Fintan O’Toole: Radical change the only way to achieve stability

Even an existential crisis has not disturbed the distribution of privilege or caused failed institutions and practices to be swept away

Everybody knows well in advance the way the general election is to be framed. It will be a simple choice: stability or chaos. As a slogan, it has its merits. It is a grown-up version of Hilaire Belloc's rhyme Jim, in which the eponymous brat, in spite of endless warnings, lets go of his nurse's hand at the zoo and is promptly eaten by a lion. "His father who was self-controlled/ Bade all the children round attend/ To James's miserable end./ And always keep ahold of nurse/ For fear of finding something worse."

The Government knows that, unlike Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman, it is not well liked. It is supported, broadly, by a large chunk of the population. But there's very little affection for it. This is partly, of course, because its term has been necessarily dour, but partly, too, because Enda Kenny's schtick has a pretty short shelf life. I'm not suggesting affection for our leaders is inarguably a good thing – Bertie Ahern was very well liked and look where that got us. But in the absence of genuine popularity you have to try something else.

When you attach big words such as stability and chaos to it, that something else sounds rather grand. It has an epic, existential ring to it. But it just means: “You might not like us but wait till you see the other shower.”

The Government's appeal is a bit like the funeral of a horrible old git at which the need for someone to say something nice about the dead man is met with stony silence until someone finally steps forward with the eulogy: "His brother was worse." Given that Fine Gael's brother party is Fianna Fáil, it has the virtue of truth.

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But it is a particularly gloomy way of framing the Irish future. We all know chaos is no fun, yet stability isn’t exactly a laugh a minute either. Firstly, the State is not really a stable system – it is just a permanent state of crisis management, a perpetual-motion fire engine always rushing from blaze to blaze. It’s not that we don’t have chaos, just that when chaos is chronic everybody gets used to it.

In the past three weeks alone we've had authoritative statements that three of the biggest parts of the State machinery are chronically dysfunctional. Tony O'Brien, who runs the Health Service Executive, told the Sunday Business Post at the weekend the HSE is on "death row", has no coherent vision and cannot make decisions for the medium term, never mind the long term.

Poorly organised

Last week’s gobsmacking report of the Garda Inspectorate paints a picture of a police force so poorly organised that it is a miracle any criminals get caught at all.

And the recent report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development finds that the Oireachtas is the worst-functioning parliament in the developed world when it comes to the most basic job of scrutinising the budget. That's just the current crop of failures: we could, of course, reap a much richer harvest.

Secondly, for large sections of society stability is a distant dream. The most immediate form of stability in anyone’s life is a home, and it is just not available to growing numbers of people. Huge increases in child poverty, deeply rooted long-term unemployment and an inability to rely on necessary public services make for chaotic lives. I don’t think there is any real appreciation in most of the political and media worlds of the degree to which working-class communities feel alienated from the mainstream, or of what that implies for our democracy.

Thirdly, we are part of a bigger world in which stability is not an option. To name just four problems, think of climate change, of the refugee crisis, of the parlous state of the European Union and of the immense destructiveness of growing inequality. Each of these on its own demands radical change: cultural, political and economic. Taken together they suggest we have to think of stability in a radically new way: the world can be stabilised only if it utterly transforms itself.

So it’s not good enough to warn us that we have to hold on to Enda’s clammy hand or else get snapped up in the jaws of chaos.

Distribution of privilege

In some respects we’ve had far too much stability: even an existential crisis has not disturbed the distribution of privilege or caused failed institutions and practices to be swept away. We’ve also had far too much chaos inflicted on the lives of those who most need a capable and rational State.

And these two outcomes have been inextricably linked: a stability that consists in protecting the haves means chaos for the have-nots. Chaos and stability look less like alternate possibilities than like Siamese twins.

What we need to hear in an election campaign is not a souped-up version of a nursery rhyme morality tale. It is an adult proposition about how inevitable and radical change will be handled fairly, rationally and decently.

What really matters is not the stability of our institutions and systems but the security of citizens’ lives.