When you have a government determined to drive away support…

Welcome to my first column and podcast in several weeks. Apologies for the delay. This column is also available as a podcast via Spotify

It has been a few weeks since I last produced a column or podcast. This lull has not been due to any lack of material. Far from it. There has been enough political activity over the past two months for several columns.

So why the dwindling output, you ask?

Well, it is indirectly related to the late great Jeffrey Bernard. Regular readers and listeners will know that I am a bit of a fan of Bernard… and regularly pepper my output with his bon mots.

You will doubtless be familiar with the phrase “Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell”. Though mainly known as the title of Keith Waterhouse’s hilarious play about Bernard, the title comes from the strapline which editors would often place in the space where Bernard’s column should have appeared… but didn’t… due to the author being too “tired and emotional”.

It was not the only strapline they used. The other variant stated: “there is no Jeffrey Bernard column this week as it remarkably resembles the one he wrote last week”.

And, so it was with me. Upon reading the first draft of my recent attempts I quickly saw that they were just re-runs of columns I had previously written on a range of topics from defence, to the lingering paradox of Martin’s leadership of Fianna Fáil, to the problems besetting a faltering DUP.

This is not to say that I forecast everything that happened. Clearly I did not, but I do think I can justifiably lay claim to having identified the fault-lines that now run through this government from the time of the negotiation of the current Programme for Government. I set out my seven criteria for government formation at the time.

Put simply, I opposed Fianna Fáil entering into the current arrangement with Fine Gael as its main partner as it was a fundamental denial of the fact that the voters had rejected Leo Varadkar and Fine Gael.

This still appears to come as news to Deputy Micheal Creed and others (based on the selective leaking from last week’s Fine Gael parliamentary party)

2020 was the second successive electionwhere Fine Gael emerged considerably weaker than before.

In the 2016 election Fine Gael lost 26 seats of the 76 seats it won in 2011 after a hefty 10.5% swing against it. This enfeebled Fine Gael entered the 2020 election with bright hopes of having Leo Varadkar revive its fortunes.*

The voters decided otherwise. They abandoned Fine Gael a second time, cutting its seat numbers by 15 more seats (as compared to its 2016 tally) via a vote swing of 5% against Varadkar’s Fine Gael.*

The point here is that in just under a decade Fine Gael slumped from 76 seats and 36% of the vote to just 35 seats and 21% of the vote. Not that you would know this from the tone and attitude of that party, or its current leader, today.

Fine Gael had no mandate to govern in 2020. The problem was that no party had. The 2020 election produced a hung Dáil. Yes, Sinn Féin did well in 2020. It did see a big jump in its support, not only as compared to the 2016 election, but when compared to the 2019 locals where it lost seats across the country.

The reality is that Sinn Féin in 2020 was just as far short as both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. We don’t elect governments based on “most improved”.  

Micheál Martin’s Fianna Fáil, which had also endured a bit of electoral setback 2020 losing 7 seats, determined that the least worst outcome to this impasse was a Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael/Green government, with him at the helm for the first two years.

So, was that decision the correct one?

While it may have been the correct decision for Micheál Martin, I cannot see how it was the right one for his party. Most polls, including the most recent RedC poll for the Sunday Business Post, not only shows Fianna Fáil doing worse than at election 2020, has its support lower than in 2011… which was the absolute low water mark for the party… so far.

I know from decades of experience that mid-term polling numbers rarely favour government parties and that hitting 15% in a series of polls today is not an indicator that the party will do this badly at the next election, be it in 13 or even 18 months’ time.

But that experience also tells me that a government, in which the inter party  communications, co-ordination and trust is as fractured as we saw last week, is far from coasting to re-election.

You do not convince voters that you are the steady pair of hands when those hands are busily engaged in sending coarse gestures to your partners in government.

Even before last week’s pre-budget missive from the three Fine Gael junior ministers, I had concerns about this government’s political ability and instincts. This applies to all three parties in government, though to be fair to the Green Party they are not as assiduous as their partners in pushing away their core support.

I could spend an entire column addressing the coordinated actions of the three junior ministers, but I will limit myself to the comments I made on last Thursday’s Today with Claire Byrne on RTÉ Radio One, with just one addendum.

This concerns the identity of the junior ministers concerned. It is notable that Fine Gael opted to have these particular three junior ministers sign off on the Irish Independent article.

What do they have in common? Clearly, they are all Fine Gael-ers and are all seen as being close to Leo Varadkar… but there is something else. Each is assigned to a government department where the senior minister is a Fianna Fáil-er.

Peter Burke is Micheal Martin’s junior at both the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Defence, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill is Michael McGrath’s junior at the Department of Finance, while Martin Heydon is Charlie McConalogue’s junior at the Department of Agriculture.

It explains why someone like Neale Richmond was not asked to add his name. His senior minister is Simon Coveney, so including this high flyer would not have given the article the extra stinging power wanted.

So, back to this government’s uncanny ability to drive away support. A former British Labour Home Secretary (I thought it was either Jack Straw or Dr John Reid, but could not find a citation) observed that somewhere deep in every minister’s department there was a civil servant working on a policy proposal or initiative which could well see that minister’s career end in tears.

The current Irish government is working on going one better. It has cut out the middle-man. Its career ending policies come from the ministers themselves.

This may appear to be an unfair accusation, but let me point you to the report in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post that an OECD review of policy making in Ireland has found that Irish civil servants believe they are being ‘side-lined’ by ministers who prefer to rely on public consultations.

Take Health Minister Stephen Donnelly’s plan to put health warning labels on alcohol products. Not only will the measure not come into effect until May 2026, it will have no impact on either exports or imports.

The labels warning of the health dangers of excessive alcohol consumption will only appear on Irish made products sold in the Irish market, imported competitor products will not have to destroy their branding in the same way.

Such is the desperation of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael ministers to find their own smoking ban / plastic bag tax moment that they content to mount any nanny-state bandwagon.

If this government or this minister was seriously committed to alcohol labelling, they would have produced the regulations in the first few months of entering office so that they could oversee its roll out and implementation. Right now, all we have now is a gesture. We have the image of a minister signing an order.

That is not government, it’s amateur performance art.

The same applies to the damaging government sourced spin and speculation about plans to amend, change, alter or otherwise diminish the triple lock on overseas troop deployments.

The recent volte-face (or, is “flip-flopping” the phrase I am struggling for here)  from Tánaiste Micheál Martin is very difficult to understand in the context of (a) public attitudes or (b) his party’s stated policies… and his own very clear statement from only a few months ago.

Fianna Fáil’s very clearly stated position (Page 138) at the February 2020 election was as follows:

Fianna Fáil reaffirms its commitment to the retention of the Triple Lock of UN mandate or authorisation, Government and Dáil approval, prior to committing Defence Forces personnel on overseas service. Ireland has correctly conferred primacy to the UN since joining in 1955, working with other UN members in supporting international action in areas such as disarmament, peacekeeping across its full spectrum, humanitarian/development actions and human rights implementation.

It was the Fianna Fáil manifesto commitments on defence which largely informed the 2020 PfG, which states on page 115:

The Government will ensure that all overseas operations will be conducted in line with our position of military neutrality and will be subject to a triple lock of UN, Government and Dáil Éireann approval.

Not that we have to go back two years for such a clear statement of commitment. Take this Dáil response from then Taoiseach Micheál Martin on November 22, 2022:

The Government has no intention of changing its current policy in respect of military neutrality. There is no galloping towards new alliances or anything like it. The Deputy [ Mr Boyd Barrett] consistently makes that false assertion in the House, but that is not the case.

Though this reply was made many months after the brutal assault on Ukraine by Putin’s Russia, we are now told by “informed” sources, that the triple lock is no longer fit for purpose and must be changed.

The triple lock mechanism comes from the 1954 and 1960 Defence Acts.

Are these sources saying that more has changed between February 2022 and today to render the triple lock no longer fit for purpose, than had changed between 1960 and February 2022? Seriously?

Though I support and back the Triple Lock mechanism, I do not fetishise it.

It is a policy and like all policies, it should be reviewed regularly. But this review should have both an expert and a political component. One of the core functions of a political party is policy formulation. What is the role for parliamentarians, particularly Fianna Fáil Oireachtas members in the process envisaged by An Tánaiste. Right now it appears to be: knuckle under and follow the leader.

I can understand why some people want to see us as full members of NATO. I disagree with the view, but I still respect it as a sincerely held position… however… I do not think it unreasonable to ask if we should not first focus on making our Defence Forces fit for purpose BEFORE talking up some yet to be defined changes to our long-standing policy of military neutrality?

I happen to agree with the arguments made by Prof Roger McGinty of Durham University in his blog: “Ireland: The value of foreign and security policy quirk”, when he says:

This is precisely the moment when we need a non-aligned movement with independent actors who can be peace entrepreneurs. NATO might be the right choice for some European countries, but that does not mean it is the right choice for all European countries.

All this is beside the fact that the vast majority of voters back the triple-lock while supporting increased investment in our national defence, especially on cybersecurity – a cause I have championed in this space for years. The April 2022 Irish Times/Ipsos poll found:

“…overwhelming support for the retention of Ireland’s current model of military neutrality… Two-thirds of voters do not want to see any change in neutrality, with less than a quarter (24%) in favour of a change”

Is it wise for Micheál Martin to start inviting others to investigate some new yet to be identified government defence policy that he knows he will never actually put in place as it is likely that there will be an election before his consultation process has completed and the necessary legislation drafted, never mind passed?

Unless of course, the aim of all this talk is not to persuade the vast majority of voters to change their minds and the real scene of his Damascene triple lock conversion is closer to Rond Point Schumann than to Merrion Street.

I could list several other policies, including the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 with its less than clear references to sex, gender and transgender, which would seem to contradict Section 18 of the Gender Recognition Act 2015 – but, let me finish with one final example.

Unlike the previous ones, this policy is popular with the supporters of the party promoting it…  it is just not popular with the supporters of the other two parties… and many more besides. It is the issue of roads and the determination of Green ministers and Oireachtas members to block a raft of major road projects.

The list of major projects being held up by Green party opposition at Cabinet is significant and includes: the proposed M20 between Cork and Limerick, the N17 and the N4 upgrades, the northern relief road in Mallow, the upgrade of the Fota Road to Cobh and the Killeagh/Castlemartyr by-pass.

While the furore over Fine Gael’s demands for tax cuts damages trust between the two main parties in government, the continued blockage on major road projects has the capacity to see this government collapse. The Green Party knows it faces a tough election, whenever it comes, and many of its TDs know they are unlikely to be re-elected, even in a much bigger Dáil of 178 seats.

But from their perspective those would just be short term loses. They also know that their party brand and reputation would not survive any compromise over the roads programme. That line in the sand has now been drawn.

Their Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael colleagues know that failing to deliver on these long overdue road improvements schemes across rural Ireland, especially along the northwest and western corridor will cost them seats.

This is a real political faceoff that is bubbling away under the surface, but when it blows up it will make the Fine Gael op-ed look every bit as insignificant and pointless as it really was.

Last week’s skirmish suggests that the internal coherence needed to address the much bigger roads face-off does not exist.

* Corrigendum: I have made a slight correction to these two paragraphs since this column was first published. In the original version I used seat drop figures that compared the election outcome with Fine Gael’s seat count from just before the election was called. These comparisons did not allow for defections, by-election losses etc., so,  I have corrected to use election day seat totals. 

                                                                    –oOo– 

As a supplement to this column I offer two polling charts showing Fianna Fáil’s gradual decline since 2018. These graphs were produced via the Irish Demographic Polling Dashboard. This project is hosted by the Connected Politics Lab at University College Dublin and uses full datasets generously supplied by RedC polling

NB – I have previously discussed the concern that Red C tends to understate Fianna Fáil support by 2-3 pts, but as these charts do not make comparisons, it is the trend we are examining.. and that trend is not good.

 

Graph 1 – Fianna Fáil support from 2018 to date (across all ages)

Graph 2 – Fianna Fáil support from 2018 to date (by age) – note that since entering government Fianna Fail’s biggest problem is now with voters aged 35-54