the government via the Progressive Democrats. The PDs need no help in appearing to the electorate as having some cake and eating it too, and the work by Fine Gael and Labour seems to have been wasted on negotiating a safe path through an issue which the public became increasingly sick of.

Not that the Taoiseach was correct in what he did, the public seemed to take the position “it was wrong, not a hanging offence, now can we please return to the issue of government?” Fortunately for the Taoiseach, this was precisely his position (eventually, after much groping for other positions). He benefitted from this in a perverse fashion because, in some way, he managed to lead popular opinion with him. Simple politics, Cian.

Not quite, for our politics is so often not about leadership at all but about the form of consensus-focus group following nonsense that delivers three parties on almost identical platforms.

I think that the opposition are (coming across as? or simply are?) weak leaders. Enda Kenny, it is well known, is not the greatest leader and for some reason the tactic has been to turn him into our very own posturing Texan Republican on billboards. That image is so 99/00. Pat Rabbitte, to his credit, can speak. The problem I have is, when he does, he can turn away as many as he persuades.

The public is being faced with a party system now focusing on the head men; presidential fights are what the media want and the forthcoming tripartite head to head between Bertie and Enda/Pat, with the side-show of Trevor-v-Michael-v-Sinn Fein, looks like it could deliver a blow to the opposition unless they show genuine leadership on issues. At present hedging their bets is beginning to backfire.

Here we hit a paradox for Labour: they must assert an identity, something which can be observed through the blue haze of the Fine Gael embrace but in the call for strong leadership they may have to take the Labour-Gael option and dilute positions before an election.

On the idea of leadership, here is some stuff the opposition coalition might like to consider: The Good Society, a work by Compass in the UK. It is a British publication focused at the work of renewal of the Labour government in office, but it is a valuable tool for policy ideas here.

I won’t bore you with mass clippings, this initial opener suffices: “Empowered as consumers we have become disempowered as citizens.” The Irish society is a new beast, we survived the eighties via social partnership and a bounce in FDI, but at this juncture in the economic cycle the winds may be changing. Our polity is a new beast, it is changing. What 2007 may need more than anything else is a diversity of ideas. The Greens have done very well by confronting the polity with the need for action on climate change and the support of that agenda through various policies. As the science continues to back their position, it seems likely the electorate will follow if candidates of calibre are fielded.

So what can be distinctive about Fine Gael and Labour? Not a lot unless they begin to critically engage with the forthcoming problems of our society—climate change, a Celtic Tiger running on fumes, serious issues in housing provision, employment generation if the construction industry contracts, dysfunctional communities around the country—and develop a discussion with the people about bringing change about.

Do we have to go all “big-state” on the policies? Frankly, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t mind having a few politicians who were willing to cast aside any presuppositions and flesh out the positions on a progressive direction for society and our economy.

If we want more of the same, the electorate will entrust that job to Fianna Fail. If the opposition want power, they need to be more than just more of the same and offer a directional change, something which, on paper, looks very hard to do.