Irish is a two and a half party system, or at least that is what we’re told. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour are the only parties that matter and a vote for anyone else is a wasted vote. Quite how this view became so commonplace given it appears that almost anyone can be elected in Ireland is something of a mystery.
Certainly, governments have been dominated by Fianna Fáil in particular, but that doesn’t mean that Ireland has no scope for the development of opposition politics.
The latest party to hear the call is Amhrán Nua, a newly founded group that aims for the so-called ‘radical centre’, perhaps the most misleading political term to appear in recent years. So, what does this new entrant to the political field offer the electorate? Not much.
Party founder Ronan Burke has been quoted as saying the party will be Ireland’s answer to the Liberal Democrats. (1) Why he thinks Ireland needs another bland centrist political party is another question altogether.
However, Amhrán Nua is very like the Liberal Democrats in at least one other way: its policies are almost infinitesimally small. During the mid-1990s, just before Tony Blair’s New Labour swept to power with a thundering majority in the House of Commons, the Liberal Democrats were busy attempting to reinvigorate politics by promising that if they were elected they would make seatbelts mandatory in minibuses – stirring stuff. In fact, right up until to Labour’s 1997 landslide then Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown was busy telling the media that the party had connected with the public and was ready for coalition with Labour.
Similarly, Amhrán Nua’s website has a large section on potholes in County Dublin. Any Dublin driver will tell you that the city’s roads are a joke, but it’s hardly the stuff that manifestos are made of. Dublin’s roads could be fixed, including in terms of easing congestion, without any involvement from central government.
Ireland’s politics aren’t suffering because of a lack of parties, they’re suffering because of a lack of vision and Amhrán Nua doesn’t appear to be doing anything to counter this. The party’s big proposal is the revival of the Tailteann Games, something that the party says will generate a significant amount of revenue. It is certainly possible that a major sporting event could draw in income it is also possible that such an idea could fail – as it did three times in the last century. Moreover, the question of whether or not a sporting event should be held is hardly the stuff economic policy is made of.
Despite the perception of Irish politics being closed loop consisting of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour, Ireland has a history of small but significant political parties from Clann na Poblachta through the Progressive Democrats, the Workers’ Party, Sinn Féin and the Greens.
The idea that Irish politics is sewn-up just isn’t true. The last general election saw the People Before Profit Alliance, a Socialist Workers’ Party initiative almost take a seat in leafy Dún Laoghaire at the expense of the Green Party. Since then the party has made gains in local authority elections and, given the Greens’ pending implosion, it may well win the seat next time around. The Socialist Party, meanwhile, won a seat in the recent European elections and is likely to regain its Dublin Dáil seat. Sinn Féin has so far failed to grow as much as was expected but to write it off would be folly. It is already larger than the Green Party, for instance.
Right now there is a clear opportunity to reorient Irish politics. The curious mixture of Italian-style corporatism mixed with the rhetoric of free-market capitalism that has dominated political life for decades has been revealed as a hollow, self-serving non-ideology that cannot deliver what the country wants. The left, however, remains mired in yesterday’s battles and the revival of Keynesian economics it proposes is only resonating because the public are afraid. In time this enthusiasm will pass and there appears to be no hard-thinking going on about how economy might be rebuilt.
Amhrán Nua claims to offer a break from the past but it only does so in terms of being a different set of faces that offers the same narrowed range of ideas that have dominated political thinking for more than two decades.
It’s easy to mock a new political party but the fact that people are taking an interest in wider issues is not something to sneer about. The problem with Amhrán Nua is that, for all the enthusiasm of its founder, it isn’t really offering anything new to Irish political life. For the moment Amhrán Nua feels more like an internet phenomenon than an actual political party.
forth contacted Amhrán Nua for comments prior to publishing this article but received no response
(1) ‘Radical centre’ party believes it can save the economy, Conor McMorrow, Sunday Tribune, October 25, 2009
Click here to comment on this story or read other readers' views
RSS feed
