Will Ireland Finally Vote For Change?

Well, friends, you’ve all lived through the coldest December since records began, one so cold and snow-covered that everyone lost all appetite for a White Christmas! Ever again! And the trouble is, the winter isn’t over yet. Things could get worse… after all, our coldest spells are usually in January and February, not December.

This sense that we’re still in the middle of winter rather undermines our normal New Year crystal ball-gazing. But into a New Year we most certainly are, and it’s one that has the potential to change very many things we have long taken for granted. And not a moment too soon, I hear you yell.
The changes will come in many forms and areas of our lives – but the looming general election and its aftermath will be what will suck most of the oxygen out of public life.
Its imminence has sparked a raft of retirements among serving politicians of all political parties and – in the case of Jackie Healy-Rae – none.
Cynics will suggest that some pending retirements on the Government side are triggered by the prospect of major losses for Fianna Fáil and years to come on opposition backbenches… not to mention the comfort blanket that present pension and transition supports offer to outgoing deputies and Ministers.
Perhaps. But there must also be battle fatigue and a sense that new energies are needed for what lies ahead for the party.
Will that include annihilation at the next election? It’s a moot point, though few in the commentariat seem in any doubt. In their crystal balls Fianna Fáil will get a drubbing.
The Hog is not so sure. They’ll lose a lot of seats all right, but they’ll have a go, on the basis that it’s not the dog in the fight that wins, it’s the fight in the dog. They will go to battle for the heritage, the movement. It could just work…
Afterwards, the current wisdom has it, they will elect a new leader. Already there’s a chorus within Fianna Fáil that the next boss be from a younger generation than those now heading out to pasture.
But who and what will they face across the floor of the Dáil? What indeed!?!
It appears from newspaper reports that big money has already made its choice and is flooding into Fine Gael. The assumption is that FG will be the largest party and will head a coalition Government with Labour.
Or maybe not… for, as letter-writer John Gillen commented in the Irish Times a few weeks ago, the numbers might actually give Labour power as the largest party of a three-way coalition of Labour, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin…
Well, maybe again. But in Ireland the winners are usually the best-organised and Fine Gael showed that their machine is relatively well-oiled in the last local and European elections. They also seem to be a bit cuter in their adoption of successful modern electoral approaches used elsewhere. In addition, powerful media forces seem to prefer the cut of their jib over all the others.
That said, one thing we can’t predict is how well the far left and far right will do, not to mention the madcaps, local heroes and eccentrics. For all that people in Ireland want national things to be done right, far too often they vote local and frequently, as with the recurrent endorsement of Michael Lowry, to give Official Ireland one in the eye.
Also, and this is really important, we can’t yet predict the impact of emigration, firstly on the election and secondly on Irish life in general in 2011.
There was a surge towards the end of last year and it looks very much like continuing. Already, 2010 saw the largest number of people leaving the country since 1989. The Economic and Social Research Institute is forecasting that 120,000 will have left by the end of 2011. That’s a lot of votes…
Emigration has always been a safety valve for the Irish. On top of the obvious personal pain involved, it’s also a profound loss to Irish society and it could be tragic. If we were more reluctant to take flight we might have a greater build-up of pressure for change.
We need the fire of youth raging through and across our political debates. We need iconoclasm and anger – just as we need new ways of thinking and doing. It will be an insult to the grievous pain that taxpayers are going to experience over the next decade if all that we get out of the next Government is, as it were, a reduction in the number of chairs on the deck of the Titanic.
That being so, those emigrating should think long and hard. At the very least they should make absolutely sure that firstly they register to vote and secondly that they know how to do so from abroad.
If you’re not in you can’t win.