The byelection results have given the junior party of Government bargaining power, but they must use it fast, writes GARRET FITZGERALD.
THE HEAVY defeat of the Government parties in the recent elections seems to have derived more from anger at the – on the whole – well-judged measures the Government has belatedly taken to deal with the crisis, rather than from anger at their policy blunders that contributed so much to it.
This does not bode well for our future, for a successful outcome to this crisis will depend upon public recognition of the mistakes made earlier in this decade leading to acceptance of the measures needed to undo the damage done to our economy – specifically by correcting the excess of our pay rates above those of our western European EU partners.
I shall return to that aspect of our situation in a future article. Meanwhile, I propose to review the results of the local elections as they affect the three smaller parties: Labour, Sinn Féin and the Greens. More than enough has already been written about the two larger parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
Labour clearly had a most successful election, trebling its European representation, and winning new seats in the local elections, where it increased its share of the vote in Dublin by over 40 per cent.
There is now every chance that in a general election it could increase its number of Dublin Dáil seats from nine to 14. In several constituencies this would face the party with a problem familiar to the two larger parties but which hitherto Labour has not met: two Labour TDs competing with each other within the same constituency!
Outside Dublin, Labour gained ground in Munster and in four Leinster constituencies: Carlow-Kilkenny, Kildare, Louth and Meath. This could bring it within striking distance of additional seats in Louth and Meath, as well as recovering its traditional seat in Carlow-Kilkenny, lost in the last election to the Greens.
By contrast, Sinn Féin lost a lot of ground in these elections, not merely shedding its only MEP, but also dropping a large part of its support in Dublin and Waterford city – as well as losing ground in all three Ulster counties. Furthermore, in eight of the 10 counties or cities that it decided to contest for the first time, it secured only between 1 and 4 per cent of the vote.
At a time when there was evidence, in Dublin at least, of a swing to the left, this was an astonishingly poor performance by a party which had expected to make significant gains in these elections.
Clearly the gloss has gone off Sinn Féin in our part of Ireland: they are no longer flavour of the month and may in the period ahead see their share of the national vote declining further.
The Greens may have lost almost all their council seats, but, curiously, following the two byelections, they now hold the balance of power in the Dáil. As a result they have acquired considerable bargaining power vis-a-vis both Government and Opposition. Their best hope lies in now using this new bargaining power to secure policy reforms that might in time earn them a recovery in public support.
They need to grasp the fact that their loss of almost 40 per cent of their vote demonstrates that in a crisis like the present one the environmental issues that are understandably dear to their hearts mean little to most voters, whose minds are currently fixated on the economy.
The party could be tempted to use their new bargaining power solely to promote Green policies, but if they take such a narrow approach they cannot hope in present circumstances to recover lost political ground.
To win back lost support they need to broaden their agenda by visibly forcing Fianna Fáil to concede ground also in other policy areas, where it has hitherto been reluctant to move, for example, in relation to party funding, as well as by visibly forcing them to undo some of the damage recently inflicted by ill-considered cuts in areas affecting children, some of which involve ludicrously small savings, when it is billions of borrowing reductions that are needed, rather than small change of this kind.
So long as the Greens keep any tweaking of recent spending cuts to a small scale, and accompany this approach with unambiguous support for the very tough, large-scale measures that will be needed in order to cut borrowing by €4 billion next December, such a tactic could pay off for them. But they would need to move fast if they wish to be seen to be the prime movers in this tactic, rather than Fianna Fáil backbenchers.
The Greens might also gain considerable kudos by using their new bargaining power to force Fianna Fáil to abandon the extravagant and anti-environmental Ó Cuív policy of requiring State bodies to publish expensive glossy reports in Irish as well as English, and requiring these bodies to throw out their notepaper so as to s
ubstitute it with Irish- language headings. That is the kind of playacting that undermines necessary public support for the language.
Having gained some kudos in this way the Greens could later quietly sound out the Opposition informally on a possible deal under which, if they left the Government and precipitated a general election at a propitious moment for Fine Gael and Labour, one or two Greens, drawn from Senate or Dáil Éireann, would be included in a future government, enabling them to carry forward their very worthwhile environmental agenda under different auspices.
A Machiavellian agenda? Why not? All is fair in love and politics and, if they wish to survive, small political parties need to be prepared to deploy skilfully and ruthlessly any bargaining power they may occasionally acquire.