The Whole Hog: Towards a Consultive Democracy

Well, that woke everyone up! As polling day approached, it was clear that Sinn Fein were on a roll. But nobody, Shinners included, foresaw the scale of it.

It’s now being parsed and analysed as the experts who didn’t predict it try to understand and explain. They say the mould has been broken, that Sinn Féin has been brought in from the cold, that Ireland has shifted decisively to the left and that a new age has dawned. But does it add up?

The first thing to say in response is that, in the Republic, the citizen is the fundamental unit. No party or individual dictates the way people vote. It’s the other way round. The aggregate vote represents the will of the citizens, who elect their deputies
(and that word is revealing) to manage the State on their behalf.

HOW ARE RENTS SO HIGH?

As a manifest of the will of the electorate, the result of an election has been respected throughout the century of the State’s existence, notwithstanding (a) severe pressures and threats in the 1930s in particular; and (b) that many have often been frustrated by the results. Our politics have survived numerous shocks. This should be no different.

Contrary to what you may have been hearing, the mould is made for reshaping. We haven’t had a single party majority for over 40 years. Surges make headlines, but ebbs and flows, and minority and coalition governments, are the norm.

Even during the lifespan of Hot Press there have been three surges that were thought to have heralded an entirely new dispensation. The first was the Fianna Fáil landslide of 1977, of which more anon. The others were the so-called Spring Tide of 1992; and the similar but much more fraught Labour result of 2011, following on from the bank collapse and onset of the economic crisis.

In both 1992 and 2011, we were told, as we are now, that a new era had dawned, that henceforth there would be three main parties. Labour would always be in Government, the only question was with whom. And so on. Sinn Féin, in large measure, owes its current status to what followed. Had Labour chosen to lead the Opposition in 2011, it would probably be the biggest party now. But it didn’t, opting instead to join Fine Gael in government.

Many raged against this decision but Labour insiders always argue, with justifiable conviction, that they protected the people, and especially those who were hardest hit by the austerity programme, from much worse. Certainly, Labour helped to manage the crisis, control the extent of the chaos, avoid a Greek tragedy and – in so doing – laid the foundation for the present, relative, prosperity. But it’s very hard to measure prevention: that, it turned out, was their tragedy.

Either way, the renewed prosperity, and the low level of unemployment, seem to be taken so completely for granted that the economy didn’t feature as an issue in Election 2020. Instead, voters focused on payback. If we’re doing so well, how are rents so high, housing in such short supply, our city doorways full of homeless in sleeping bags, our health system so dysfunctional (until you get into it, that is, after which it’s excellent)…

LIVING BEYOND OUR MEANS

So here’s some advice: Sinn Féin, and everyone else, should spend time studying the 1977 election and its aftermath. Back then you had an unpopular Fine Gael and Labour coalition. For their election campaign Fianna Fáil unveiled a manifesto of radical change. A key element of this was the abolition of property tax, then collected in the form of rates. Instead, funding for local government would be met by general taxation…

Does this sound familiar?

What followed was as predictable as night following day. Fianna Fáil won a landslide victory, every bit as striking as Sinn Féin’s recent performance. Soon, unemployment rose and they had to increase general taxation. There was a flight of capital out of the country and as taxes rose PAYE workers found themselves bearing far too great a burden. Accusations came thick and fast: farmers and the self-employed, professionals included, weren’t doing their bit.

There were marches and protests. Charles Haughey became Taoiseach and went on the telly to say we’d all been living beyond our means, when he should have said: “We made a hames of it.” Cutbacks and swingeing austerity followed. The lesson? Putting it all on general taxation was then, and remains, a grievous mistake. Keep your tax base broad. There hasn’t been a single-party majority since.

Which brings us back to the citizens: while our well-educated commentariat furiously demands new philosophical precepts, new alignments and new politics, people are generally not bothered.

Rather, they want the Government to manage the enterprise as effectively as possible and, in particular, to do rather than to say. They want results – and the housing, homelessness and health crises are just too big to ignore. That is what drove the Sinn Féin surge.

Elections are largely won when the undecideds make up their minds. That can happen, as on this occasion, in the final few weeks. Nowadays, floating voters constitute as much as a third of the electorate. On the whole, their decisions are instinctive and emotional rather than rational and considered.

BUILDING CONSENSUS

That’s absolutely fine, but it suggests that the big new politics may not happen quite as is being envisaged. All the evidence suggests that life here isn’t like that. We may get a pragmatic solution instead. If so, we’ll live with it once it’s clear that the key issues will be addressed with urgency and conviction, especially housing and health.

Whoever goes into government may be lucky. Much spadework has already been done. The momentum in building houses has already gathered pace. Whether this is the right policy is a different matter. In addition to houses, we really should be building lots of apartments, close to city centres, and going much higher, and having a wider conversation about how we can live more sustainably in terms of commuting, energy consumption and convenience to schools and work.

Doing so would involve a different radical shift, towards a deliberative and consultative democracy – one that seeks to build consensus rather than conflict. The Citizens’ Assembly illustrates just how effective this is. And some of the world’s most stable democracies, especially the Nordic countries, are built on this concept. They too have multiple parties, many disagreements and complexities, but that way of doing business ensures that politics meets the needs and demands of the citizens. We should be getting more like that, not less.

Hot Press was the first mainstream publication to draw Sinn Féin into the wider conversation, back in the 1980s, before the peace process got legs. The interviews with Danny Morrison, Gerry Adams and others were ground-breaking and a hugely important building block in their move from war to peace. Whatever happens next, the rewards of that initiative have been precious.

Onwards and upwards. Hopefully...